What makes you think that oligopoly is an inevitable result of regulations?
I do not think that hence the word "most" in my statement. The main difference between cabs and restaurants is that it is very difficult for one company to run a thousand restaurants on a city but it is quite common for a cab company in a big city to have a thousand cabs.
It is also for shifting supply to demand. When supply is higher than demand the excess electricity is stored by pumping water. When demand is higher than supply the water is run through the turbines to meet the demand.
If there is more demand for 50GW and only 25GW can be produced then there is a problem. If the reservoirs are dry because they have been used there is a problem. Therefore capacity and amount of electricity produced is very important.
The article contents that all electricity need for California can be fulfilled by solar power. They do not differentiate between daytime demand and nighttime demand. They make no reference to and difficulties in integrating large amounts of solar into the grid.
EXACTLY! and hence your and others' claims that wind and solar does not work without extensive storage is: NONSENSE
Let me fix that for you
hence your and others' claims that very large amounts wind and solar does not work without extensive storage
Take a look at any production graph in this report. Notice that at all time there is a significant amount of conventional production. The article contends that all daytime demand can be fulfilled by solar. At no time Germany does 100% of electricity come from solar/wind therefore Germany has never had to ramp up or down as fast as necessary if solar fulfilled day demand. Germany is not an counterexample as the scenario is very different.
Deploying Solar In California's Urban Areas Could Meet Demand Five Times Over
Then you state;
as long as solar power production is far from 100% storage is not needed and is meaningless.
Since five times is much more than 100% I don't see how you could have read the headline and made that statement.
So you are arguing about stuff which is not even in the article
Yes I am arguing stuff not in the article because the article does not show the whole picture. That causes solar to appear to be a simpler solution than it really is.
It is my contention that the focus on large production number for solar is hiding the real issue with integrating solar into the grid which is storage. Is solar useless? No. Does high solar production need storage to shift supply to demand? Yes.
While the road itself has not been touched the road was scanned by a special vehicle and the data gone over by a person to highlight specific attributes of the road. Traffic lights are specifically located so the car knows where to look for the signal. Stationary objects on the side of the road are flagged as such. In effect the Google Car is restricted to roads that have been analyzed recently. There is a lot of human interaction with the maps to allow the cars to drive. Most of that 350,000 miles is Google employees commuting over the same roads.
without incident
Since the driver takes over in difficult situations that "without accident" stat is skewed.
There is one thing that Google never tells us; How many times the driver had to take over because the AI could not handle the situation. The Google car is not completely self driving as the driver takes over sometimes. It will not be self driving until the driver never has to touch the wheel. We are far from that.
Are self driving cars the future of transportation? Yes. The only question is how far in the future. Current technology can do many of the tasks of driving a car very well. Lane following is a good example of that. They also do many tasks very poorly. Differentiating someone waving hello from someone trying to warn you of danger is an example. To do the more complex tasks requires great leaps in AI. When will these advances happen? I think it will take at least a few decades. Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? In this case 80% of the challenges can be solved with 20% of the effort. That last 20% is going to take 80% of the effort.
If you hire a guy to keep building fences for the foreseeable future he is an employee and not a contractor. Building a single fence is a discrete job. It has a definable start and end. When the job is over the contract is over. Driving for Uber is indeterminate as it has not defined end.
The quote about tools is incomplete. Here is the rest of it.
However, it is recognized that some employers require employees to provide their own tools or vehicles.
You completely ignore the fact that Uber controls who they pick up. Uber drivers are not allowed to work for Lyft while working for Uber and are not allowed to pick up street fares.
A driver who is in his vehicle 10 hours a day five days a week picking up only Uber dispatched calls and who's only source of income is Uber is an Uber employee. Are all Uber drivers employees? Probably not. Are some Uber drivers Uber employees? Definitely.
Uber does not want them designated as employees as they would have to give them things like holiday pay, minimum wage, EI payments, etc.
Take a look at this article. While many points are driver issues there are a significant number that are company issues that the CEO is responsible for. Some of those are "surge pricing", cancelling fares on competitors, high fees/low fares, poor background checks, privacy issues, muck raking journalists, etc.
