Live Eco Style - America Powered Show

Robert Mills, President of Solar Power Alliance of California and Randy Weckerly chat about the work Robert is doing in bringing clean energy by the sun to California home and apartment owners. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:30

Well, good afternoon, everybody. And this is a thoroughly, thoroughly exciting day because after ten years of working on my particular platform called Live EcoStyle and Robert Mills traveling the world, well, I'll talk about here in a minute. Um not only that, but uh an advocate for uh humanity, uh clean air, sunshine, and all the good things in life. Uh we're gonna have a great discussion today on our new show called America Powered. And that what that means is that you'll get into it. We'll define it as time goes on. Anyway, sitting with me this afternoon, coming from California, the new president of what organization, Robert Mills? Solar Rights Alliance. Well, tell us all about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Global giant, Randy.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Welcome, welcome, Robert. What'd you say?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I'm sorry, Global Giant and the alternative energy organization. We have 150,000 members run away to millions. Uh, we represent four million uh homes in California, four million that have solar-powered rooftops and powered by the sun, and we want more. And the organization exists to protect those people and to put and to uh keep people, keep the regulators and the government from unreasonably interfering with the right of the citizens to gain power from the sun themselves. And and believe me, they're trying every way they can to block it because every electron generated on your rooftop is one a utility can't sell you, and it's costing them money. And so they are going all out. It's really shocking to see the scale upon which they are frightened and horrified and terrified of what the sun is going to do, because it's given you, the consumer, an alternative to power your house, to power your air conditioning. You know, you can use the sun to, and it's free and it's unpolluting. You can save the world and you can save money. And people are jumping on that bandwagon for a good reason, because it benefits them. And this is taking money away from the utilities. And in America, we call bribes paid to politicians campaign contributions. I don't mean to sound too political, but let's not be naive. Okay, let's let's not be naive, okay. All that money, because we are in a media market and it's expensive to buy television ads, you know, money buys political power. And so the the you know, the utilities are going to the politicians in California, liberal California, and buying them and saying, we want you to stop solar power, we want you to block it, we want you to over-regulate it, we want you to tax it to death, we want you to be interfering with our profit. We're making money selling power to these people, and we don't want them to do it on their own with the sun.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

It's that simple. You're gonna have to forgive me. It sounds so ludicrous. I'm just gonna throw, as I said, I was up most tonight getting energy and on my own, getting ready for this show because it's 10 years in the making. Uh, my company is called Live EcoStyle. It's not about global warming, but it is about a lifestyle that, as I say, leaves a better footprint. And it involves dining and sipping and golf, recreation, and sports. But two things when I thought about what you your people, it would be highly entertaining to sell the to, you know, euphemistically sell the bleachers that are on the borderline between Nevada and uh California, and sell the popcorn and the and the Diet Coke to sit and you know, we're just gonna look at California fighting over this. I mean, this is just really it's somewhat entertaining. You have to admit it's a little ludicrous. And the reason that it is, is that if they're gonna tack or tax or try to try to help the energy companies, I have so many questions which we're gonna get to, but things that are you know that the sun re that it affects us is let's say suntanning. So is the next thing we're gonna be is taxed for getting a suntan because the you know, we're out there in the California sun and uh we're we're getting the benefit of it through suntan.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It'll be a suntan tax on uh I don't feel Randy as a battle uh uh uh uh you know but among Californians fighting each other over this at all, you know, and this is this is a common enemy throughout the country uh against the consumer. All of us, all of us are being opposed by the corporate powers that want to make money selling us electricity, okay? And when you can go and hook into the sun and power your house for free, you are taking corporate profits away from them. And they they're gonna do everything they can to stop it, okay? And that's what we exist for. That's what the solar rights alliance is, okay. We came into being because the the regular the utilities in California panicked over in the beginning, it was just this cool little thing. Some few rich people uh up in Marin County had these cool little panels, and you know, but all of a sudden it took off. And it started growing like people said, wait a minute, I can I can put these things on my roof and I I don't have to paint electricity. And they started putting it on by the millions, and the utilities panic. We've got to stop this, or they're gonna put us out of business. We can't meet our corporate profits. And so the Solar Alliance Alliance exists for a simple reason to serve you, the consumer, to keep the utilities from unreasonably regulating your right to generate power from the sun. Okay, so that's what we're here for. We are uh on our way to millions. We're going when we get we think that there is a a synergy between California consumers and the rest of the consumers.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Without question, we you and I talked about that yesterday, but I looked up the different states that um you know this is a national concern. It's not just a California concern. Yeah, living in northern Illinois, I was having a conversation with people in my own community having a cup of coffee this morning, very, very excited about what you're doing out there. And of course, we live in what they call the flatland. We're called flatlanders in Illinois, uh, where it is flat. You can see for 18 miles in the winter and 18 feet in the summer because the corn's up and you can't see any further. Um, but in the winter, you literally can see 18 to 22 miles. It's so flat. But we have coming here all kinds of solar farms. Uh, southwest of DeCalb, as far as I can determine, it's about 20 miles by 40 miles wide. Uh wind uh wind turbines up and down Route 39 stretches to just south of DeCalb, down to LaSalle, up to Rochelle, and they're going up every day. I mean, they got the semis unloading, you know, the fans. But um, you know, top five countries using solar power, uh, United States is number two, uh, China is number one, India is number three, Germany four, and Japan five.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Uh other states are countries you should note that are on the top of the thing that are poor or don't have access to alternative to uh to fossil fuels. Okay, they don't have a lot of oil. And so Germany is also one of them. And they don't have any oil. Japan doesn't have any oil, so it it uses solar power so it doesn't have to import expensive. The oil is going to run out. The coal is polluting the skies and it's gonna run out. And so the world is wants to have to change this new free unputing power source, and it's being ferociously resisted by the powers that be. The listeners here should not be naive about this. You know, it's been good, this battle has been going on for a long time. Um, you know, the um uh Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. Okay, and Ronald Reagan ripped them off.

