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Tesla's Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass (bloomberg.com)
Tesla is all set to cut the ribbon on a massive battery storage facility in the California desert -- the biggest of its kind on earth. It joins similarly huge facilities built by AES and Altagas, which are both set to launch around the same time. Combined, the plants constitute 15% of the battery storage installed globally last year. From a report: Tesla Motors is making a huge bet that millions of small batteries can be strung together to help kick fossil fuels off the grid. The idea is a powerful one -- one that's been used to help justify the company's $5 billion factory near Reno, Nev. -- but batteries have so far only appeared in a handful of true, grid-scale pilot projects. That changes this week. Ribbons will be cut and executives will take their bows. But this is a revolution that's just getting started, Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview on Friday. "It's sort of hard to comprehend sometimes the speed all this is going at," he said. "Our storage is growing as fast as we can humanly scale it."
This is a stationary setup. Weight and size shouldn't matter. They should use nickel-iron for longer durability, a hundred years or more.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why does CA choose Tesla batteries when there are lower cost options that perform as good or better?
Good article, but...
"Critical Mass" indicates that there are more facilities coming online, or at least publicly planning to. No indication of that in TFA... in fact, the closest they got is this:
"...may change in the next five years..." is nowhere near actual activity that would indicate a "critical mass" in industry.
How about they call us when it actually gets in motion - regionally, if not nationally or globally.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I can get my hands on non-counterfeit 18650 and A123's!!
Look up Reno on a map. Go just a little bit west and TA DA! You're in california. Summary even says NEAR Reno. That is the major city closest to the site.
Anyone who's president should not have any stocks whatsoever. Conflict of interest.
Same is true of Congress. However Congress has given themselves the legal right to engage in insider trading.
It's hard to know whether you're trolling, or really are a fucking retard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So li-ions go to 5% of their original capacity in 4 years?
that doesn't sound right
Without a new breakthrough technology in our pocket, batteries technology should be determined by the real use case. Lithium ion is a good technology when weight is very important, but a lousy technology when does not matter. Why use a bad technology when a pretty good on is on hand?
Several reasons, all economic.
1) Economies of scale. Producing two types of batteries is more expensive than producing the same number of a single type of battery.
2) Standardization. Picking the exact optimal battery type for every application instead of using a standard battery actually results in product fragmentation and added cost. It's actually cheaper in many cases to use a standardized product instead of an optimized one.
3) Excess capacity. If you already are producing a product it's often cheaper to make extras and use those than to build a whole new production system for another product for marginal efficiency gains.
It did with my Nexus 4. My Nexus 5 and current iPhone 7 seem to be holding up better.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
These devices aren't going to be used like a phone battery. They will be setup for optimal life rather than longest possible runtime. Industry will be doing all the little "tricks" to keep them in longest lifetime condition. Not charging to 100%, not discharging to 0%, storing in a temperate controlled area, etc.
Do you Gentoo!?
No. It seems that he's into not sending money to people who want to kill us. The big oil companies make a large portion of their money from refining oil. They will do just fine in a post carbon based energy world. We need to get from "the now" to "tomorrow"; and we should do this without funding the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
So the rational solution is to put the pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast refineries; drill over here; have jobs here; and financially starve Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Highly variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar in combination with energy storage using batteries to balance out variations in both load and supply might well be the wave of the future. However, it seems unlikely that these Tesla battery packs, optimized as they are for use in automobiles and thus designed to meet standards for compactness, weight, and collision safety, are also optimal for grid energy storage, which has different requirements. Assembling grid-scale energy storage from individual cells is probably a technological dead-end and will be supplanted by flow batteries.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Perhaps you were on vacay when the fucking oil glut hit ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Here's an article with the video embedded
https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/
Still better than buying fuel every week.
#DeleteFacebook
These devices aren't going to be used like a phone battery. They will be setup for optimal life rather than longest possible runtime. Industry will be doing all the little "tricks" to keep them in longest lifetime condition. Not charging to 100%, not discharging to 0%, storing in a temperate controlled area, etc.
