All this rule changes is the efficiency for NEW wood burning stoves.
Stop showing off. Just because you can understand what you read, doesn't mean everybody on Slashdot can. Either that or they're so knee jerk "damn gubmint regerlations" that they believe idiotic headlines like "EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal", when it should be something like "EPA Bans Sale of Dirty Wood Stoves". The horror! You can keep your old stove as long as you want. If you have to buy another one you'll pay little or nothing more for a wood stove that doesn't make your neighbors cough and choke. The horrors! What happened to freedom in America! (being constantly spied on by the NSA is a minor issue by comparison).
New diesel engines, including for trucks (real trucks, not pickups) must meet pretty stringent emissions standards. Granted, for years they were essentially unregulated and it pissed me off that trucks, buses, constructions equipment, etc. could belch smoke and sulfur compounds while your car had to meet stringent emissions requirements, but that's a thing of the past. Why do you think all diesel fuel sold now has to be ULSD (ultra-low sulfur diesel). Of course you'll complain about the increased costs of ULSD, but according to the refiners it adds less than ten cents to the gallon.
Yet another paragon of scientific insight. I've read more than enough of those denialist sites to understand the two basic strategies. First, find something stupid somebody said (today's example is Typhoon Haiyan), and act as if that debunks the whole theory. Meanwhile, back in reality, most climatologists are extremely vocal about the fact that no one weather event can be blamed on AGCC. The other approach is to cherry pick a few examples of noise defying an overall trend. It would only be suspicious if you couldn't find such examples. Any theory of something so complex that perfectly matched the data would be a fraud. Nowhere, of course, do the denialists offer a thorough statistical analysis of their own that refutes AGCC.
By definition? The market is always right, if you define "right" to be whatever the market does. It's a tautology.
The definition of a security's price is "the value of all future business of the concern."
I hope you don't do any serious trading with that idea, because you're going to be very poor. As Keynes observed (from personal experience), the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
"balancing energy" (sorry, no dictionary has the right english term for "Regelenergie")
Your English translation is close. We usually say "load balancing".
Before germany had "solar power" we used coal. That means Switzerland is losing nothing due to our switch to solar and wind.
No, unless the economic arrangements have changed recently, the Swiss now sell balancing energy at night, when prices are lowest and solar production is nonexistent. Obviously with solar you don't need to buy much balancing energy during the day. Because coal plants can the same output day or night, in the past the Swiss would mostly sell balancing energy during the day, when demand and prices are highest.
I'm not saying that Germany is doing anything wrong, just that the Swiss are unhappy about it. I can imagine a time when Germany might need to pay them more so the Swiss are more willing to share load balancing with Germany, as opposed to finding other markets for Swiss electricity.
You're preaching to the choir. Note my implied criticism for the typical libertarian's very selective complaints about government subsidies. The Koch brothers don't complain much about government subsidies for oil, do they?
Germany was dizzed by the US, for selling so many goods. I know that's because the industry fears...
Other European countries complain about that a lot more than the US, and for good reason. For all that I admire German industry in many ways, Germany has had a mercantilist policy for decades. The Plaza Accord in 1985 dramatically reduced the German-US trade imbalance because it forced Germany to stop manipulating its currency. More recently, the Euro is beloved by Germany because they can run a trade surplus which doesn't get balanced out by movement in the exchange rates. European financial difficulties would be far less without the Euro. Like most mercantilist countries, Germany prides itself on its thrift and the competitiveness of its industry, where the truth is that they're simply part of the problem. The US took a similar tact in the 1920's, and it was a big part of the reason for the Great Depression.
A central power system is also a single point of failure
No it isn't. The grid is many power stations tied together. There have been incidents where that interconnection itself has been a problem due to ripple effects of one power line failure (e.g. the Northeastern blackout of 2003), but that's technically solvable. As for local transmission line failures, the problem is poor practices (overhead lines instead of underground) and poor maintenance (e.g. lack of tree trimming near overhead lines). Most countries spend more on power line maintenance than the US, and it shows in the reliability. In other words, to the extent our central power station system is unreliable, it's because of penny pinching and politics, not technical barriers.