unknown 9:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

And that tug of war has been going on ever since. Okay. Uh they put up a a uh the the U.S. Geological, I mean the World Geological Survey, uh Geophysical Year put a uh a research station on Mauna Loa, which you probably know about, and it's to measure the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. They put it up there in 1957, way up on this mountain, it's thousands of miles from the nearest pollution source, so it would get pure air, could measure how much carbon dioxide has been in our atmosphere. And they have measured a terrifying 25% increase in the Earth's carbon dioxide in the whole air since 1957, mostly in the last 25 years, and it's going, and so is the temperature. We're gonna talk about these things later. Uh, how much is the temperature going up and how it's going up on a steep curve? And so the the um uh they they put this, they ripped this out so that the people can can, you know, they the the the theory is if you don't know how much the carbon dioxide is going up, you won't care about it, it won't go up anymore. It's sort of like when the Catholic Church banned, they were burning people to the stake for saying that the earth goes around the sun as opposed to the other way around. And and they thought that they could they could change that fact if they just burned all the people that were saying that the earth goes around the scientists. So the so Galileo, they were gonna, he was too important. He was an Aristotelian professor at the University of Padua, so they they put him in a house arrest for life, provided he wouldn't teach anymore that the earth went around the sun. There's a similar parallel here with with them trying to you know basically say that the that you know this this solar power doesn't exist, that goal global warming is a myth, it's a it's a hoax, okay? When all you have to do is just measure it, you know, and and it's been on. So I'm gonna talk about how this all came to what so let's let's let's start, shall we, with with with this whole I I appreciate I appreciate that preamble.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

I am so loaded with questions. This is gonna be an ongoing dialogue between you and me. I have right now, just on my own, just this morning, I am not going to go through all of them today. I've got 82 different questions I'd like to ask the president of this great alliance. And by the way, what is the dot com uh that your uh Solar Rights Alliance? I think it's what, solarrightsalliance.org? Solarrights.org.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

We have a we have a great website. Please go and take it out, and it will answer all your questions about most of them anyway. And if you don't, if you have extra ones, you email us, you know, and I'll I'll get you an answer.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Um, but we're yeah, even on our website, we on our page on LibEcoStyle, there's a way right at the bottom of you can't miss it. It's a big put in your question, put in your name, put in your email, and we'll get make sure that Robert gets a chance to um to answer those. But let me start, Randy.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