My post wasn't entirely serious Mr Logic.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Typo,
"Dessert"
Death by chocolate.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What politicians normally do is submit a plan to an ethics review whereby their savings and investments are in a "blind trust" or equivalent. What this means is that they have no insight into where their money is invested ("blind"), and no control over the decisions that their trusted agent/broker makes regarding those investments, nor any communications with them apart from perfunctory statements or the like ("You currently have X dollars in your accounts" etc). This often involved selling off their existing assets to place them in that trust.
The problem with Trump is that he hasn't done this, and has shown absolutely no intention of doing so. He still knows where his money is invested, and still has control/influence over those investments. He claims that he doesn't, but it's grossly clear since his name is plastered all over it. What's more, it's his children that are now running the business, and if you think he couldn't quietly make his wishes known to them, you're deluding yourself. He therefore can easily take that information into account when he's making decisions, and directly benefit his own financial interests thereby.
To give an example, his travel/immigration ban covers several Middle Eastern countries, and cited terrorist attacks including 9/11 as cause. And yet, none of the countries the 9/11 hijackers came from are included in the ban. Why? Possibly because those countries happen to be ones that the Trump Organization does business in, since there's zero overlap between the banned country list and the list of countries in the Middle East where Trump's business has ties? Now, it's impossible to prove that was the reason why, but wouldn't it be better for everyone involved if we didn't have to even worry about that in the first place?
Except that Elon Musk is one of Trumps economic advisors...not to mention with Tesla's entire manufacturing in the US, including the massive Gigafactory as well as SpaceX employing only American citizens...I'm pretty sure that Trump is getting a good amount of advice that isnt' just big oil.
It sounds nice, but after 2 years, the capacity of the battery storage facility will be about 70% of what it is today and a couple of years later it will drop to 5%. Let's hope they built the facility with a user replaceable battery.
My 4 year old Tesla (car) battery is at 98% of new capacity, not 5%. Try again.
It shouldn't really be up to Trump to make ethical decisions. They should be forced upon him. Why isn't this happening ?
No. But I remember when the media and congressmen were saying that we would never see sub $2.00 gas again.
Oops. I guess increasing supply ruined that foolish prediction.
We do have a "glut". Good. Let's keep crude oil prices to screw Saudi Arabia. How about we drill here, have refineries buy at the reduced price (due to increased supply) and we place a use tax on the gas. Then we use the tax dollars to increase wind and solar production, energy storage (battery, flywheels, whatever).
End result is we don't send money to fanatics; we have blue-collar jobs; we fund solar and wind.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
So long as the glut continues, you're not going to be making a lot of people rich, and where the oil is more expensive to get at, like oil sands in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Dakotas, or even North Sea oil, you're finding production falling off because the lower prices reduces the economic argument for grabbing the oil. That's the real problem here. Cheap oil is great if you're a consumer, it's probably pretty damned good if you're a refiner as well, but if you're a producer it sucks really bad, and while technology has indeed allowed cheaper access to some sources like shale oil, all in all low oil prices have actually had a pretty shitty effect, to the point where Shell is selling its North Sea assets.
It's the great irony of oil production that it seems it is low prices, rather than high prices, that are causing the industry problems, and may in the medium term lead to more development of renewables. The Saudis, at least, seem to know this, which is why they've set up their massive sovereign wealth fund. They're going to grab the money while they can, because they know in the long term, fossil fuels are a dead end.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wow, comparing a short lived lithium ion battery fire to Chernobyl, a nuclear wasteland for the next 100+ years.
Where do you get your alternate facts from?
Go read more about that case. The warnings were trying to cheat elements of a law, not something she ever asked for, and her request was far more reasonable, they just suffered punitive damages for how they went about this.
Battery storage reaching critical mass? I hope they are not talking about nuclear batteries...
