<story><title>Tesla Motors Announces a New Home Battery</title><url>http://offgridquest.com/news/tesla-motors-announces-a-new-home-batter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>&lt;i&gt;So, where does lithium come from? It comes from the Earth, of course, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t require strip mining or blowing the tops off mountains like other resources do...most often, lithium is found in briny underground ponds. The liquid is pumped out and left to dry in the sun.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;TANSTAAFL&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lithium+pond+photos&amp;amp;iax=1&amp;amp;ia=images&amp;amp;iai=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencephoto.com%2Fimage%2F438264%2Flarge%2FC0115790-Lithium_evaporation_pond-SPL.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;duckduckgo.com&amp;#x2F;?q=lithium+pond+photos&amp;amp;iax=1&amp;amp;ia=image...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mining is mining. There isn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; form. Tearing holes in the earth is not the worst ecological damage or the great health risk. The big problem is the water...and it will run downhill from the Andes and wherever else Lithium is mined and into the Ocean.&lt;p&gt;The house off the grid is built on industrial infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tessierashpool</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    The house off the grid is built on
    industrial infrastructure.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So what? It&amp;#x27;s a matter of degree.&lt;p&gt;I helped my parents build their off-the-grid house. It&amp;#x27;s solar-powered, but uses batteries for backup storage. It collects and filters rainwater, recycles and purifies its own sewage, and is made mostly of recycled materials (in the style of what&amp;#x27;s called an &amp;quot;Earthship,&amp;quot; but with a more traditional, house-like form factor).&lt;p&gt;Did industrial infrastructure come into play? Of course. We used cars and trucks to get stuff there to build with. We used machines and materials produced in the modern world. What difference could that possibly make? The house is still much less ecologically destructive than the vast majority of dwellings worldwide, both in terms of ongoing damage and initial construction.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible to create buildings today which get all their electricity from the sun; which require no industrial infrastructure at all for sewage, heat, or clean water; and which cost much, much less than earlier housing models. That&amp;#x27;s an amazing improvement.&lt;p&gt;All tech&amp;#x27;s based to some degree on tech which came before.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla Motors Announces a New Home Battery</title><url>http://offgridquest.com/news/tesla-motors-announces-a-new-home-batter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>&lt;i&gt;So, where does lithium come from? It comes from the Earth, of course, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t require strip mining or blowing the tops off mountains like other resources do...most often, lithium is found in briny underground ponds. The liquid is pumped out and left to dry in the sun.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;TANSTAAFL&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lithium+pond+photos&amp;amp;iax=1&amp;amp;ia=images&amp;amp;iai=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencephoto.com%2Fimage%2F438264%2Flarge%2FC0115790-Lithium_evaporation_pond-SPL.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;duckduckgo.com&amp;#x2F;?q=lithium+pond+photos&amp;amp;iax=1&amp;amp;ia=image...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mining is mining. There isn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; form. Tearing holes in the earth is not the worst ecological damage or the great health risk. The big problem is the water...and it will run downhill from the Andes and wherever else Lithium is mined and into the Ocean.&lt;p&gt;The house off the grid is built on industrial infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>headShrinker</author><text>Also many municipalities don&amp;#x27;t allow battery &amp;#x27;grid-tie&amp;#x27; with the option of &amp;#x27;off the grid&amp;#x27; living. For example, Connecticut has laws which don&amp;#x27;t allow houses to have batteries that would allow a house to be self sustaining and have a connection to the grid. This is because if you have batteries which cause a back flow during a power outage to the power station, an electrical worker could get shocked down the road.&lt;p&gt;The fact that lithium batteries aren&amp;#x27;t the greenest combined with the fact that you can&amp;#x27;t even live &amp;#x27;off the grid&amp;#x27; in a grid tied system is a big uphill for these batteries.</text></comment>