We're I'm ready to go. It's deep history about this, okay. The the people have been fascinated by the sun since prehistoric times, since the beginning, okay. And I just went to that uh Egyptian exhibit at the at the museum about the pharaohs, and the Egyptian civilization of three to five thousand years ago was obsessed with the sun. They worship the sun, the sun god. And so this has been, I mean, there it was, you know, in in they named it, you know, these gods. So this has been something that has been fascinating mankind from and and then if you go along a little later, you discover to my surprise, that in 12 212 in 212 BC, Archimedes, the famous Greek polymath, took polished bronze panels, made them into these obelisks, and they reflected the sunlight and set fire to invading Roman ships in the siege of Syracuse. They were using solar power as a weapon across distances to twelve BC. Okay, so there's been people have been thinking was how can we harness the power of the sun for our use, okay, since pre since before you know, since ancient times, okay. So now stepping forward here, when did this become something about you know the practical um uh use of electrical power? So the world kind of went off on steam power and you know the terminal combustion, and so they it took a little of the the juice out of the electric, but it was still there. It was way back um in 1839 um that uh a French guy um named uh uh Edmond Buckrel, okay. This guy discovered the photovoltaic effect, okay. Now, this is something everybody should know about. When you shine light on a piece of metal, it generates electrons. And this was a huge discovery. It was one of the epic discoveries of science, okay? It's called the photovoltaic effect, okay? It defied physics. They couldn't understand how it was possible. And it resulted in this epic debate and went on for almost a century, actually, more than a century, in physics. And it ultimately led, because it was not physically possible under the models that had existed under classic physics that had been around for centuries. And so finally, Albert Einstein sits down in 1905 and he writes this paper about the volta and explains it. And he explains that it's explained by the fact that light is both a wave and a particle. Okay, that that was something that was so revolutionary and contrary to everything in the entire establishment of physics, that there was a famous physicist at the University of Chicago, um, Milliken. And Millican said, this is preposterous, it is crazy, it's impossible. And so Millican doesn't just stop there and say that and say, believe me. He's a scientist. So he develops this elaborate, you know, scientific experiment. And he goes to great lengths to make the measuring devices the most that had ever been done at that point. They were accurate to many decimals so that no one could challenge it. And he sets up this experiment to show that Einstein is wrong. And he conducts the experiment, and lo and behold, to his shock, Einstein was right to as many decimals as he could prove it. Every single one of these experiments showed Einstein was right in all his things. What does Millican do? This is very, very important. Milliken doesn't say, well, let's just let's just ignore that, okay? Let's ignore that. Millican is a scientist. And scientists are, you know, follow Thales, who came up with this theory in um, you know, he was born in in two in 420 BC, and he was the founder of science. And he said, the truth is found through reason and evidence. The founder of science, Thales, okay. And uh, so he said, he's so that what do they do? So what Milliken is a believer in that, okay? So Millican says, this is what the science shows, this is what the evidence shows. I was wrong. I was wrong. Einstein is actually right about this. This shook up physics to the ground, and it was stunning. They both won Nobel Prizes, both of them, for this, for the photovoltaic effect. Okay, so here is this interesting, fascinating discovery that light shined on a metal can create energy. No one thought of that before, and they didn't think it was even physically possible, but there it was, it worked. Okay, so this French guy comes up with that theory, okay, and it was proven. And then this American guy named Charles Fritz decides I'm gonna make a cell, I'm gonna generate electricity on my roof. And so he creates the first cell, okay, and puts it on his rooftop in New York City in 1883. Isn't that amazing? He puts this panel up there and it generates electricity, you know, very inefficient, but it generates electricity, okay? Um, so in 1841, another American, Russell Old, he patents the first semiconductor that uses a solar cell design. And this is all improved on enormously. And by 1954, Bell Labs, with three scientists, comes up with the first really practical, powerful silicon-based photovoltaic cell capable of powering electrical devices. So here it is, practical, it works, and they've got it in eight in 1954. Okay. So uh nobody, you know, the the world goes on, the turtle combustion engines go on, but people continue to develop this, okay? And a lot of the poor countries like China see that here is a way for us to generate power without having to buy oil. And we don't have any oil, and it's expensive to import, impoverishes us. So, and they and the elect and the other African countries start jumping on this, okay? So when Reagan rips off the panels and he he he defunds all of these incredibly promising studies in the federal government about photoelectric effects, they go no, we want to go that way because you know what? The the the uh you know the the alternative the the fossil fuel industry was paying for them to crush those programs. They did not want you to make power from the sun, they wanted you to buy it from Gulf from you know uh from the oil companies, from shell oil. And if you were getting it off your roof, they couldn't make any money. So they crushed it. And who jumps on it but China? And China leaps ahead of us in this incredibly multi-trillion dollar market, okay? And today there are many countries out there that are carbon negative, they take out more carbon out of the out of the atmosphere than they put into it. They can show so and they're poor and they use the solar power to do it, okay? So the solar uh panels have become each generation, just like with computers, you know, the first computers were as big as a whole warehouse, and they generated way less capacity than your than your cell phone, okay. And now, you know, your cell phone is bigger than this whole factory-wide computer. And every year they get more and more powerful and better and better and better. Um, and uh so the same thing is happening with Voltoelectric panels, with solar panels on your roof. Every year they get more powerful and they get cheaper. And that's been the thing. That was who was that somebody's law, Moore's Law, that it it goes it becomes twice as powerful and half the cost every generation, you know, every few years. That's what happened with computers. Computer power went up double and the price went down at 50%, and that just keeps happening and happening. That's happening now in solar power, okay? You can put these things on your roof, they're not that big, and they will run your house, they will power your air conditioners.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Well, let's let's talk about that just for a minute. If you go to uh Robert's website, it does explain very, very exciting. And I've talked with Robert about this probably for the last month, but then when you go to the site, it's a plug-in solar panel where, and maybe you know how it works, but you plug it, it showed, put it out in your backyard, you open up the wings, and you plug it into the outdoor extension, and somehow it reverses the power through your own existing simple plug in. This is a new invention.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

It's amazing. And they they came to us at the Soul Rights Alliance and they said, Robert, look, you we we can't do this at scale. What we can make this thing cheap, okay, but we have to make In volume, big volume. And the big volume places you guys in California, because you got your four million, you know, there's millions and millions of people. If we can get approval in California, then we can invest the money and attract the investors to make this on a huge scale and make it cheap. Okay. So we uh are now running bills through. We we have the uh you know, with help of of certain allies we have in Sacramento. I was up there, you know, last week, week before last, with this bill 868 that will keep the utilities from blocking. They want to block you from buying something to like unfold in your balcony. You know, you can't do that because you're taking money from us.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

You know, you can't be generating power from the I can't buy an umbrella anymore. I can't buy a thing that goes over my mystery. Well, it doesn't exist yet, Randy, because it's too expensive.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

You can buy it, but it's very expensive. They're in Germany, but it's too expensive. It's not competitive, they're gonna make it really cheap. And what they need is California's approval, and that will enable me to get the investors to make it on a mass scale. And so you can buy these cheap panels and sit it out in your backyard and buy your pool or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