I often wonder why people think engineers are too stupid to see obvious engineering problems. I'd assume the Tesla engineers would reckon on capacity losses and simply size the installation large enough to deliver the required performance over the planned service lifetime. It's not like they don't understand battery technology.
Li-ion batteries are not nearly so bad as you paint them to be -- although obviously you can abuse them into early failure. Tests of electric cars shows battery aging to be less of a problem than anticipated. Tesla Roadsters retain over 80% of their range after 100,000 miles, for example, and data suggests the batteries in the Model S are aging even better on average -- almost negligible after 100,000 miles.
If you're extrapolating from your experience with your phone, phones probably represent the worst case. They often have barely adequate batteries so users deep-discharge them then top them off to 100%, every single day. That's the worst thing you can do to Li-ion batteries.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
FFS, is no joke safe from the ASD crowd?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The Saudis, at least, seem to know this, which is why they've set up their massive sovereign wealth fund. They're going to grab the money while they can, because they know in the long term, fossil fuels are a dead end.
That's what they said about the olive oil trade, back when Christ was a corporal.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Its hard to really judge the trends though since it depends on the number of complete cycles as well as temperature. Plus we don't know whether the car is accurately reporting or not. I doubt its anywhere near as bad as the poster claims but the current cost of battery packs its still worrying.
I think most oil men everywhere realize that. You see the Koch Bros heavily invested in wind project. I think I read that they were investing in a few energy storage projects (flywheel in NY state).
/barrel to US/Canadian producers than $35/ barrel to Saudi Arabia. But that's me.
Oil will be done as an energy supply in a generation or so (20-40 years). Solar production has been increasing exponentially since the late 1970s. We just haven't noticed it since early doubles 2 to 4 to 8 are not noticed as clearly as later ones 2048 to 4096 to 8192.
You're correct that when crude oil prices drop too low it hurts producers. I would prefer that we pay crude oil prices of $50
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Trump did not even have control over the countries on the travel ban list, they were put there years ago,
He had full control. He decided to use that particular list. He could have used another list, he could have written a brand new list. Instead he picked a list that conveniently did not impact any of his business partners.
There are liberals, and then there are leftist lunatics.
This would be the latter.
Please explain what is so lunatic about the point he's making. This but Obama made me do it argument is so staggeringly dumb that nobody with a mental age above 5 takes it serious. I mean, Trump? Accepting recommendations from Obama? That's almost as dumb as the whole spiel about the `huge' inauguration attendance.
That leaves the adults wondering what the real reason is. The business interests explanation is not very convincing to me, but it is miles ahead of the but Obama made me the list explanation.
And that's ignoring the blatant insinuation that the Obama administration made that list for the kind of asshole measures that Trump has now ordered.
Several reasons:
1) The voters didn't care (enough) that this was his long-running modus operandi (using any position of influence or power for personal gain, even at the expense of everyone else around him, has been a consistent theme for him), or that he made a particular point of ignoring/flouting political norms and expected behavior (this was seen as a plus by many, in fact).
2) Congress has become so completely polarized that it is at best hindered in, and at worst incapable of, acting as a check on a president of the same party.
3) Independent ethics groups hold no sway over him because he has no apparent shame, although they have resorted to suing him over the matter (whether that amounts to anything at all is another matter entirely).
Alternate fuels are great when the "surfs up". - Fossil fuels are very much more important for a backup, and an easy way to manufacture plastics and lubricating oils. You never know what is going to happen, wars, weather... Always be prepared with a 2nd plan..
Just a comment on the price. Oil prices are reflective of global supply and demand, and unless there are geographic constraints on a particular supply, ie no access to export points, changing where you buy the oil from won't change the price.
Lets say the US decides to only buy its oil domestically, this would have the immediate effect of pushing the domestic price up and the international price down. But it would be a fleeting change, as anyone who was buying from the US will shift to the now cheaper international supply. This will raise the international price and lower the US domestic price. The net effect is that the price ends up exactly the same.
