Gyroscopic Investing

All over the world, utilities are moving to 100% renewable energy. My own state of New Mexico has a mandate to reach this point by the year 2045. Many other states have similar policies. Various private companies have made the same pledge, with some already reaching it. The USA as a whole produced 18% of its electricity through renewable sources last year: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/ele ... istics.php. And speaking personally, I have reached the goal of 100% renewable energy myself, with a large solar array providing all of the power needed for my whole family, feeding all-electric appliances and an electric vehicle. It is quite possible; I'm living it. You can too.

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There are quite a few ways to generate electricity without burning fuels, among them solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal.

Hydro and geothermal can produce electricity at a constant level like a nuclear power plant, and can ramp up or down to match demand, like a fossil burner. But hydro requires a river and has its own negative environmental consequences. Geothermal is only economically feasible to implement in certain places--though this may change if fracking-originated deep well technology is applied to it. But that's another story.

So for the moment, the most widely applicable means to cleanly generate electricity are wind and solar. But these generation sources have a problem: they only produce electricity intermittently. A few solutions have been found, including pairing them with peaking fossil burner plants, adding battery storage, or overbuilding them to match peak demand during the period of lowest production.

Using supplementary fossil burners is an economic dead end; new solar and wind plants are already economically competitive and in some cases cheaper than fossil burners. Most new electric capacity in the USA is renewable, not fossil. Storage is an option, but it's more expensive than simply overbuilding more renewable capacity. So that's what's happening, by and large.

Think about what this means: we will wind up producing excess electricity most of the time. And not only will we, but we already do! In many electricity markets, a fraction of renewable capacity is simply shut down during periods of peak supply because there isn't enough demand for it.

Think about that. We shut down some of our electricity supply because we produce so much more than we need. This isn't a fantasy; it's already happening. All over the world.

Now, that seems wasteful. If we overbuild capacity to meet peak demand during the lowest-producing periods, we'll wind up with tons and tons of wasted electricity during the highest power-producing periods. Resources gone to waste.

But... what if it wasn't wasteful? Right now this electricity is basically free. That means we could install and operate free air conditioning for people who don't already have it. It means free medium-distance mobility for people with electric vehicles. It also means free hydrogen production. And what can you do with hydrogen? Burn it as a fuel in vehicles where the power-to-weight ratio of battery storage and electric motors is not high enough to displace fossil fuel engines. So we could put that hydrogen in planes to have zero-pollution air travel and air freight with essentially free fuel. We could do the same for tanker ships. We could store that hydrogen and use it later, just like batteries. And speaking of batteries, they're becoming cheaper all the time.

It's hard for me to avoid the conclusion that we're rapidly reaching a point in human history where energy itself actually does become "too cheap to meter." This turns everything on its head because our entire economic system is based on scarcity. So what happens when one of the economic inputs to that system becomes non-scarce?

Interesting times.

Now, this is just electricity of course. Raw materials and skilled labor will still be scarce. But unskilled labor is not as scarce as it once was. It's not just immigration from poor countries; automated production horns in on it as well. What happens when recycling reaches a point where raw materials are super cheap too? This is something to get excited about, not to fear!

All sounds good except for the government's magic wand that can mandate it happening by 2045. I'll be 98 that year so I might not be around to see it but my prediction is that the mandate itself will be responsible for a lot of waste.

Depends on your definition of waste. To my way of thinking, burning precious fossil fuels whose primary characteristic is high power to weight ratio in stationary combustion devices is the height of waste.

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:03 pm Depends on your definition of waste. To my way of thinking, burning precious fossil fuels whose primary characteristic is high power to weight ratio in stationary combustion devices is the height of waste.

No argument with that basic concept. It's just the government mandate. My suspicion is that it will be about as successful as the mandated government lockdowns to make the corona virus go way. The overall cost in unintended consequences is rarely even considered when such mandates are issued.

I find that specifics beat generalities.

Yes, in general government actions are often inefficient and ineffective. But this does not mean that all are.