distributed power generation is the way forward once they've got power storage sorted and cheap. The grid can be used as a back up system
"Off the grid" is a pipe dream for most people. While household solar and batteries move towards that goal, the solar won't be enough to cover all power needs. That's especially true in, for example, apartment buildings. On the whole, greater use of renewables will require greater interconnection than what we have now. I applaud the German household solar approach, but Germany doesn't have anything like America's Southwest. A lot of solar can be generated there, but it takes long distance transmission lines to get it to people in less sunny climes. Similarly, the Midwest is an ideal place for wind power, but again you need transmission lines to get it elsewhere. These transmission lines are also important because of the unreliability of many forms of renewable power. It may not be windy in one place on a given day (or number of days), but it's rare for the wind to not be blowing everywhere. Hence you transmit the power to even things out. Hydro is another, and definitely the oldest case, of renewables requiring long distance transmission lines. The Pacific DC Intertie ships 3.1GW from Northwest hydro plants to SoCal. Much of the Northeast gets power from Hydro-Québec, which has 60 hydro plants generating an astounding 35.8GW.
Sure things might look okay now, but in 10 years when bubsiness (and JOBS) have moved to more market driven countries
Which countries are those?
P.S. Even though I completely disagree with you, I think it's idiotic that you were down modded to -1. Hey mods: that's for trolls and flamebait, not opinions you disagree with.
although lead acid are one of the most easily recycled battery, and certainly common, less than 40% of the material is recovered
Cite? I find it hard to believe that applies to the lead.
even the most efficient country in the world, agriculturally, australia only gets a slight return from the sun with about 0.9kJ of oil per kJ of food produced
Do the sheep account for much of that efficiency? I would think that livestock grazing on large expanses of open land (which aren't artificially fertilized or anything) would be very efficient from that PoV. How does New Zealand do?
the loss of efficiency due to zillions of small power generation points more-or-less balances out with the gain in efficiency because the power is consumed near where it is generated, thus eliminating transmission losses
Transmission losses for a traditional central power plant approach averages only 7%, from generator to electrical outlet. It simply is not a major source of inefficiency.
Frankly, Germany would be better off selling excess electricity to the Swiss, who then pump their lakes full [wikipedia.org], and then buying that electricity back when needed. This is around 70% efficient, and a hell of a lot friendlier to the environment.
There I agree with you. I defend batteries as not necessarily being the worst things, but hydro storage is better. Best is if you don't have to use pumped storage. You simply shut off (or at least cut back) hydro generation during the day and let the water build up in the reservoir, then use it at night or during unusually cloudy weather (a typical dam can hold a hell of a lot more than a day's worth of extra water, and certainly a much longer period's worth than any practical battery). You get better than 70% efficiency, and don't have to build pumps.
AFAIK the problem is economics. The Swiss hate the German solar initiative, because it reduces the demand for their hydro power when the prices are highest during the day. Nighttime electricity prices are much lower. It would be nice if they could come to some sort of an economic agreement. It'd be worth it to the Germans to compensate the Swiss to some extent, because the Germans could save money on batteries.
Because socialisim or something. Or no wait. Solar is for hippies. Or no wait.. It's expensive. Or no wait. Solar sucks. Or no wait whats the excuse of the day now?
Solar is unsustainable. In a few billion years we'll lose the source.
You have a good point. There shouldn't be subsidies for solar, just like we shouldn't have subsidies for nuclear, oil and hydro. Somehow it's the solar subsidies that get the most criticism though.
It sounds like a great use for nickel-iron. Unfortunately the nickel content makes them expensive. Of course the nickel can be recycled, so it's essentially a one-time investment. It's be interesting to work out the economics.
So we really don't have a good comparative number.
That's true. I would hope sufficiently accurate stats are kept on car fires to make such a calculation, but I wouldn't bet on it. The "older cars are more likely to catch fire" is just speculation at this point.
What we do have though is enough information to say that "Tesla is a deathtrap" is way overblown.
Slashdot Mirror
All this rule changes is the efficiency for NEW wood burning stoves.
Stop showing off. Just because you can understand what you read, doesn't mean everybody on Slashdot can. Either that or they're so knee jerk "damn gubmint regerlations" that they believe idiotic headlines like "EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal", when it should be something like "EPA Bans Sale of Dirty Wood Stoves". The horror! You can keep your old stove as long as you want. If you have to buy another one you'll pay little or nothing more for a wood stove that doesn't make your neighbors cough and choke. The horrors! What happened to freedom in America! (being constantly spied on by the NSA is a minor issue by comparison).
New diesel engines, including for trucks (real trucks, not pickups) must meet pretty stringent emissions standards. Granted, for years they were essentially unregulated and it pissed me off that trucks, buses, constructions equipment, etc. could belch smoke and sulfur compounds while your car had to meet stringent emissions requirements, but that's a thing of the past. Why do you think all diesel fuel sold now has to be ULSD (ultra-low sulfur diesel). Of course you'll complain about the increased costs of ULSD, but according to the refiners it adds less than ten cents to the gallon.
