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Microsoft 'Cuts The Cord' With A Local Power Utility To Pursue Greener Energy (seattletimes.com)
Frosty Piss summarizes the Seattle Times:
Microsoft will bypass Puget Sound Energy to secure carbon-free power on wholesale markets under an agreement with state regulators. In 2015, 60 percent of PSE electricity came from coal and natural-gas plants, according to company statistics. The agreement calls for Microsoft to pay a $23.6 million transition fee to Puget Sound Energy, which the utility will pass on to its Western Washington customers... But the settlement does not address one major financial issue that hangs over PSE and its customers -- how to handle the costs of shutting down coal-fired units in the Colstrip, Montana, power station... State regulators and Puget Sound Energy determined that Microsoft is legally responsible for a share of the Colstrip, Montana coal-fired generating plant costs.
...ends where another man's face begins."
-- Voltaire
nothing in montana bothers you
After all, if they can get Microsoft to pay for it, it looks better on their books.
Of course, if the WPPSS had completed the entire set of nuclear plants, they probably wouldn't be burning coal in Montana.
There is no mention of "cord cutting" in TFA. The power company will just route "cleaner energy" to MS through the existing network.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Yet another example of why the climate change deniers are just irrelevent. Let them scream, argue, bitch and moan, lie about the " war on coal" like Mitch McConnell (R- retard) does, but in the end, they are nothing.
Things are changing and things as being done - regardless of the Republicans quest to turn this country and World into a hot backwards theocratic shithole.
"⦠allows Microsoft to argue it owes nothingâ when Colstripâ(TM)s future is determined..." FK any company that things its customers are liable for the choices it made. PSE is the only one on the hook for how they deal with their coal plants. They made the profit they pay for it.
Hey Microsoft! In New England and much of the northeast, the bulk of the energy comes from Niagra Falls. Water fall power is clean, right?
I'm so confused. It sounds like microsoft is paying the energy company to leave them (legal monopoly i assume?) but once MS does leave them they'd have to shut down coal fired 'units' because they were commissioned or at least dedicated to only powering MS so through perverted capitalist logic MS is suddenly partly responsible for the cost of those units because they're not being used to provide them power any more?
AGREED. The racist indo chimp won't breed with me either
Excellent, great idea!!!
For all those who haven't already, please now cut the cord from Microsoft and free yourselves from their heinous greedy fuckery found in all their products and services.
For extra money, you can get windmill electrons instead of normal electrons! This is totally not an accounting gimmick that means that you get the same electrons anyway, because the grid kind of, well, mixes and matches.
With PSE, I've only had one outage in ten years and four months that lasted longer than my ~5 minutes of UPS backup lasted. They are a great company, but too many people here in the Seattle area want them to be less reliable and to increase our costs even more by being "green."
The really strange thing is that so many people in PSE's territory are anti-hydro power. I think it is clean, but several of my friends had a party last summer to celebrate five PSE hydro damns being shutdown.
Microsoft changes who they pay for electricity, but continues to use the same infrastructure and power, somehow being "greener" and more "environmentally conscious" in the process.
Gotta love these new green scams.
As if Microsoft really gives a shit. It's all about ad copy and preception.
... the path to grokking this is to chase the money.
Obviously, this is a business move for Microsoft.
"Millions of dollars," is a negligible amount, compared to the order of magnitude of Microsoft's disposable income, which is in the billions.
So, what I'm getting from this is that Microsoft does not want the source of PSE power, but it does want to use PSE's transmission lines .
That's what Microsoft is paying for: the use of infrastructure to deliver alternative sources of power.
There's probably something I'm missing because Microsoft makes moves that benefit their bottom line.
There is no way in fucking hell that Microsoft is doing anything for the betterment of any entity other than itself.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
PSE is going to be stuck with the clean-up costs of the sites containing the coal-fired energy generation plants.
Since they presumably own those plants what is the problem? If a customer decides to stop doing business with a company they are not responsible for the associated costs because of the loss of business. Frankly, I don't understand why MS even has to pay $23.6M just to not use PSE's power anymore. It would be completely unacceptable for a customer who switched from Windows to Linux to have to pay Microsoft a fee to cover the increase in costs to Microsoft due to the switch.
The electrons never reach anyone, regardless of whether it's AC or DC.
That's true for AC but not true for DC although the drift velocity is usually in milli- or micro- metres per second so it will take a while for the electrons to get very far. Even with AC there will be some diffusion of electrons as the current flows since when the current reverses it's not guaranteed that exactly the same electrons will flow back, just the same number. However, this process should be even slower than DC.
In the end, though it's a pointless exercise since there is no such thing as a "green" electron. However, if you look inside the nucleus you will find that all the protons and neutrons each contain a green quark.
You'd think so but a "creative" decided that there would be "better optics" if they used the phrase as a deliberate move to mislead.
They're not cutting any cord. They're simply purchasing power from a different wholesale supplier. The electrons still come from whatever the local utility is being fed from; the power "source" is primarily bookkeeping. Electrons on the wire don't have tags saying where they're from; it's more like water: an amount is poured into the system; an equivalent amount is taken out.
A physical electron does not travel. It simply moves out and back.
Not in a DC circuit. With a DC circuit, the electrons do have a net movement - they may more back and forth but they move forth more than they move back. If they did not move there would be no constant magnetic field. The electrons do move a lot slower than the electric field but they do move and you can measure their speed.
Scintillation is a completely different phenomenon to do with emission of light. In AC circuits the electrons still have a net movement but it reverses with the current so that over time it averages to zero. If there were no movement of charge there would be no magnetic field. Yes, there is a flow of energy but there is also a physical movement of electrons too.