No, it's so it's honestly it's so absurd that you everybody can have, you know. If you go to his website, go to Robert's Solar Alliance website and look at this, it's enough to just make me claw my eyeballs out because uh you sit here and yeah, I sit in the Midwest. It's actually becoming a pretty nice, lovely uh place to live. It's you know, we we have our tornadic issues occasionally, we have some cold weather occasionally and things like that. But we do get um, we have had uh, I think Illinois has been a leader in tornadoes, so you know, the adaptability of having something other than gasoline generators running your house. Well, I'll tell you what, uh up in Lake Geneva last year they had two tornadoes within six hours that uh X marked the spot in Lake Geneva where they crossed. And and you could go and see they were like F1 or F2s, you could see the trees down this way, down that way, and then down this way, down that way. And it was like two miles off the western shoreline where the trail of these two tornadoes went. One went north, like north from northwest to southeast, the other one went from southwest to northeast, perfect X in the middle of Lake Geneva. And it was like, you know, and they just two weeks ago had another straight wind. Unfortunately, three people died on the lake, but so strong out of nowhere, wasn't a tornado, tipped over a boat with little kids, properly life preserved and everything else, lost a life, but that we went up to go and drive around because that we just moved from that area, and but the power loss my point is this if we would have in my backyard, I could go open up panels every day, and you know, in fact, on a new umbrella that goes over my um picnic table, um, arches over it in the metal thing, it has a solar cell on top that collects solar during the day so that it puts lights on the umbrella at night, you know, just from the reserve little battery about this big, you know, up there. So it's amazing that we can't do more for your homes. And I mean, I I appreciate you being kinds of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

You know, in California, they are putting up solar panels that charge batteries that are there for electric cars in the desert, in the middle of nowhere. Go out in the middle of nowhere, there's no electric wires, powers, you know, lines or anything. They have these these arrays, and you just back your car in there, plug it into the battery, and it will charge up your car from the sun. You know, I have that, I have the batteries too too. I mean, the batteries will enable you if you buy the batteries alone, okay, you can draw power from the grid between midnight and four when it's really cheap, and then feed it back to yourself during the periods when it goes way up and is really expensive, you know, which saves the power companies money because they have to have four or five you know power plants running, you know, at dinner time, but they can only they can get by with one going half power or something at night. So you draw it out at night, pay it back in, it saves you money, saves everybody money, and it's ecological and and not well.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

You know, we have our friend Bobby Aldridge that lives just about 20 miles south of Lake Superior. And in the winter up there, the winters are brutal. It gets 20, 30 below. He loves to snow ski, and he's a you know, technical assistant in uh different types of um Olympic trials up there. But he he developed his whole home with a large array of solar on top of the roof, uh, with internal things that are in his house for water running through the floor, you know, where it's all heated up. It's and it's just beautiful. It's quiet, and you know, it's permanent solar array on his roof. And when I go up there, I mean, uh, you can't even hear the squirrels scratch the trees because it's so quiet. I mean, it's so ridiculous. Um, but his his home is just so beautiful, and you realize, you know, the only thing he has to do occasionally is go out and shovel off when they have 20 inches of snow. He's got to shovel those solar panels off. But uh we're gonna be right back. We've got to take a quick break here for about uh five, six, seven, eight minutes. And uh, if you get a chance, go to uh Live Eco Style and go to America Powered, our website there. It's gonna be growing out. We want to have a lot of information. And Robert, you asked me the question why would anybody else in the United States be interested in what California is doing? I think going back to the time that we were 10, 12, and 15 years old, everything started in California. Uh the Beach Boys, you know, if there's something new in California, it spread from west to east. President Kennedy said that.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

You said it always starts in California.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

It did, yeah, you know, and it does. But there are so many states, the states that would be interested in the fastest growing opportunity are really strange. And just as a quick nugget, um, Texas, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, Texas for obvious reasons. Uh Michigan is loaded with all kinds of new power uh things coming to their grid. Uh, greatest consumer potential savings are California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. So, my friend, you are the uh gorilla sitting at the top of leadership nationally, starting your big footprint in the West, and we're gonna have a lot of fun in the times with our America Powered show going forward. So, you are the leader, my friend. We'll be right back, everybody. Uh, if you get a chance, go to LivicoStyle. Just click at the top, America Powered. Uh, that's where you're gonna get a lot of this information. We'll be right back.