Furthermore, the competence of a representative government is a function of not only the quality of its politicians, but also of the democratic skills of its people. When the people are nihilistic, have lost their conception of the public good, or wish only to use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies, the government will be at best ineffective and at worst psychopathic. But this is a choice that its own people have made. Those people can make different choices to get a better government. See also https://www.gyroscopicinvesting.com/for ... =9&t=11647

Anyway the point is mostly academic. California now gets 44% of its electricity from solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro (https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/ ... generation). This percentage has increased as the percentage mandated by law has also increased (https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/rps/). So clearly this kind of policy works. No need to claim that it will be a failure for nebulous reasons related to government incompetence, because it is already succeeding at its stated goal.

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 4:57 pm (https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/ ... generation).

Glad to hear from the California Energy Commission about all the success they are having due to government mandates in the state of California.

Maybe we should all move there.

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Glad to see you back, PS.

Do you have any thoughts on 4th Generation Nuclear Power?

Many.

I would have loved nuclear power 30 or 40 years ago. It would have been the perfect tool to transition away from fossil fuels during the time when solar and wind generators were science experiments or playthings for the rich. We could have replaced all coal and oil burners with nukes to zero out carbon emissions from electricity generation, and then slowly phased out the nukes as renewables became cheaper. This is essentially what France has done, and is doing.

But we didn't. And the window closed, so I don't see any reason to build any more nukes. Why?

• All existing designs are economically outcompeted by renewables today
• Nukes produce long-lasting pollution that we have no practical way to get rid of; renewables don't
• Nukes require extraordinary scientific and technical expertise and strict government oversight to safely operate; renewables don't
• Nukes have inherent safety and security risks; renewables don't (with the exception of hydroelectric dams, and I see this as a valid argument against them)
• Nukes require fuel; renewables don't
• Hypothetical future designs that address any or all of the above problems are just that: hypothetical and future. By the time they ever become practical--if they ever do--renewables will be even cheaper so there will be even less of a reason to build anything else

All that said, I see a place for nukes on ships. I want 100% of our destroyer-sized and larger ships to be nuclear-powered for strategic military reasons. At least for cruisers. Bring back the nuclear cruisers!

Very well reasoned. As always. Thank you.

I don’t/didn’t(?) have as much confidence in solar as you do. Some bad experiences. I’ll reinvestigate.

Cheers.

I talked to this guy in Sydney last year.
He was in town to start a bank. Which I read about in the news next day. Success!

But we spent our whole night talking about how to even out the demand on renewable energy sources.

Oversupply never came up.

I pushed gigantic flywheels and pumping water uphill. He was in favor of batteries.

I still like flywheels

Mark Leavy wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:22 pm But we spent our whole night talking about how to even out the demand on renewable energy sources.

Oversupply never came up.

I pushed gigantic flywheels and pumping water uphill. He was in favor of batteries.

I still like flywheels

Something I read about the other day from Ramez Naam (author of the Nexus series, great novels); if we had more West---East electrical grids and had the right production, the eastern states could produce solar in the early morning for the pre-dawn western states, and the western states could do the same for the eastern states after dusk. Something to think about.

The first order of business is to use less electricity (and fuel in general). Engineers are working on energy efficiency, the rest of us can help by not being wasteful. I don't know about now being post-scarcity electricity (maybe in the Southwest), but maybe we can get there.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the eco-hippies who preach austerity and efficiency are wrong.

All evidence shows that efficiency gains generally don't reduce total consumption because people simply consume more at the higher efficiency level. You make a house more efficient and people turn up the heat to the comfort level they wanted all along because it's no longer prohibitively expensive to do so. People buy a higher MPG vehicle or even an electric car and then they drive more compared to taking short-haul planes or trains. And so on. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Efficiency is good, but its end result is better quality of life, not reduced consumption. You can't efficiency-ize your way out of a problem caused by overconsumption or pollution. The way out of that is to de-couple the consumption from the problem it's causing. In this case, what's needed is to enable consumption of electricity without carbon emissions, air pollution, uranium or coal mining, oil and gas exploration, etc. Then people's consumption of electricity isn't a problem and they can consume as much as their budget allows (either by buying the electricity itself, or the means to generate enough on their own).