Perfect if all your users happen to be in the middle of major metropolitan cities. Useless if you live in suburbs or any other place
Which suburbs? I don't know about the UK, but here in the NYC suburbs (Long Island) we get 4G data no problem.
No matter, the explosive ingenuity of Barnes Wallis and his intellectual heirs knows no bounds.
Do you think the Brits would be so foolish?
In October 2013 [the 617 Squadron] left for Afghanistan as part of the British deployment prior to it being disbanded in the Spring of 2014. It is due to reform in 2016 as the RAF's first F-35 squadron.
They have regiments that go back centuries. Why disband a squadron that's a mere 70 years old?
Only an idiot will claim government saved cotton from polyester.
Ruth Benerito is most famous for her work relating to the use of mono-basic acid chlorides in the production of cotton, with which she has 55 patents, which allows for more wrinkle-free and durable clothing. She invented these wash-and-wear cotton fabrics while working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratories in New Orleans in the 1950s.
Sounds like government research to me.
Fracking was invented in about 1900.
And hasn't changed since.
Reminds me of printed documentation that says "this page intentionally left blank".
Yet another paragon of scientific insight. I've read more than enough of those denialist sites to understand the two basic strategies. First, find something stupid somebody said (today's example is Typhoon Haiyan), and act as if that debunks the whole theory. Meanwhile, back in reality, most climatologists are extremely vocal about the fact that no one weather event can be blamed on AGCC. The other approach is to cherry pick a few examples of noise defying an overall trend. It would only be suspicious if you couldn't find such examples. Any theory of something so complex that perfectly matched the data would be a fraud. Nowhere, of course, do the denialists offer a thorough statistical analysis of their own that refutes AGCC.
The market is, by definition, far-sighted.
By definition? The market is always right, if you define "right" to be whatever the market does. It's a tautology.
The definition of a security's price is "the value of all future business of the concern."
I hope you don't do any serious trading with that idea, because you're going to be very poor. As Keynes observed (from personal experience), the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
"balancing energy" (sorry, no dictionary has the right english term for "Regelenergie")
Your English translation is close. We usually say "load balancing".
Before germany had "solar power" we used coal. That means Switzerland is losing nothing due to our switch to solar and wind.
No, unless the economic arrangements have changed recently, the Swiss now sell balancing energy at night, when prices are lowest and solar production is nonexistent. Obviously with solar you don't need to buy much balancing energy during the day. Because coal plants can the same output day or night, in the past the Swiss would mostly sell balancing energy during the day, when demand and prices are highest.
I'm not saying that Germany is doing anything wrong, just that the Swiss are unhappy about it. I can imagine a time when Germany might need to pay them more so the Swiss are more willing to share load balancing with Germany, as opposed to finding other markets for Swiss electricity.
You're preaching to the choir. Note my implied criticism for the typical libertarian's very selective complaints about government subsidies. The Koch brothers don't complain much about government subsidies for oil, do they?
Germany was dizzed by the US, for selling so many goods. I know that's because the industry fears ...
Other European countries complain about that a lot more than the US, and for good reason. For all that I admire German industry in many ways, Germany has had a mercantilist policy for decades. The Plaza Accord in 1985 dramatically reduced the German-US trade imbalance because it forced Germany to stop manipulating its currency. More recently, the Euro is beloved by Germany because they can run a trade surplus which doesn't get balanced out by movement in the exchange rates. European financial difficulties would be far less without the Euro. Like most mercantilist countries, Germany prides itself on its thrift and the competitiveness of its industry, where the truth is that they're simply part of the problem. The US took a similar tact in the 1920's, and it was a big part of the reason for the Great Depression.