Taxis in most cities are oligopolies in that the business is controlled by a few companies. The reason oligopolies are created is that they are compensation for requirements put on them by the government. Here are a few examples of what taxi companies are required to do or have that Uber is not. 1. Commercial licenses for drivers. 2. Minimum number of cars on the road 3. Vehicle inspections 4. Insurance requirements. 5. Minimum wage for drivers 6. Minimum number of handicap accessible vehicles. 7. Requirement to pick up anyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. 8. Set rate fares 9. Background checks 10. Accountability for drivers' actions (Uber just throws their hands in the air and says "they are a contractor I have no control" while taxi companies get fined) 11. Governance by a taxi board who decides on fines for poor service. The laws for taxis have grown through the years and no jurisdiction in their right mind would want to go back to the days of no taxi regulations.
If Uber is allowed to flourish they may drive conventional taxis out of business. When the fad of driving for Uber fades we will be in a much worse situation.
Tesla is actually following or fighting the dealership laws. They do not have dealerships in States that do not allow them. Another difference is scale. Tesla may have one dealership in a city while Uber could have hundreds of drivers.
The problem was that the driver provided a false criminal records check and Uber did not verify it's authenticity. It is weel know that many criminal records checks are forged in India. Had they done the check they would have found it false and not allowed him to drive.
Control – Is the person under the direction and control of another regarding the time, place, and way in which the work is done?
Uber drivers can only pick up passengers through the Uber system. They have to follow Uber rules of conduct. Check.
Ownership of tools – Does the person use tools, space, supplies and equipment owned by someone else? If so, this would indicate an employment relationship.
Uber drivers must use uber apps and Uber servers to communicate get fares. Check
An Uber driver is much closer to a employee paid on commission than a contractor.
So you didn't even read the headline of the article
Deploying Solar In California's Urban Areas Could Meet Demand Five Times Over
but are still commenting on it. Small amounts of solar are easy to integrate into the grid but large amounts cause issues. In this case their "study" was a running a few equations to come up with a number that makes solar look good. They fail to go any further than "how much can we produce?" and ignore the issue of when we need the electricity.
Germany alone has like 25 pumped storage plants (only 2 listed in that article) and we are also in the 20GW and something like 400GWh range.
Where do these numbers come from? Are they based on a day, week, month or year?
Here is some real data for germany. Lets take January (pg 89). Pumped storage production per week = 0.6TWhrs. Total production per week = 43.5TWhrs. Therefore pumped storage contributed 1.4% to weekly production. 1.4% is almost insignificant.
Sorry but actual data refutes your assumption. Take a look at this chart. The capitol, operations and maintenance costs for coal make up $64.20 of the $95.60 cost of 1MWhr of electricity. That makes fixed costs 67% of total costs. I would say that 67% is very relevant.
Where electricity is always priced at market equilibrium, all electricity is consumed and therefore "needed" by some definition of the word.
That is completely untrue. There are not people waiting around for prices to go down to use electricity.
people consume more electricity at that time because it's cheap (perhaps to cook dinner or do laundry)
Most people cook when they need to and do laundry when they have time. The price of electricity has nothing to do with it.
The report hinted at this solution: "The resource mix would also benefit from...demand side response capabilities to help meet real-time system conditions."
Good selective quoting. You missed the " energy storage capabilities and" which I am talking about. Demand side response is only part of the solution storage is another.
There are a very limited number of charging stations available and new ones are expensive to install.
You seem to think that because solar doesn't instantly solve every single problem that it's some sort of rubbish nonsense fad which deserves scorn.
No, I think that articles concentrating only on production numbers for solar hide the issues involved with utilizing solar. Solar + storage is a solution but because solar production is so sexy, storage is falling behind. They also rarely add the cost of storage into the solar costs and therefore skew any comparison with conventional production.
Slashdot Mirror
In NYC they have been very common
In NY hired cars have to be licensed by the NY Taxi and Limosine Commision
What makes you think that oligopoly is an inevitable result of regulations?
I do not think that hence the word "most" in my statement. The main difference between cabs and restaurants is that it is very difficult for one company to run a thousand restaurants on a city but it is quite common for a cab company in a big city to have a thousand cabs.
Hence the word "most" in my statement.
It is for balancing the grid.