MangoMan wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 8:22 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:14 pm
Nukes produce long-lasting pollution that we have no practical way to get rid of; renewables don't

Then is this not accurate? What's Wrong with Wind and Solar?

No.

For example the very first statistic presented is that the theoretical maximum efficiency rate of a solar panel is 33%, but this is simply the efficiency for a single-junction cell. Multi-junction cells have a higher efficiency. Furthermore the efficiency of a solar cell is not important the way it is for a fuel burner. The "fuel" of a solar cell is the sun, which is free. So you don't have to care about the conversion efficiency the way you do for an engine that burns scarce and expensive fossil fuel. The limiting factor is instead raw materials for the cell, because a 5% efficient solar panel would require a lot more raw material to reach a target level of energy production than a 20% panel. He brings this up when he talks about the devices being made from "non-renewable materials" but this too is misleading. All energy generation requires construction, mining, raw materials, etc. The alternative is not "no mining and construction", it's "mining and construction for fossil fuel-based infrastructure" which has a much much higher ecological footprint. Furthermore the materials in a solar panel are recyclable once the panel reaches the end of its service life and is replaced because it's down to only producing 80% of its original generation level (this generally takes about 30 or 40 years). The materials in a wind turbine are the same, even more so. The "plastic" blades he says are non-renewable are in fact generally made of fiberglass which is recyclable.

He says their life is short (20 years) but this is total nonsense. Solar panels don't wear out and can operate essentially indefinitely. It's just that after 3 or 4 decades, they aren't producing as much as they used to. This doesn't mean you have to go out and throw them away! You just add a few more to make up the lost capacity. When you do replace the oldest panels, you're happy to because the newest ones are so much better and cheaper than the ones you're replacing. And the raw materials can be recycled into new panels. This will become even more true simply due to supply and demand should mining of the raw materials become expensive.

It is more accurate about wind turbines, but this is because the newest ones are so much better than the old ones due to advanced in materials sciences that allow them to be built bigger and bigger. The larger they are, the cheaper the electricity they produce, and the more reliable the supply (the higher you go, the higher the likelihood that there will be enough wind to turn the blades). Eventually we will reach a physical limit to the size of wind turbines that it is practical to build, and these mega monsters will last for many decades. And again, when they're taken down, their raw materials can be recycled.

I could go on. But this is a video designed to feed renewable skeptics with information that confirms their pre-existing points of view using inaccurate information that they won't know is inaccurate.

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Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 6:34 am I don't know about now being post-scarcity electricity (maybe in the Southwest), but maybe we can get there.

I want to stress that this is not theoretical: I'm living it, and you can too. Here's a more detailed explanation:

Over the course of the last few years I replaced all my gas appliances with electric ones. This was mostly cheap because I simply waited until the appliance needed to be replaced anyway and then made the switch to electric.

• Brought my nice electric induction range with me when I moved and sold the gas range that same with the house -> profit of about $200
• Water heater leaked -> its replacement is electric (total up-charge of about $500)
• Swamp cooler died and furnace was on its last legs -> installed ductless mini-split heat pumps to replace both (total up-charge of about $3,000 after utility and federal tax rebates)

I must also stress that the electric induction range and heat pumps are a substantial upgrade. Cooking on induction is wonderful compared to gas or (ugh) electric resistance, and the heat pumps give me air conditioning, which is much nicer than evaporative cooling.

After all the appliances were electric, I planned for a solar array that would meet 100% of the house's needs. This ended up costing my $17,500 after the federal tax credit. Not cheap in an absolute sense, but the way I looked at it, this was a great price to eliminate my electric bill. Here's the calculation:

$3,300 for appliance upgrades
$17,500 for solar
total cost: $20,800

So I spent $20,800 to eliminate my gas and electric bills, which together were about $175 per month. $175/mo costs about $52,500 in investments to sustainable generate forever. So it seemed like a no-brainer: spend $21k to avoid having to save $52k. So in my way of thinking, I came out ahead $31k.