The only case where this wouldn't happen is if the US domestic production is unable to ramp to US demand. In which case US price will be higher and international lower.
This is one of the big issues with oil embargoes on target countries. They are never world wide. So while the US and its allies may refuse to buy oil from country X, China and Russia won't have the same problem. No price change, just customer change.
The earth as a whole receives sunlight 24x7 and long distance transmission of power is a proven technology. O.K. there are some losses, but less than for storage.
I'd keep my day job if I were you...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This, and look at what's happening to a boom in the Bakken oil fields:
Extraction is way faster than distribution, so transporting the shit is a golden job.
Trucks, rail, boats and barges used to ship the product have attracted the boomers who live in tiny trailers because the surrounding cities refuse to provide municipal services like water, gas, sewage, and electricity, and fire and police protection.
The cities know that all those jobs are going to disappear once pipelines become the transport of choice.
Building the pipelines themselves is labour and material-intensive, but that all goes away after it comes on line.
What America needs to do is EXPORT that shit to oil-hungry nations.
That would call for increased refinement, building new refineries and updating ports ... all along the Gulf, particularly.
Specifically, the old Texaco, Shell, and Gulf refineries are still there (bought out now) and the ports at Beaumont, Galveston, Houston and Port Arthur are fully capable of handling mass export because they've already been there, done that.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What "oil hungry" nations are there right now? With the price of oil globally pretty cheap, it's not as if the US is the country pumping oil out of the ground, or selling it abroad. Everyone has an oversupply, which is why the price is low.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Obama made all his money from book sales. Sales that petered out after his first year or three in office.
The clintons had negative equity when they left the whitehouse due to paying for all the lawyers.
A side-by-side comparison of imports vs exports answers that question.
Appreciate that if I send a barge of crude to you, you're probably going to reject it and ask for some refined stuff, instead.
Guess who has the largest refining capacity? (hint: USA)
Many countries who have refineries have crude, but they don't have enough.
China, India, parts of Africa and others.
Remember Aramco? I do.
In the article, notice the companies, Texaco and Mobil Oil.
I worked for both.
My brothers worked for Gulf Oil.
My dad worked for Pure Oil (later Unical).
--
We need to do three (3) things (at least) in tandem:
1.) Make export agreements with countries needing cheap oil (start with Ukraine?)
2.) Upsell buildouts of refineries in those countries. US has the leg up on that one.
3.) Expand shipping ports and build tankers. From around the Gulf Coast, look at Beaumont, Port Arthur, Houston, and Galveston.
Lots of jobs for top-flight engineers, middle managers, draftsmen, steel mills, boilers, cracking units, welders, pipefitters, carpenters, riggers, day labourers, designers, (and shit loads more) and the need for support in the way of hardware/mill supplies, transportation, housing, schools, ...
It would be the boom of of the 1950s all over again.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
But since the produced supply is higher then the world wide price would drop. We would be "subsidizing" oil production at a minimum base price in order to keep production at glut level. Europe and China would have lower fuel costs.
Of course lower prices could mean increased use - thus higher prices. (And a waste of resources and US tax dollars).
It would only work if industrialized countries worldwide continue conversion to alternative energies.
If they don't then we would have to cut production subsidies as it didn't achieve its stated goal.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
We need to stop using fossil fuels. That's not something you and I are going to agree on, I suspect.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Your suspicion is logical, but unfounded.
My DNA is in oil patch, but I have evolved to despise it.
It's a filthy source of energy and killed my dad with cancers in the brain, liver, pancreas, stomach and lungs.
My post was not an advocacy for fossil fuels, it was a strategy to exploit it, if we're going to let that pussy-grabbing son of a bitch destroy us, we should flameout with dollars in our hands.
I litigated tobacco and it was a bitch to get those mother fuckers to stop killing us, and it still is.
At least with fossil, we have a replacement to use as a weapon.