unknown 29:18

We rise with the right.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

All right, welcome back, everybody. And I'll tell you what, I had to take an excitement break and just calm myself down because everything on this show is so much fun and so much in tune. Anyway, Robert, I'm I'm I put my seatbelt on, I'm ready to go. Uh, fill us up with more worldly knowledge of Robert Mills. All right.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Um as I was saying earlier, um, we are trying to get, we in the Solar Rights Alliance are battling the insurance industry. I mean the uh utility industry. It's a huge industry. And they are not constrained, many of them, by profits because they're monopolies. So they can take your money that you pay for rates for electricity, and they can use it against you by going to politicians and say, pass stuff that interferes with your right to make power from the sun. And that's what they're doing. And so that's what Solar Rights Alliance, one of our major themes now, is to go oppose it. So we were um trying to get the the companies that make German companies that make balcony solar things that came to us, we got to get approval in California, and we they're gonna screw us every which way. So we got a senator, um Wiener, who is this epic guy. I mean, he's a you probably heard of him. He's and he's not running for Congress. And so Wiener works with us and he drafts this bill that says basically, if you buy this balcony solar panels and put them in your backyard or on your porch or something, the utilities cannot unreasonably regulate it. They can't stop you from generating power from the sun. And of course, they're having a fit about it and they're coming in. So I was in Sacramento and I posted a bunch of stuff, I think you saw it, you know, of us over there. And one of the interesting things about solar, Randy, and I think your listeners need to pay attention to this, it's very important, you know, is this is one of the few issues in America that's bipartisan. Yeah, and it appeals to Republicans as much as, and sometimes in cases more, especially the libertarian ones, you know, than it does to Democrats. The Republicans love the fact that you leave me alone. I have the right to get the government off my back. I have the right to power, use the sun myself. That really appeals to Republicans. And I like that. And so we we organize an opposition to support for this bill, Senator Bill 6868. And um, and it's it's basically saying leave solar alone, you know. And and so we we go to our base, our 160,000 people, which is we're gonna make 500,000 soon, and we say, we need your help, we need your help. And so they come to Sacramento. It's uh, you know, it's a huge state, California, it's a thousand miles one end to the other, and they drive for hours and show up and stand in line to testify in favor of this bill. The legislators were just, and it was Republican, and Republicans spoke in favor of it more than the Democrats did. And what was just so heartwarming that you don't see in America today, is that I got megas from the northern, the northern third of California is deeply red. Okay, it's also the poorest place in California in the United States, you know, and it's right next to the richest place. And it's deeply Republican, and it's very, very, very big on solar power. They don't want utilities to tell them what to do, they want to do it themselves. And so MAGA people came down from this, they drove hours and hours to Sacramento and are shaking hands with, and you know, the the the the you know, the solar rights people from Berkeley, that you know, the and and the liberals, as they would call them. And so you got Berkeleyites and and these MAGAs shaking hands and platting each other on the back, and they're all in the same team. And so it's in it's heartwarming to me that you know I'm I got everybody on my side here, okay? Uh all the consumers, the left and the right, okay, to support this bill because we want to get it done. So it's a bipartisan thing uh to get this the right to do the use of the sun, okay?

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Can I ask you can I ask a couple questions because it just sort of sticks out there like a sort of sun. So in California, do you do you folks have gas-powered generators for emergency use that you plug into your house?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Oh, uh millions of them. I mean, you know, I I lived up on the hill and in uh and ran up up in the Mount Tam, you know, and it was very forested. And after every big storm, the trees would knock down the power lines and they'll power go out for days. And so everybody had a generator and you had a flip switch. As soon as your power went out, it turned on the generator. So as soon as the lights all went out, you hear this oh, and generators would come on everywhere, and lights go back on.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

So are those are those regulated? No, of course, it's not necessary. You know, they want them, you know. So I got so I got another question for you. Uh do you have any houses that have batteries that if something goes south that you know you have batteries that can charge up your house and light your house up?

SPEAKER_01 34:48

If you of course, of course, I have two great big giant Tesla batteries in my garage. I think you probably saw pictures of them. And and they're and they and they can be plugged into your house and they're in plugged in, they can run the house for two weeks. So the power goes out. I I'm not concerned about, you know, forget the solar panels. If I disconnect it from the solar panels and just use batteries, I could run my house for two weeks on these batteries.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

So if you had solar power to go to your batteries first, charge your batteries. I do. Would that be illegal in in California right now, just to charge your batteries?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

No, no, it's it's it's it's legal. Uh it's it's perfectly legal. You know, they they want, you know, we've blocked them from stopping that. You know, you can do it.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

So where the problem is if you plug it into your house for direct use, that's what they're saying is because you already have people using gas-generated power. You have people battery power that is they're all electrons, you're basically putting electrons in your house, but because it's a solar panel plug-in unit, that's the problem. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Well, Randy, that this is a revolutionary leap forward in this. Yeah, I know. You know, a lot of people don't have a roof that, you know, and they and it's more expensive. And so somebody has come up in Germany with this, you just fold it out, you sell pictures of it, and plug it in. And it in, you know, for poor people in a hot climate, you know, elderly people who don't have the money to run, because it's so expensive in California that it costs as much as 500 bucks a month for electricity. And you can plug this in and run your air conditioning to save yourself in the heat of the summer off the sun. And they don't, the utilities don't want to, so they're thinking of all kinds of ways. And what this bill is that we're getting through is it it keeps local, municipal, it keeps everybody's hands off. Hands off these things. You can't touch, you can't regulate, tax it, you can't, you got to leave it alone, let people have access to the sun. And that's they're having a fit about it. So we're trying to get now. Now they have not they're not blocked solar panels on the roof because when they started, when they got that, we got that started, you utility saw this is just something for for rich, you know, liberals in Marin County, and it's never going to go anywhere. And when people realized that you could put these things up, you know, for 13 to 30 grand total, and they will generate a quarter of a million dollars worth of power over 20 years and pay themselves off in three to five years, and then give you free power after that. People said, I want one of those too. I want them in. So they started buying them like crazy. Four million houses grabbed them. The pay, the insurance, the utilities just an. We've got to stop this, otherwise, we will not be able to make corporate profits from burning fossil fuels and selling it to the consumer. So they so we set up Solar Rights Alliance to protect the consumer and his right to have the sun to powers at home. It's it's as simple as that. And that's our that's our mission to keep to give you, the consumer, the power to use the sun without unreasonable interference by the guy. And this is appealing to every appeals to the right wing, appeals to the left wing, you know, and you don't need to argue about climate change, you know, and most people don't really want to hear about that, at least on the right, they don't. So when I go to Sacramento and I make pictures, you know, we don't talk about that. In fact, you go look on our website, we never mention climate change, you know, because it's controversial. We don't want you don't need that. People on both sides of this want it for the simple reason that it's in their interest. They the Republicans love the idea that they can cut off the government, which is the utilities, and get them out of their life and and their overpriced power, and they can harvest the sun power themselves, run their house, their air conditioning, without having to answer to anybody, uh without having to pay for these, you know, this the uh utilities now in California to are going down into the desert. That's PG ⁇ E, which is the northern part of California. 19 million people use this utility called Pacific Gas and Electric. And what Pacific Gas and Electric did is they go down into the desert, you know, 500 miles away, and put up these vast solar arrays to generate electrical power because they know it's cheap and they're using it. But they have to string it on wires for 500 miles, which is the most expensive element of the whole thing. If you put it on your roof, you have 10 feet of you know of transmission wire. But they and so but they have in this this 19th century antiquated monopoly law, it says they get a 10% return on all their quote outlays. So they can string up these things inefficiently and charge you gazillions of dollars and and make it inefficient with the expensive forest fire-causing transmission wires, and and they get paid 10% on it. And so, of course, they're gonna do that. And uh, and they're against solar power because solar power doesn't use 500 miles of transmission. That's why it's cheaper, and it saves everyone. It saves everyone the transmission cost, which gets paid back, gets you know uh you know, uh amortized back to the consumers. The ratepayers in in every state are are gonna pay for those wires and the cost of the transmission, which is the most expensive element of electricity, is the transmission. And you don't have any with solar power, it just goes off your roof right into your butt.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