These numbers will differ based on local markets and climactic conditions, of course. But this is how it worked out for me.

doodle wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 8:53 am Up here in Montana I can say that a radical change in the homebuilding industry would have to take place in order to get houses to a point whereby one could get through the winter without having to resort to burning fossil fuels. In many ways the answers probably lie in the past with ancestral building technologies and designs developed by people who didn't have the energy resources we do or had to go out and cut their own firewood. A huge downsizing of homes would also help. I hate having to heat 2000 square feet as i do currently (at a balmy 56 degrees..lol) In New Mexico the potential with window orientation and passive solar and earthen building practices I think have a lot of promise.

A secondary negative effect of trying to increase home efficiency without addressing fundamental design is that these houses are toxic waste dumps in order meet blower test and r values. With the building quality around here I'd be surprised if many of these places last longer than 30 years before needing major repairs. I'm not sure what you do with a house full of six inches of spray foam insulation. It's a mess...trying to fix, repair or replace anything.

What options do you think exist up here for electrical generation throughout the north that don't involve fossil fuels though? Geothermal is the only one I can think of...but I'm in a geologically active zone here. I'm not sure about those in North Dakota, Minnesota, etc.

On an individual level, and for targeted purposes, efficiency can work. In the case of a house that's an energy pig, spending $2,000 on efficiency makes sense if it lets you save $10,000 on the size of the solar array you'll need to heat (numbers pulled out of my ass, but hopefully they illustrate the idea). I did this in the houses I've owned, consciously trying to reduce the heat and cooling loads with the expectation of being able to reduce the side of my future solar array, and it worked perfectly.

The way you sell this kind of efficiency to people is in terms of comfort. Industry experience shows that this is the only real way to do it. To sell people new efficient windows you talk about how pretty they look, how much easier they are to open, how much less cold you'll be sitting next to one in the winter, and so on. Nobody cares about efficiency. Nobody even understands what it means.

Don't get me started on spray form insulation though. Every time I travel to Germany for work, I get depressed by the quality of their buildings. It's real. The way they build structures makes our attempts look like a toddler with fingerpaints next to a professional artist. German buildings are magnificent.

Regarding how to do it in Montana, I expect it would involve more wind than solar. But if you've got geothermal, that works too. An interesting emerging technology with geothermal is to use fracking-based deep well drilling technology to drill incredibly deep geothermal loops. This can scavenge heat from basically anywhere, not just geologically active regions.

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I went through a phase where I was obsessed with underground houses. It was part and parcel of my feeling that somehow hidden knowledge had been kept from me: here's the best way to build that the building industry doesn't want you to know about! He's the secret investment strategy that financial managers hate! And so on.

It's not that any of the advantages of an underground house are wrong, it's just that a full accounting of the costs and losses leaves their total advantage much less certain. Among them:

• Lack of windows/visibility/natural light
• Titanically high labor cost
• Increased radon risks
• Increased flooding risk, enough so to make it totally impractical in many places
• Diminished resale value (like it or not, houses are an investment product and resale value is important)

I've become much more of a fan of the idea of stealth exceptionalism. My house looks totally average, so my neighbors don't know that I have no monthly gas bill, drive for free, and pay only $8 for my electric bill (the minimum charge). It's kind of the utility version of the PP. Nobody has to know that you have a huge and unique investment portfolio.

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 8:17 am Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the eco-hippies who preach austerity and efficiency are wrong.

All evidence shows that efficiency gains generally don't reduce total consumption because people simply consume more at the higher efficiency level. You make a house more efficient and people turn up the heat to the comfort level they wanted all along because it's no longer prohibitively expensive to do so. People buy a higher MPG vehicle or even an electric car and then they drive more compared to taking short-haul planes or trains. And so on. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Efficiency is good, but its end result is better quality of life, not reduced consumption. You can't efficiency-ize your way out of a problem caused by overconsumption or pollution. The way out of that is to de-couple the consumption from the problem it's causing. In this case, what's needed is to enable consumption of electricity without carbon emissions, air pollution, uranium or coal mining, oil and gas exploration, etc. Then people's consumption of electricity isn't a problem and they can consume as much as their budget allows (either by buying the electricity itself, or the means to generate enough on their own).