I'm please to see the progress we're making with renewables and the persistence of manufacturers to continue rolling it out.
This kind of chickenshit short-sighted legislation will spread like cancer and the only way to stop it is pressure from buyers:
The new Wyoming bill would forbid utilities from using solar or wind sources for their electricity by 2019, according to Inside Climate News.
The bill's nine sponsors—two state senators and seven representatives—mostly come from Wyoming's top coal-producing counties, and some have denied the scientific validity of climate change, according to the website.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
My apologies! That's what I get for drawing hasty conclusions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thank you, and no problems. Your conclusions were my fault.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The earth as a whole receives sunlight 24x7 and long distance transmission of power is a proven technology. O.K. there are some losses, but less than for storage.
It would be a good idea, but there are oceans in the way. And they are hard to get wires over... ;-)
The reason you're seeing $2 oil is a price war kicked off by the Saudis (who don't pay much to get their oil out of the ground) aimed at undercutting tight oil suppliers (who pay a lot more) and pushing the market price below the costs of extracting tight oil.
That's a strategy they lost (the tight oil suppliers didn't go bankrupt) and has put their entire economy in danger (SA is hugely in debt now and even considering introducing income tax). Prices are now rising quickly and you can expect them to go back to where they were, if not a lot higher.
Incidentally the high oil prices are an indication that we've hit peak oil worldwide - the easy stuff is all gone and now the cost of extracting oil is going up (through most of the 20th century you'd get an energy return of at least 25-50 barrels for every barrel expended. In some areas of extraction the return is down to 5 barrels per barrel expended. Tar sands and shale oil are extremely expensive to process (There's more energy in a bowl of cornflakes than in the same volume of oil shale).
The fact that tar sands are regarded as important is a big indicator. When I was a kid it was taken for granted that such resources were hopelessly uneconomic to extract and would only be a last resort supply.
Right. They tried to put the frackers and oil sand drillers out of business by dropping prices. This happens with increased supply. The opposite happens with limited supply, especially when dealing with monopoly powers.
Frackers can make money in the 40-50 / barrel range (some less than that). Saudi Arabia has a break even in the low 30s (IIRC) but has a budget requirement of about 100/barrel. (They need 100/barrel to not run a deficit.)
At issue with carbon-based energy is bridging the gap until solar and wind can take over. Alternative energy production has been growing at an exponential pace for 40 years and there's no reason for us to think that the rate of growth will slow anytime soon.
We need carbon-based energy for another 20+ years. And that's it.
But don't worry Exxon and Mobil will do quite well there will still be a need for refining oil. We just won't be using it as an energy source.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
How exactly is that supposed to work? They sell their entire portfolio for cash, and put the cash in a bunch of safe deposit boxes, or hide it under a mattress?
Or maybe just sell it all and buy U.S. Treasuries?
Maybe that's not the phenomenally bad idea it seems to be.
That'd certainly provide one strong incentive to preserve and even improve the U.S. government's credit rating, now wouldn't it?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
"Alternative energy production has been growing at an exponential pace for 40 years and there's no reason for us to think that the rate of growth will slow anytime soon. "
The problem is that even if you carpet the countryside in windmails and panels you can only match existing power generation. In order to eliminate carbon you need to also convert domestic/industrial heating and as much transportation as possible to electricity AND get developing countries on board
That translates to an increase in demand in developed countries somewhere between 6-8 times and 20-50 times in developing countries over existing electricity generation capacity.
The only viable way of doing this is nuclear power and realistically we should have had MSRs ready 20 years ago. If anyone attempts to hold back developiong countries by restricting their energy generation there _will_ be a war. We can't keep billions of people poor in order to maintain our own affluent lifestyle. (Poor people have more children. The statistically proven way of reducing population growth to zero or negative is to make them affluent. Wars and famine only result in a minor downtick in population which is more than made up in a couple of generations. The Black Death proved that)
I tend to regard wind and solar as an expensive boondoggle because they're so fiddly. If you have upbiquitous MSRs (LFTR) then they're unnecessary irritations on the power grid which operators will be glad to get rid of.