I was just looking while we're talking here, I wasn't ignoring you, but I have in my other computer I just put into chat, I just simply said um who has the highest rates in America? You know, so Hawaii is number one, 46.6, as we mentioned to you the other day, uh per kilowatt hour. California is second, Connecticut is third, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Vermont. And it basically a question that um would be is you know, how come every home how many homes do you have in California?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

14.5 million, 14.7.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

So, and the average price of a home we know is terrifically higher in California than you know.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

That's that's kind of a you know, what when when people come like tours, I give history tours in San Francisco for the for the city, and and I have to explain California people, you know. California is not a place. A place you can say it's like this and it's not like that. California is not a place, it's a realm of regions, each of which is more drastically different than the one adjacent to it, and any place on earth. We have the highest place in the United States, the 48 states, we have the lowest place in the West, you know, in North America, and the hottest place in the world, inside of ice, okay, in the in the Sierras. We have the biggest trees, the oldest trees, we have the richest place, the poorest. There's all this stuff right next to each other, okay? And so, you know, you can't make generalizations uh about about then I withdraw that.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

So, Your Honor. Uh well, I'll I'll try to readdress that question a little differently. There with 14 million homes in California. If I were to build, are there new homes being built in California? Is there any new development going on? There's new homes, but not not as many as we need, um, for a variety of reasons that I can explain, but it's it's not as many as well. No, no, again, I'm just gonna go down another path. Is that basically when you say it costs $12,000 to $30,000 for solar power on top of the roof and whatever these units are going to cost, um, and you have identified 4 million homeowners uh out of the 14 million? Well, how did how did you come up with that number? What that they already have solar power or they have solar power.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

4.1 million, maybe 4.2, have purchased solar power panels from these manufacturers that we work closely with, and they love us because we are promoting their products. And they have put these panels on the roof, and you you we can identify that. We we we're that's a high confidence number. It it's 4.2 million homes in California. Now, these are the portable panels or no, no, no, these are not that the portable panels are not generally available yet. They're we're we're trying to get them available and keep the utilities from blocking them. That's what we're fighting with them now. The the rooftop stuff is up and it's available, and they they they can't stop that. Although they're trying to what they what they did recently, recently is they they took away the tax benefits, they started adding it to, you know, passing laws to add it to your tax base is the cost that they're doing everything they can to obstruct it and punish and make it less profitable to keep it from growing beyond the 4 million. Um, and to and and and to punish the 4 million. Um, and so we got a bunch of lawsuits going on about retroactively changing this and this employment act, you know.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Um I said, and again, that that is um neurosurgery and lawyering is never going to be in my future. Uh both equally, I'm dysfunctionally uh adapt at. But in looking at um these high rates, you would think that uh, you know, if Hawaii has the highest electricity rate, that every home over there um will be powered by solar. And I think they have a big solar initiative. I haven't been back there, but I think they have a big solar initiative on Hawaii because of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

