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  1. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    You're saying they have no way at all to look at clouds?

    Meanwhile, you spoke of immediate surges. No thermometer that isn't in my house can predict exactly when my A/C will come on. While not common, it is nearly inevitable that every A/C in the neighborhood will just happen to power on or off at the same time.

    You also ignored the many other things I pointed out that are far more sudden and happen all too frequently.

    Until residential areas get a lot more solar installations, power won't be flowing backwards out of residential circuits, it will be flowing within the neighborhood (and so from the perspective of the managed grid, it will look like a lesser and varying load, not power flowing backwards).

  2. Re:Typical Government Hypocracy on At CIA Starbucks, Even the Baristas Are Covert · · Score: 1

    Well, we've tried the elephants and the donkeys so far. I don't see how the hypos would be any worse.

  3. Re:3G is terrible for all these things on World's Smallest 3G Module Will Connect Everything To the Internet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That has been my big question for all of this. 3G isn't all that cheap from the carriers. I don't want my things racking up a massive bill with AT&T.

  4. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    No, I am making a series of guesstimates about peak output of a system that would roughly average to zero after considering dark hours and cloudy days. Similar to but less rigorous than capacity planning that would go into an installation given that there's no financial benefit to a negative net use.

    As for the spikes, have you seen an air conditioner turn off? One instant it's on, the next it's off. Now, have you ever seen the sun blink off like that? How quickly do you suppose load drops when a tree or a car strikes a power pole? Would you characterize that as faster or slower than clouds drifting over a neighborhood? You seem to have an unfounded belief that sudden increase or decrease in load is somehow different from gaining/losing PV generation.

  5. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    Very few homes actually net 0 for the month. Practically none will go into the negative numbers since in most places the power company is never obligated to send you a check or maintain a 'power balance' from billing to billing, so after 0 you're just giving power away.

    So, that suggests that until 20% or so of homes adopt big enough PV arrays to net zero, the power generated will be absorbed by other homes in the area. (in other words, not a problem today or tomorrow). Until that day comes, PV is indistinguishable from the swings in load they must already be prepared to handle.

    The real trouble starts when there are enough solar installations to maintain voltage in the whole area even when a region is isolated from the grid. The local inverters will have found their own natural phase and frequency which won't be a close enough match to the grid to just close the switch again.

  6. Re:Boeing bought more politicians. on Sierra Nevada Corp. Files Legal Challenge Against NASA Commercial Contracts · · Score: 1

    He was alluding to the fact that the booster was only segmented because it had to be shipped from a land-locked state. Originally it was to be built in one piece and sent by water.

  7. Re:Boeing bought more politicians. on Sierra Nevada Corp. Files Legal Challenge Against NASA Commercial Contracts · · Score: 1

    Since there is more than one customer for the things you mentioned, they can be reasonably assured of being able to sell their product and making a return.

    Here, we are talking about manned space launches. There aren't enough customers in that market to enter without a contract.

  8. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    Why is a 2 KW swing from a solar panel more disruptive than a 2 KW swing from an A/C system coming on?

  9. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    I didn't claim solar was steady state, just that it is a more gentle rise and fall. I made no comment on wind.

    There are plenty of power sinks that are more sudden than solar and the magnitude of the change is largely a matter of chance.

    I have no doubt that upgrades will be needed and agree that even people whose net use is zero should pay something for the grid services acting as storage for them, but it's hardly as serious as you make it out.

  10. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    Solar doesn't suddenly spike. You make it sound like outside looks like a disco. The 'spike' a typical home might produce from clouds in front of the sun are unlikely to be as severe as the A/C coming on (which is all at once and with an inrush current, no less).

  11. Re:Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    Of course, solar users also ease loads on the grid allowing power companies to avoid buying power at peak rates or having to build more generating capacity. You didn't think power companies ran PSAs about saving energy because they thought it would be cool to make less money, did you?

  12. Re: Oh dear - money grows on trees... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    You have it backwards. It was run by the government but then when the market was allowed to take over, it got more expensive and continues to rise faster than inflation.

  13. Re:May still be infected. on How Did the 'Berlin Patient' Rid Himself of HIV? · · Score: 1

    It's already been a few years.

  14. Re:Summary missing punchline on How Did the 'Berlin Patient' Rid Himself of HIV? · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's because they used SHIV, a hybrid virus, not SIV. They chose SHIV because it's response to anti-retrovirals resembles that of HIV.

  15. Re:LEDs on The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy · · Score: 1

    People buy the cheapest because they don't trust the 'rating' on the package. They know it will die 'early' anyway so they might as well be cheated out of $5 rather than $10.

  16. Re:Amazing... on First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks · · Score: 1

    That's because Windows users don't tend to get Linux foisted upon them or have some device or another they want say "sorry, Linux only".

    Windows users don't have problems with Linux systems refusing to interoperate.

  17. Re:The silence is deafening on First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks · · Score: 0

    MS bugs don't even make the headlines anymore.

  18. Re:They will never learn on jQuery.com Compromised To Serve Malware · · Score: 1

    Because I feel at least some sense of responsibility for not infecting people who visit my site but I have no idea how well you or some other party have secured their sites.

  19. Re:Shocking. on Apple Yanks iOS 8 Update · · Score: 1

    From my understanding the update is fine. The problem is in installing the update.

    As long as you don't install the update everything is fine? :-)

  20. Re:These jokes are old, get new material please. on Apple Yanks iOS 8 Update · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At Apple we bend over backwards to bring you the thinnest phones?

  21. Re:Another terrible article courtesy of samzenpus on Seattle Passes Laws To Keep Residents From Wasting Food · · Score: 1

    Only in a desperate "please won't you stuff me into the nearest locker" sense of legit.

    The residents are still free to waste all the food they want as long as they put it in the correct bin.

  22. Clingy corps on Popular Wi-Fi Thermostat Full of Security Holes · · Score: 1

    If the manufacturers wouldn't be so clingy, many of these problems would go away. They COULD embed a tiny web server in the device and just have it sit on the LAN. Ideally it would also have a very simple protocol to talk to (or at least a proper web API). But they insist on having the things connect to their server 'in the cloud'. Not just offer that, insist on it.

    I won't even consider installing such a thing until it willingly confines itself to my LAN. If I want remote access, it will go through another server that then uses the simple and well documented API to pass the commands along.

  23. Re:Fire Hazard Warning on Popular Wi-Fi Thermostat Full of Security Holes · · Score: 1

    He's too much!

  24. Re:How many of you are still using Gnome? on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    Listening to users in the beginning might not be such a good idea, but later on, when you present users with your new vision and they scream "the goggles, they do nothing!" and running for the hills, it may be time to accept that that's not the direction they want to go. Doubling down on it at that point is not helpful.

    I'm fairly convinced the Gnome project was taken over by a group of psychologists experimenting with how far you can push users before they leave. Even with all of that going on, guess what project was the first to grow a new dependency on systemd?

  25. Re:Now all they need to do... on New MRI Studies Show SSRIs Bring Rapid Changes to Brain Function · · Score: 1

    Essentially we've twisted society up in knots until increasing numbers of people can't tolerate it and then rather than fixing the thing, we prescribe drugs to make it sort of tolerable.