Another Way of Looking At It...

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Well, it depends. I know there are quite a few utilities that offer time of day rates of 50cents/9kwh=~5cents/kwh. It depends on use... Electricity in bulk is way cheap. It only becomes expensive when the grid needs to pump out an extra 20-40% above and beyond what it usually makes 99% of the time. Those power plants that only get used a couple times a year are incredibly expensive. The stuff made when the grid is nearly idle during the early morning is incredibly cheap. Larger companies will sign up for time of day rates and invest in some sort of storage or work around that schedule just because they're a half to a third of everyday rates. It's kinda like buying enough gas to last until December in March, except the difference in price is way more.

[GasSavers_Brock]

Yup, I pay 5.5 cents per kw between 7pm and 9am. During the day, between 9am and 7pm I pay 22 cents a kw. So my small solar setup really offsets my daytime or on peak usage. I did have another option for three rates as well. The way off peak time wasn't enough of an advantage to me to go with the extreme times.

I do pay an additional $4 a month to be on "Time of Use" rates, but I often save about $30-$60 a month. I have things like shutting off our chest freezer 5 hours before off peak starts, our fridge 2 hours before off peak starts; only make ice on the weekends (all off peak), only run the electric dryer off peak ect…

[Bill in Houston]

Wow, pretty cool. Down here, we could run the AC all night and then turn it off in the morning. :-)

[GasSavers_Brock]

Yup, we do that as well. I set it for 74F at 7p and at 3a it drops to 72F, then after 9a it is set to 80F and only runs when it really really hot out. My wife doesn't like the temperature swings, but she likes the untility bill

[Bill in Houston]

Originally Posted by Brock

My wife doesn't like the temperature swings, but she likes the untility bill

Totally...

[slurp812]

Originally Posted by Sludgy

Well, DUH! Why didn't I think of that? Maybe perpetual motion generators in each car would power the batteries.

Not to be TOO sacastic, but of course the electric power needs to come from somewhere. Society gets to choose which source. The only reasonable non carbon source is nuclear. Are you pro-nuclear?

So we need find an old Delorean, and build a flux capacitor??? But wait, we dont need 1.21 giga-watts of electricity, well not all at once anyways.

http://www.davetheguitarplayer.com/delorean.jpg

JK of course

[DarbyWalters]

Almost every car in Iceland runs on Hydrogen...It is easier to implement in a country like Iceland because of the size and lack of Oil Resources. The only things for the most part that use petrol (diesel) are the fishing boats.

Anything is possible, but to just ignore a resource (read waste) and count on a better replacement out of neccessity is not an intelligent way to solve the crisis.

[ajohnmeyer]

Originally Posted by cfg83

MorningGaser -just start electrifying people's roofs
CarloSW2

I think you've just hit it.
What I think that we need more than anything is a massive "New Deal" scale program to decentralize and green the nations power grid. As the large-scale blackouts, brownouts and rolling blackouts of the nations grids in the last few years have shown, centralized power generation has it's downsides. One key plant or transformer station goes out under a peak load, there is the potential to take down the entire grid.

I seem to recall a program under President Clinton that aimed to put solar panels on the roofs of a million homes. Of course, that program got the axe under the current administration. Go figure. The Initial investment cost would be large, but the long-term payoff could be enormous. Just think, the peak power production occurs simultaneously with peak power demand. Fill in the "gaps" in production with a huge wind power program on the coasts and in the great plains, and you have a significantly reduced (even periodically eliminated) load on our current fossil-fueled power plants.

[csrmel]

i don't think you guys fully understand oil wells and drilling for oil. we will never truly run "out" of oil. sure, one day in the future we may run out of gas and diesel, but there will probably always be enough oil to produce oil based goods and services. even now, oil wells that were believed to be dry, are being re-used to pump more oil all over again. so when the oil supply for transportation runs out and people start freaking, there will still be enough to make you're tv's and microwave ovens.

[skewbe]

Originally Posted by csrmel

even now, oil wells that were believed to be dry, are being re-used to pump more oil all over again.

It isn't like the oil faires refilled the well. More likely that they sucked the oil out faster than the topology could support and oil seeped back in over time. Nothing to be interpreted as an endless supply as the returns will likely be diminished.