Ok, so now you're arguing for not the end of energy scarcity then

Second, you're not addressing my point. I said we can help by not being wasteful. That would include resisting succumbing to Jeavon's Paradox, which could arise through the efficiency gains the engineers are working on. I'd say it's more likely that people are heating their house to the comfort level they want right now, at a higher resources cost than if they could do it more efficiently. I doubt someone who's comfortable at 67 degrees would turn up the heat in winter to 80 and be uncomfortably hot. But again, if we end energy scarcity and electricity becomes too cheap to meter, who cares anyways?

At any rate, I suspect we pretty much agree.

On the other hand, I'm not clear on how you make renewable equipment without fossil fuels for resources extraction and processing. Have there been some developments in that area? As far as I can tell, we could do it sustainably, but not at our current consumption level/population level.

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 8:56 am

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 6:34 am I don't know about now being post-scarcity electricity (maybe in the Southwest), but maybe we can get there.

I want to stress that this is not theoretical: I'm living it, and you can too. Here's a more detailed explanation:

Over the course of the last few years I replaced all my gas appliances with electric ones. This was mostly cheap because I simply waited until the appliance needed to be replaced anyway and then made the switch to electric.

• Brought my nice electric induction range with me when I moved and sold the gas range that same with the house -> profit of about $200
• Water heater leaked -> its replacement is electric (total up-charge of about $500)
• Swamp cooler died and furnace was on its last legs -> installed ductless mini-split heat pumps to replace both (total up-charge of about $3,000 after utility and federal tax rebates)

I must also stress that the electric induction range and heat pumps are a substantial upgrade. Cooking on induction is wonderful compared to gas or (ugh) electric resistance, and the heat pumps give me air conditioning, which is much nicer than evaporative cooling.

After all the appliances were electric, I planned for a solar array that would meet 100% of the house's needs. This ended up costing my $17,500 after the federal tax credit. Not cheap in an absolute sense, but the way I looked at it, this was a great price to eliminate my electric bill. Here's the calculation:

$3,300 for appliance upgrades
$17,500 for solar
total cost: $20,800

So I spent $20,800 to eliminate my gas and electric bills, which together were about $175 per month. $175/mo costs about $52,500 in investments to sustainable generate forever. So it seemed like a no-brainer: spend $21k to avoid having to save $52k. So in my way of thinking, I came out ahead $31k.

These numbers will differ based on local markets and climactic conditions, of course. But this is how it worked out for me.

I remember you describing your dope setup in your last thread about renewables. I've been looking at it for my house and might spring for it this year because I'll have some taxes I can actually use the credit for.

One question, why didn't you do solar water heating?

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 10:19 am Ok, so now you're arguing for not the end of energy scarcity then

Well, I'm arguing for energy superabundance. I'm saying eventually we will be generating enough energy that for all intents and purposes, it will be limitless. Like Netflix and YouTube. Technically the amount of streaming video is limited. In practice, there isn't enough time in a human lifespan to consume everything available, so it is for all practical purposes limitless.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 10:19 am Second, you're not addressing my point. I said we can help by not being wasteful. That would include resisting succumbing to Jevon's Paradox, which could arise through the efficiency gains the engineers are working on. I'd say it's more likely that people are heating their house to the comfort level they want right now, at a higher resources cost than if they could do it more efficiently. I doubt someone who's comfortable at 67 degrees would turn up the heat in winter to 80 and be uncomfortably hot. But again, if we end energy scarcity and electricity becomes too cheap to meter, who cares anyways?

At any rate, I suspect we pretty much agree.

Basically I think I'm making a distinction between the personal the the collective. I have generally resisted succumbing to Jevons' Paradox*. You probably do too. Everyone here in this forum probably could. But as a society, when everyone is taken into account, we do not, at least up to a point. But it's a valid argument that there is a limit. As you point out, people aren't gonna crank the heat to 80. Even with free driving, people wouldn't drive 20,000 miles a year just because they can, because long-distance driving is still overall an un-fun activity. There are limits to many forms of human consumption due to our basic physiology. So yes, efficiency is helpful, but it can't get us all the way there. I guess that's what I'm saying.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 10:19 am On the other hand, I'm not clear on how you make renewable equipment without fossil fuels for resources extraction and processing. Have there been some developments in that area? As far as I can tell, we could do it sustainably, but not at our current consumption level/population level.