It is also for shifting supply to demand. When supply is higher than demand the excess electricity is stored by pumping water. When demand is higher than supply the water is run through the turbines to meet the demand.
If there is more demand for 50GW and only 25GW can be produced then there is a problem. If the reservoirs are dry because they have been used there is a problem. Therefore capacity and amount of electricity produced is very important.
The article contents that all electricity need for California can be fulfilled by solar power. They do not differentiate between daytime demand and nighttime demand. They make no reference to and difficulties in integrating large amounts of solar into the grid.
EXACTLY! and hence your and others' claims that wind and solar does not work without extensive storage is: NONSENSE
Let me fix that for you
hence your and others' claims that very large amounts wind and solar does not work without extensive storage
Take a look at any production graph in this report. Notice that at all time there is a significant amount of conventional production. The article contends that all daytime demand can be fulfilled by solar. At no time Germany does 100% of electricity come from solar/wind therefore Germany has never had to ramp up or down as fast as necessary if solar fulfilled day demand. Germany is not an counterexample as the scenario is very different.
The headline states the following;
Deploying Solar In California's Urban Areas Could Meet Demand Five Times Over
Then you state;
as long as solar power production is far from 100% storage is not needed and is meaningless.
Since five times is much more than 100% I don't see how you could have read the headline and made that statement.
So you are arguing about stuff which is not even in the article
Yes I am arguing stuff not in the article because the article does not show the whole picture. That causes solar to appear to be a simpler solution than it really is.
It is my contention that the focus on large production number for solar is hiding the real issue with integrating solar into the grid which is storage. Is solar useless? No. Does high solar production need storage to shift supply to demand? Yes.
unprepared public roads
While the road itself has not been touched the road was scanned by a special vehicle and the data gone over by a person to highlight specific attributes of the road. Traffic lights are specifically located so the car knows where to look for the signal. Stationary objects on the side of the road are flagged as such. In effect the Google Car is restricted to roads that have been analyzed recently. There is a lot of human interaction with the maps to allow the cars to drive. Most of that 350,000 miles is Google employees commuting over the same roads.
without incident
Since the driver takes over in difficult situations that "without accident" stat is skewed.
There is one thing that Google never tells us; How many times the driver had to take over because the AI could not handle the situation. The Google car is not completely self driving as the driver takes over sometimes. It will not be self driving until the driver never has to touch the wheel. We are far from that.
If Uber is so profitable for drivers then why are some Uber drivers striking over wages/working conditions?
Are self driving cars the future of transportation? Yes. The only question is how far in the future. Current technology can do many of the tasks of driving a car very well. Lane following is a good example of that. They also do many tasks very poorly. Differentiating someone waving hello from someone trying to warn you of danger is an example. To do the more complex tasks requires great leaps in AI. When will these advances happen? I think it will take at least a few decades. Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? In this case 80% of the challenges can be solved with 20% of the effort. That last 20% is going to take 80% of the effort.
If you hire a guy to keep building fences for the foreseeable future he is an employee and not a contractor. Building a single fence is a discrete job. It has a definable start and end. When the job is over the contract is over. Driving for Uber is indeterminate as it has not defined end.
The quote about tools is incomplete. Here is the rest of it.
However, it is recognized that some employers require employees to provide their own tools or vehicles.
You completely ignore the fact that Uber controls who they pick up. Uber drivers are not allowed to work for Lyft while working for Uber and are not allowed to pick up street fares.
A driver who is in his vehicle 10 hours a day five days a week picking up only Uber dispatched calls and who's only source of income is Uber is an Uber employee. Are all Uber drivers employees? Probably not. Are some Uber drivers Uber employees? Definitely.
Uber does not want them designated as employees as they would have to give them things like holiday pay, minimum wage, EI payments, etc.
Portmout, NH sa one Uber driver. The taxi business in a town of 20,000 is very different that in a city of 20,000,000.
Take a look at this article. While many points are driver issues there are a significant number that are company issues that the CEO is responsible for. Some of those are "surge pricing", cancelling fares on competitors, high fees/low fares, poor background checks, privacy issues, muck raking journalists, etc.
Taxis in most cities are oligopolies in that the business is controlled by a few companies. The reason oligopolies are created is that they are compensation for requirements put on them by the government. Here are a few examples of what taxi companies are required to do or have that Uber is not.