A central power system is also a single point of failure
No it isn't. The grid is many power stations tied together. There have been incidents where that interconnection itself has been a problem due to ripple effects of one power line failure (e.g. the Northeastern blackout of 2003), but that's technically solvable. As for local transmission line failures, the problem is poor practices (overhead lines instead of underground) and poor maintenance (e.g. lack of tree trimming near overhead lines). Most countries spend more on power line maintenance than the US, and it shows in the reliability. In other words, to the extent our central power station system is unreliable, it's because of penny pinching and politics, not technical barriers.
distributed power generation is the way forward once they've got power storage sorted and cheap. The grid can be used as a back up system
"Off the grid" is a pipe dream for most people. While household solar and batteries move towards that goal, the solar won't be enough to cover all power needs. That's especially true in, for example, apartment buildings. On the whole, greater use of renewables will require greater interconnection than what we have now. I applaud the German household solar approach, but Germany doesn't have anything like America's Southwest. A lot of solar can be generated there, but it takes long distance transmission lines to get it to people in less sunny climes. Similarly, the Midwest is an ideal place for wind power, but again you need transmission lines to get it elsewhere. These transmission lines are also important because of the unreliability of many forms of renewable power. It may not be windy in one place on a given day (or number of days), but it's rare for the wind to not be blowing everywhere. Hence you transmit the power to even things out. Hydro is another, and definitely the oldest case, of renewables requiring long distance transmission lines. The Pacific DC Intertie ships 3.1GW from Northwest hydro plants to SoCal. Much of the Northeast gets power from Hydro-Québec, which has 60 hydro plants generating an astounding 35.8GW.
Sure things might look okay now, but in 10 years when bubsiness (and JOBS) have moved to more market driven countries
Which countries are those?
P.S. Even though I completely disagree with you, I think it's idiotic that you were down modded to -1. Hey mods: that's for trolls and flamebait, not opinions you disagree with.
although lead acid are one of the most easily recycled battery, and certainly common, less than 40% of the material is recovered
Cite? I find it hard to believe that applies to the lead.
even the most efficient country in the world, agriculturally, australia only gets a slight return from the sun with about 0.9kJ of oil per kJ of food produced
Do the sheep account for much of that efficiency? I would think that livestock grazing on large expanses of open land (which aren't artificially fertilized or anything) would be very efficient from that PoV. How does New Zealand do?
They also last practically forever with little or no maintenance. I wonder what the nickel content costs though? It's a fairly expensive metal.
the loss of efficiency due to zillions of small power generation points more-or-less balances out with the gain in efficiency because the power is consumed near where it is generated, thus eliminating transmission losses
Transmission losses for a traditional central power plant approach averages only 7%, from generator to electrical outlet. It simply is not a major source of inefficiency.
Frankly, Germany would be better off selling excess electricity to the Swiss, who then pump their lakes full [wikipedia.org], and then buying that electricity back when needed. This is around 70% efficient, and a hell of a lot friendlier to the environment.
There I agree with you. I defend batteries as not necessarily being the worst things, but hydro storage is better. Best is if you don't have to use pumped storage. You simply shut off (or at least cut back) hydro generation during the day and let the water build up in the reservoir, then use it at night or during unusually cloudy weather (a typical dam can hold a hell of a lot more than a day's worth of extra water, and certainly a much longer period's worth than any practical battery). You get better than 70% efficiency, and don't have to build pumps.
AFAIK the problem is economics. The Swiss hate the German solar initiative, because it reduces the demand for their hydro power when the prices are highest during the day. Nighttime electricity prices are much lower. It would be nice if they could come to some sort of an economic agreement. It'd be worth it to the Germans to compensate the Swiss to some extent, because the Germans could save money on batteries.
Because socialisim or something. Or no wait. Solar is for hippies. Or no wait.. It's expensive. Or no wait. Solar sucks. Or no wait whats the excuse of the day now?
Solar is unsustainable. In a few billion years we'll lose the source.
You have a good point. There shouldn't be subsidies for solar, just like we shouldn't have subsidies for nuclear, oil and hydro. Somehow it's the solar subsidies that get the most criticism though.
It sounds like a great use for nickel-iron. Unfortunately the nickel content makes them expensive. Of course the nickel can be recycled, so it's essentially a one-time investment. It's be interesting to work out the economics.
imagine 4KWh of lead-acid batteries. that is going to be so much
better for the environment!
The lead in lead-acid batteries is completely recycled. That's already done with car batteries, so it's nothing new. Sulfuric acid is also recycled.
A pun isn't good unless it's bad.
the two other by... malfunction ?
Striking something hard enough to punch through a 1/4" steel plate is not called a "malfunction", it's called a car accident.
So we really don't have a good comparative number.
That's true. I would hope sufficiently accurate stats are kept on car fires to make such a calculation, but I wouldn't bet on it. The "older cars are more likely to catch fire" is just speculation at this point.
What we do have though is enough information to say that "Tesla is a deathtrap" is way overblown.
How many ordinary cars would catch fire if they contained no gasoline? That would be the better comparison.
Assuming you only drive downhill.