And um Hawaii is a relatively rural place, and and and the places are scattered about, and they're on these isolated islands. Um, and uh so you know it's it's hard to get an efficient, you know, uh power system there, and and so you can see why it's expensive. And then that gives Hawaiians a very high motivation, as it does Californians and other places where it's expensive. You have a high motivation to get solar panels. It's it's a cheaper alternative, avoids all the wires all over the islands and and the fire risks that come from that and so forth. And and of course, the the utilities there are going to want to keep it from happening. So this is the great battle going on in America today. Um, and and one that the Solar Rights Alliance is leading the fight for the consumers.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yeah, I just think it's it's fascinating. Um you talk about grid reliability, I if I remember correctly, I think Texas had a grid meltdown a few years ago where it was either hot or cold, or I think it was a cold snowstorm, and they had to reluctantly buy power from California and help Texas out, they know extend the extension cord. Um and I know on Maui, you when you talk, you know, Hawaii is the most isolated place on earth. A lot of people don't realize that. 2,000 miles, draw a circle, there's nothing there. It's just Hawaii. And um, but they they were having such a power shortage, you know, you go there and you can see the wind power up on the up in the hills, uh, but they were having such a power shortage, they were saying, Boy, we're gonna have to run an basically an extension cord to Oahu under under the ocean to plug in there because we're just flat running out. I mean, we just can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Well, because it's so isolated, it's expensive to import the oil to run the electric generator. So the solar and the wind makes all the sense in the world to them, and that's what they're doing um successfully. And and they're they're it's going you can you can see them all over the place right now, putting them in. And and uh you've seen those big power things up on the on the mountain there at Walea. And so they're on the way to to the the revolution, you know, and and the change in America. Um uh, I mean, people used to say get a horse, you know, and you know, the the the there's the equivalent today of people saying, you know, um, you know, get a internal combustion engine, you know. And um I was fascinating to me. I I I drove my my Tesla out to this remote uh hot spring, I think I told you the story. Um and there were all these guys there with these these jacked up big trucks, you know, and and they were they were offended that somebody would have a sedan that was electrically powered, you know, and they go out there. This was the domain of the macho guys with the turtle combustion, the big jeeps were jacked up real high in it. Yeah, and they had this emotional identity with it. And I I don't I'm still struggling a bit to understand why there's this identity with the turtle combustion part of it, you know, as opposed to electric. Um, and and uh because electric does appeal to the leave me alone, let me have, you know, get the government out of my life. But if what I'd like to do now, Randy, if it's okay with you, is I like to just go back and explore uh something that's a little controversial, but I think a lot of people would be finding it fascinating uh to learn about the role of climate change. Because you know, there's there's there's two reasons that you want to use electric power, okay? One is to save money, okay I mean, for 13 to 20 some thousand dollars, or you can put them on your roof and they will make you this huge amount of money, okay, and give you free electrical. So you can save money. That's a great motivation.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

My point was earlier, not particularly, but if you were, let's just say buying a house that didn't have solar, or you're buying a new house, and it was only, let's say it's $25,000, it's just another add-on, you know, on a mortgage. What difference does it make? Another $25,000, you wouldn't even notice it in your mortgage, honestly, to you know, to have solar power.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

Electrical panels will give you three to five hundred dollars a month toward your mortgage.

unknown 49:36

I know.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

That's no small potatoes, you know, which is why four million people in California leaped at the opportunity to put them on their on their rooftops. And there's millions more coming.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Um, just by the way, I did look up my next vehicle I'm looking at by American, the Chevrolet Silverado EV truck. You could be the macho guy in that truck, you know, deal. Um, it runs about 55,000 bucks. It goes up to 478 miles, uh, 20, 12,500 pounds of towing capacity. Can you believe that? I mean, that's that's a lot of towing capacity.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

This is new, and and it's it's it's a breakthrough that what we're now seeing in in the electric vehicle business is jeeps and big macho trucks, and and we're soon seeing you know the semis and all powered by electricity. That didn't, you know, this is new, okay? And it's it's really making a big difference. And you you notice it said 470, you know, there's thousand-mile batteries coming, you know, and maybe some 50 for 3,000 eventually that you you charge it up and you don't, you know, last it for years before you have to recharge it. So the charging part, but they called it range anxiety, was the big obstacle to selling electric cars. You know, what if I run out of electricity? You know, and but what happened in in California and Russia is there's there's stations everywhere. There's more stations to get electricity now by far, maybe three times more, and there is gas stations, and they're everywhere. And so that range anxiety thing is starting to die. But it's also being countered by the fact that you got batteries in these vehicles that are gonna take you almost 500 miles. And they're come 1,000 miles are coming, 1,600 miles are coming, and so the range anxiety is a thing of the past. In fact, one of the big selling points of electric vehicles soon is gonna be the fact that you don't have to you got this, you can drive it across the country, you know.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

Well, I tell you what, my my son, wife, his wife, and uh let's see, four-year-old granddaughter and uh eight-month-old granddaughter, plus a dog, drove from just west where I live, west of Chicago, go down to see her folks down in uh uh Naples. And you know, they had to plot out and totally uh it's a Hyundai uh EV car. They have big, big SUV, and it has so much pickup. My son said, Hey, you want to see the pickup? Hold on. And I mean, it'll knock, it'll knock you back in the seat. And but no, they had no problem. I mean, you're gonna have baby stops anyway, you're gonna have gotta eat, gotta let the dog out. And all they had to do is chart out where the you know the the places are to hook back up, and they're down. It totally you have to do that with gas anyway.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