1. Commercial licenses for drivers.
2. Minimum number of cars on the road
3. Vehicle inspections
4. Insurance requirements.
5. Minimum wage for drivers
6. Minimum number of handicap accessible vehicles.
7. Requirement to pick up anyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
8. Set rate fares
9. Background checks
10. Accountability for drivers' actions (Uber just throws their hands in the air and says "they are a contractor I have no control" while taxi companies get fined)
11. Governance by a taxi board who decides on fines for poor service.
The laws for taxis have grown through the years and no jurisdiction in their right mind would want to go back to the days of no taxi regulations.
If Uber is allowed to flourish they may drive conventional taxis out of business. When the fad of driving for Uber fades we will be in a much worse situation.
I believe with Uber a driver can refuse a job.
But they can not take other fares than from Uber.
Uber drivers own their own car, or lease it from a third party.
They also use Uber servers and software to receive dispatches.
Uber drives get paid per job.
So does anyone doing commissioned sales.
It is a grey area and depends on how one looks at it.
Tesla is actually following or fighting the dealership laws. They do not have dealerships in States that do not allow them. Another difference is scale. Tesla may have one dealership in a city while Uber could have hundreds of drivers.
The problem wasn't the identity check,
The problem was that the driver provided a false criminal records check and Uber did not verify it's authenticity. It is weel know that many criminal records checks are forged in India. Had they done the check they would have found it false and not allowed him to drive.
Control – Is the person under the direction and control of another regarding the time, place, and way in which the work is done?
Uber drivers can only pick up passengers through the Uber system. They have to follow Uber rules of conduct. Check.
Ownership of tools – Does the person use tools, space, supplies and equipment owned by someone else? If so, this would indicate an employment relationship.
Uber drivers must use uber apps and Uber servers to communicate get fares. Check
An Uber driver is much closer to a employee paid on commission than a contractor.
So you didn't even read the headline of the article
Deploying Solar In California's Urban Areas Could Meet Demand Five Times Over
but are still commenting on it. Small amounts of solar are easy to integrate into the grid but large amounts cause issues. In this case their "study" was a running a few equations to come up with a number that makes solar look good. They fail to go any further than "how much can we produce?" and ignore the issue of when we need the electricity.
More than 5% pumped storage are not needed.
Germany alone has like 25 pumped storage plants (only 2 listed in that article) and we are also in the 20GW and something like 400GWh range.
Where do these numbers come from? Are they based on a day, week, month or year?
Here is some real data for germany. Lets take January (pg 89). Pumped storage production per week = 0.6TWhrs. Total production per week = 43.5TWhrs. Therefore pumped storage contributed 1.4% to weekly production. 1.4% is almost insignificant.
Sorry but actual data refutes your assumption. Take a look at this chart. The capitol, operations and maintenance costs for coal make up $64.20 of the $95.60 cost of 1MWhr of electricity. That makes fixed costs 67% of total costs. I would say that 67% is very relevant.
Usefulness above profit.
Paid for by whom? Profit goes into new technology and new capacity.
Too bad Hawaii is not on the continent or part of the continental grid. You funny.
technology practical for mass-producing common products
That sounds like high production runs to me.
Where electricity is always priced at market equilibrium, all electricity is consumed and therefore "needed" by some definition of the word.
That is completely untrue. There are not people waiting around for prices to go down to use electricity.
people consume more electricity at that time because it's cheap (perhaps to cook dinner or do laundry)
Most people cook when they need to and do laundry when they have time. The price of electricity has nothing to do with it.
The report hinted at this solution: "The resource mix would also benefit from...demand side response capabilities to help meet real-time system conditions."
Good selective quoting. You missed the " energy storage capabilities and" which I am talking about. Demand side response is only part of the solution storage is another.
No, you park it and charge it.
There are a very limited number of charging stations available and new ones are expensive to install.
You seem to think that because solar doesn't instantly solve every single problem that it's some sort of rubbish nonsense fad which deserves scorn.
No, I think that articles concentrating only on production numbers for solar hide the issues involved with utilizing solar. Solar + storage is a solution but because solar production is so sexy, storage is falling behind. They also rarely add the cost of storage into the solar costs and therefore skew any comparison with conventional production.