Construction equipment can easily be electrified. They use all-electric heavy machinery in various European cities already. It works fine. And the world's biggest EV is a giant mining dump truck that never needs to be recharged, due to the nature of its work. It's fascinating. See https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ump-truck/
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Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 10:27 am I remember you describing your dope setup in your last thread about renewables. I've been looking at it for my house and might spring for it this year because I'll have some taxes I can actually use the credit for.

One question, why didn't you do solar water heating?

I ran the numbers and solar PV plus boring old electric resistance made the most financial sense. Solar thermal was much more expensive, more mechanically complex, and consumed more available roof space, which was a limiting factor on my house.

I even considered getting a heat pump water heater instead of a plain old giant-toaster-in-a-tank due to its improved efficiency, but the added cost and complexity of the equipment tilted my calculation in favor of what I ended up with. If my family consumed much more hot water, it probably would have made sense, and around the time my kids are teenagers when the current water heater is on its last legs, I might consider it. Same thing with the dryer, which is currently a giant toaster unit. These options give me room to improve my efficiency and maintain net zero even my my water and laundry consumption increase.

But overall it's hard to overstate how simple and bomb-proof a solar PV system is. There is practically nothing that can go wrong. It's basically a rock that sits there and generates electricity. There are no moving parts, no liquids, no heat transfer systems, nothing to lubricate, etc. It just sits there making me electricity. I love it. I felt a very strong draw to pair this simple and reliable system with appliances that matched it in those characteristics.

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Note that you can carry unused portions of the solar PV tax credit forward into subsequent tax years. So what you can do is give yourself a bigger tax burden by contributing to a Roth IRA instead of a Traditional IRA or a 401k, and then offset that bigger tax burden with the solar PV tax credit for multiple years. So you are basically paying no taxes on your Roth contributions during this time.

* Though I admit that with an EV, I feel like the drive-through window is guilt free now since there's no more idling, and I'm using it more than I did before. But that might also be COVID.

So it sounds like with your setup you are feeding the grid during the day and drawing at night? You haven't mentioned batteries and you have a grid connection charge so it appears you don't have to deal with storage..correct?

As far as efficiency goes, it does work however just not for most pussified americans. In Florida I was able to get my monthly power bills down to about 20 bucks.... about half of that was just connection fees, taxes or whatever else they glom onto bill. I didn't use hot water heater for 8 months of the year....water came out of ground at 75 degrees or so...good enough for a brisk shower which felt good when you weren't using ac..lol. On the hottest nights I might run a window ac unit for an hour or two before bed to cool things off..often sleeping with no sheets and a fan was enough. 80 degrees and a fan is perfectly comfortable sleeping temp. Rode a bike so no gas bills... Cooking simple things ...anyways it was enough to make me happy...in fact as I was prying of leaking coolant hose on my truck the other week in 15 degree weather I was thinking how much of an idiot I was to leave that lifestyle for this.

doodle wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 11:19 am So it sounds like with your setup you are feeding the grid during the day and drawing at night? You haven't mentioned batteries and you have a grid connection charge so it appears you don't have to deal with storage..correct?

That's correct, there's no storage. In retrospect I'm thinking this might have been a mistake and I am currently planning a small storage system. Small meaning "no relying on the grid at night as much as possible." a 10 kW battery system would do this about half the year, and 20 kW of storage would get me there about 85% of the year. This would not be truly off grid, but it would good enough to withstand power outages most of the time. Thing is, there are hardly ever power outages and the net metering policy is generous, so I'm not sure it's really worth it.

Another interesting thing to consider is that my EV has 66 kW of battery storage. If it was capable of bi-directional charging, it would be totally possible for me to use it as a whole-house battery backup in case of emergencies and not need to buy a dedicated house-only back up system at all! Sadly my model doesn't offer this feature, which is something I failed to consider when I bought it. Oh well, maybe the next one. Regardless, the synergies when you combine these systems really start to become impressive.