I mean, you've got to stop and and I I I love just to stop and read my read the base paper, get something to eat, and then and you come down, I mean it's charged up. I have the I grandfathered it. Mine's free, you know. I just plug it in. Free fills it up, you know, just like my the sun powers my car from my house. It comes, hits on my roof, goes down and fills up my my uh my batteries in my car. And I, you know, I I got 270 miles and I go out the garage, and I can go air all over the bay and not you know for days and days and never use that up, you know. Come back and plug it in again, sun charges up. I haven't bought a drop of gas or paid for any, you know, for 12 years, you know. And I think people are looking at that and saying, hey, I that's I'd like to get it on that too.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, well, well, Joanne has uh has had a Versa in her life, and the most fun that she had was uh watching her yeah, no gas mileage, you know, average mile per gallon, 63, you know, 63 miles per gallon in the little had a little gas tank in it, you know, which at the time it was good. But we have been seriously looking at EV uh making it well, we have some reasons that it's it's upcoming. And uh but boy to get in a my son's car was just such a pleasure. It's a big SUV, and it and uh I had to drive him in and take him to the airport the other day, had the luxury of driving his car back and uh see how easy it is. Um you know both of them have different ways they have to drive, and it just makes so much sense on the on the uh on the whole epic scenario. And again, some of the things I can't wait to get into because energy today uh is being used everywhere. If you look at Live EcoStyle, we're gonna talk about um forms of vertical farming, um indoor farming, if you want to call it that. A lot of uh farm you know, farming today, uh vertical farming really a lot of people don't realize. There's also a number of years ago what are called waste digesters that gather basically, if you have a dairy farm, you put the uh waste material in these digesters and they convert that methane into electric power to put back on the grid. So everything today takes power. And uh, but boy, living at home, Robert, I can't wait. Uh you know, you have four million of 14 million, so we got to go gather the other 10 million homes, you know.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

We're out we're we're on the job right now.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

I know. Well, I'm gonna be measuring it every week. We're gonna have a counter uh right on that with their new website. We'll start at 150,000 today, and uh, whoever is out soliciting for you uh better give you a good report because I'm gonna be watching. We're gonna have everybody here.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

It's not just that one guy. We hired him for doing nothing. He's dedicated to going out.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

But we're I'm just saying it's gonna be fun seeing how you grow because I know that's gonna happen. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

So let's let's talk about okay. We talked about the money thing, okay. It in California three to five hundred bucks, and it it's a little less than in other states, okay. What it costs to run a house, just the electricity component of it. We all know this. Um, and that becomes free with solar panels, okay? And so there's the economics there uh of it, okay. And so there's the money saving. So there's the motive, and you also have the motive, it's very appealing to conservatives to be free of the government, okay? You know, you don't need the government, you get you could free it. It's your right to use the sun and you use it, okay. And so you have those two motivations that are reasons to use solar power, and it's enough for most people, and then some, okay. But there's another reason to use solar power. And I don't, you know, if you don't believe in this, you don't have to believe in it. Just keep an open mind, okay? Just keep an open mind, okay? There's another reason that you want to use solar power, and that is it saves the world from climate change.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

And we're going to talk about climate change here because I think it is very, very frightening and it's very, very real. And a lot of people are just in denial about it. You know, understand the history of climate change and how the world's climate is over thousands of years has changed back and forth, you know, and how it's coming. And how we're taking, you know, last year we put 60 billion, 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the earth's paper thin atmosphere. You know, I used to fly my plane up, you know, it gets, you know, half the earth's atmosphere is under 18,000 feet. So the air is three and a half, like three and a half miles thick at sea level pressure. If you took a tube there and you stick it up, it would be the Earth's atmosphere. And, you know, a forest fire in Ontario or up in Canada can blacken the skies over the Midwest and the South. You know, so why wouldn't putting 60 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere raise all of carbon monoxide? And wouldn't that warm the earth? Okay. So let's let's go back and take a look at this history. It's fascinating stuff, okay? Um, people had speculated about this for years. Um, and there was this famous, not famous guy, he's he's kind of forgotten in a lot, especially in America, is John Tyndall, T-Y-N-D-A-L-L.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

I have to I have to warn you, or yeah, I love Robert, but we have about 10 minutes to go, and so we got the 10-minute producer signal coming up, okay?

SPEAKER_01 57:58

So give you a quick, I'll give you the 10-minute sketch on Tyndall, um, Irish physicist. Uh, he did a whole bunch of things, okay. We can talk about it. You know, he he he was the guy who discovered the Tyndall effect, which is why the Earth's air, why the sky's blue. You know, he he was the guy that figured out why it was blue and showed people why it was blue. He invented all kinds of the Tyndall sterilizing effect with Pasteur. He did so he he was fascinated by heat exchanges. He's a physicist, he has a PhD in physics. So he discovered that if you take carbon dioxide and put it in a in a in a glass jar or something, and you put an extra heat source, like the sun or some other, it will get hot quicker than regular air. And it will hold it longer than regular air.

SPEAKER_00 58:49

Okay. Hopefully I'll be in touch and drive. Anyway, for Robert Mills and uh myself, along with Randy, and for our new show called America Power, uh, we're really, really uh exclusively happy that you joined us today, and be sure to join in as the weeks go forward. And as my grandfather always said in everything we do, always leave a better footprint because it's just the right thing to do. Anyway, Robert, Robert Mills, President, Robert Mills, thank you very much. Thank you, Ray. Voice of the light. That is too. Talk to you soon, folks. Tune in next week. Bye bye. Bye.