Very good points about war being inevitable if attempts are made to restrict growth in developing countries.
:-)
but if ocean based windfarms can take care of NY, LA, London, Tokyo, etc... that would be a great start.
.
Nuclear is definitely an option that should not be ignored.
Re solar and wind - I see nothing but growth on horizon; and it doesn't need to be the wet dream of photo-voltaic paints or other such things.
If we can get residential small towns to be energy self-sufficient (whether in the US or the Congo) that will be a godsend in-and-of-itself.
Ocean based wind-farms will soon be a reality. A large percentage of major cities are coastal (Paris, Berlin, Mexico City, Moscow, New Dehli, Beijing being obvious exceptions).
OK. Lots of people don't live in coastal cities
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Large wind turbines are surprisingly expensive to run. The 2MW+ ones have an alarming tendency to shred their gearboxes or have them catch fire - to the point where they're barely breaking even with subsidies - and having 8MW ones at sea makes it that much harder/more expensive to maintain them.
The cost of reticulating the network to them is also a big deal. Windpower generation is seldom located convenient to demand centres.
I'm fairly sure that practical molten salt nuclear systems will result in forests of turbines being abandoned, as unlike [PB]WRs, MSRs can be _safely_ located near or in population/demand centres and not be dependent on geologically unstable features (rivers tend to track fault lines and drought conditions mean river-cooled xWR systems have to be derated in hot weather, lakes and seas are subject to tsunamis) and will be substantially cheaper to operate than current nuke tech (which is around half the cost of wind/solar as it is), due to the reduced waste handling costs.
It's worth noting that Edison's original power plans were for regionalised, distributed power generation, but our current worldwide centralised power generation model was proven more economically and physically practical more than 80 years ago. Solar/Wind plants are in many ways a step back to that century-old philosophy with its attendant massive administrative complexity. Whilst grid automation could handle a good deal of the load/generation balancing, politicalisation of generation makes it much harder for planners and operators - and the cost of that interference is borne by energy consumers, with approximately 40% of the average UK power bill being attributable to wind/solar systems that only average 4-6% of the actual generation.
Wind and solar systems are only going to stop being a network menace when they are teamed with energy storage local to the generation plant, to smooth the peaky feeds they provide. At that point their economics largely go out the window as you need ~50% increase in generation capacity to maintain the same overall output - and that's on top of actual output over time being only 15-20% of nameplate rating, necessitating massive overbuild to get real capacity to where it's needed. It effectively takes 1800-2200 2MW turbines to match _one_ 1200MW power station, not the 600 you'd think at first blush - and even then 600 turbines is a LOT of space. (Yes, oceanic turbines are bigger but see comments above about the gearboxes and reticulation - there are only so many spaces suitable to install them anyway)
The thing about windfarms is that the low hanging fruit goes quickly - one example being the Tararua/Te Apiti/Te Rere Hau farms in New Zealand which are unusual as it they are in an area with near constant wind year round. The first tranche of turbines generated steady power, but followup ones have proven to be less and less cost effective, with more complaints about noise. Even these farms, with a near-constant wind supply don't go anywhere near nameplate output levels when averaged over a year.
Yes, there are times in europe when wind reaches 100% of energy consumption - but if you look closer you'll usually see that it's a combination of extremely low demand period coupled with unusually high winds over a widespread area, and until the issue of generation when the sun's not around and there's no wind coupled with demand peaks (such as Europe's rather notorious cold, still cloudless nights) is addressed, you'll still need backing capacity - which right now is fossil based. If you can make it practical to supply this with nuclear then for the incremental cost of enlarging the nuclear plant you also just made all those turbines/solar panels redundant.
Naa, we just lost a ambassador, no biggy, happens all the time. It was all because of a video too!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?