And why exactly does the US think Dotcom doesn't have the right to defend himself?
He does have that right which he can exercise by coming to the US and presenting himself for trial. He does not have the right to select which parts of the legal system to defend himself against.
Only people who are fugitives have extradition preceding lodged against them. Therefore since Dotcom has extradition preceding against him he is is a fugitive. All the extradition preceding do is determine if the country that the fugitive is hiding in agrees that the charges are valid. It does not change the fact that he is a fugitive. If he gets spotted in the US before the statute of limitations runs out he will be arrested.
It is interesting that Dotcom wants to use the US legal system to get his assets back but not stand up to the charges against him. You can't just pick which parts of the legal system to use. It is an all or nothing thing.
basically the same as saying that appealing a conviction is a subtype of prison escape attempt.
No, Appealing a conviction is a legal measure to released from detention while an escape attempt is an illegal measure to release oneself from detention. See the difference.
Astroturfing; Paying people/companies to make statements they do not believe to support a cause.
Not Astroturfing; Convincing someone you view is correct and providing a venue to display these actual honest views.
Labeling something astroturfing does not mean it really is astroturfing. Why shouldn't a company be able to show statements made by people who are not paid to make them? The environmental lobby does it all the time.
“I worry about her whole approach,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, who is the chairman of a subcommittee that on Monday scheduled a hearing on the incident for next week. “I do question the director’s leadership. This is a place where we can never, ever make a mistake.”
This just shows how little Representative Jason Chaffetz actually knows about personal security. Security Agents are human and will make mistakes. Security systems are designed to take that into consideration by designing security in layers. One or more layers may be breached due to mistakes but unless the person being secured is harmed then the system worked. Lets look at what happened. 1. He climbed the fence. While a security layer it is designed to deter entry not prevent entry. Layer worked as designed. 2. He ran across the lawn and was seen by a security agent who sounded the alarm. Security layer worked as designed. 3. He opened the door. Layer failed due to alarm being muted. 4. He ran past startled security guard. Layer failed due to alarm being muted. 5. He ran up some stairs and was tackled by counter assault agent. Security layer successful.
There were probably a few more security layers between that point and the President. The only mistakes I see are the alarm being muted and the door not being automatically locked by the alarm. Would you rather have snipers shooting anyone who climbs over the fence?
Personal security everywhere has a few conflicting objectives. - Protect the person from physical threats - Do not appear intimidating to the general public - React quickly to perceived threats - Do not overreact to perceived threats Sure you could put a concrete wall around the White House and shoot anyone who climbed over but that would be very bad.
This incident has been blown way out of proportion. Lets look at what really happened. 1. I guy jumps a fence. 2. He runs across the lawn. He was seen at this point and an alarm was triggered (the problem is that the alarm was muted for some reason) 3. He enters an unlocked door (Which would have been locked had the alarm sounded). 4. He runs past a startled security guard (The one who would have locked the door if the alarm had sounded). 5. He runs up the stairs and across a long room. 6. He is tackled by a counterassault agent. The only people he encountered were security personnel and he did not damage anything and harmed no one.
Lets look at what contributed to the incident. 1. He was not shot as he had no visible weapons. 2. The door to remain unlocked because the alarm was muted. The article claims that is was muted on the orders of the Usher's office 3. The President was in the process of leaving the building. During movement security is concentrated around the president as that is when he is most vulnerable. That left the front lawn less protected as there was less there to protect.
How to fix the issue? 1. Never mute the alarms 2. Connect the front door lock to the alarm so it locks when the alarm goes off. Those are simple solutions to a small problem.
Mr Gonzalez is a Iraq War veteran with mental health issue. Though he had a knife on him he never brandished it and no one knew of it's existence until he was arrested. What do you think the comments would have been if it turned out that an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD was shot dead while trying to enter the White House? So the Secret Service has to choose between being damned for letting someone into an an empty area of the White House or damned for shooting an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD. You choose.
Perhaps Congress could start by dissolving the enivronment that has caused so many people to want to do antisocial things
Between 2000 and now there have been 14 "intruders" at the White House. Only one of which actually broke into the building. These intruders include a toddler who squeezed through the fence and a couple who crashed a Sate dinner. That is an average of less than one per year who had antisocial intent. From a population of 360 million less than one per year is not many.
I hope I live long enough to see "the grid" become just another 20th century artifact.
Take a look at Manhattan and tell me how it would survive without a grid to bring power to it. Off the grid is OK for single family dwellings in the suburbs or country but is impossible in urban areas.
Completely off the grid customers are not the problem. Sure it is relatively easy for a single family dwelling on a reasonable sized plot of land to go off the grid but that will never make up more than a small percentage. Most multifamily dwellings, offices, retail, business, industry, etc will never go off grid. Can you show me how a 40 story office building will ever be off the grid? All that customers going off the grid will do is reduce the need for building new plants to meet increased demand due to the use of electric cars by people who have no other choice but to be on the grid.
What they are concerned with are the partially off the grid customers. They are the ones that do not use grid power most of the time but occasionally need to use grid power when their system does not produce enough to meet demand. The problem is that the grid still needs to maintain and operate the generation facilities to meet demand of the partially off the grid consumers even if they do not use that power. This leads to much higher fixed costs per unit produced and much higher costs to people on the grid. This leaves those people who have no choice but to be on the grid holding the bag.
It's why there are already places where it's illegal to be off the grid.
I found a fewarticles where not being connected to city water is illegal and/or the building size does not meet code but I have found none where someone was forced to connect to the power grid.
Lets use your numbers. A high daytime rate that where a unit of daytime power pays for four units of nigh time power. Lets put some numbers in this. Say a unit of daytime power is priced at $16. The costs for that power is $8 in variable costs and $.50 in fixed costs. Nighttime power is sold at $4 and the costs are $2 variable costs and $.50 fixed costs. So the profit on daytime power is 16-8-.5 = $7.50. The profit on night time power is 4-2-.5 = $1.50. Profit on daytime power is 5 times that of night time power. Now lets look at two scenarios;
Without solar Four units of power would have been sold to the would be solar producer for a profit of $6 and one unit of day solar would have been sold for a profit of $7.50 for a total profit of $13.50.
With Solar The electricity company would have sold one unit of day power for an income of $16. The electric company swaps one unit of day power for four units of night power. There is no income from that transaction and the cost of producing the four units of night power. The production costs of the night power is the variable costs + fixed costs. Lets look at fixed costs. Fixed costs per unit is calculated by dividing the total fixed costs by the number of units sold. Say the use of day solar reduced the electric company's production needs by 20%. That would mean that fixed costs would be spread over 80% of the units. Therefore the new fixed costs would be $0.50/.8= $0.625. So the cost of producing 4 night time units would be (2(variable costs) + 0.625(fixed costs)) *4 = 10.5. Therefore the profit for those transactions is $16.00 - $10.50 = $5.50.
So so by allowing a day solar producer to swap day power for night power reduced the profit to the electricity company from $13.50 to $5.50 a drop of 59%. The issues that cause this are as follows; 1. The company looses all profit from the night time power that would have been sold to the day solar supplier. 2. The costs of producing the four units of night time power may be more than the costs of producing one unit of daytime power. 3. Reduced production can have a significant impact on the fixed costs for producing a unit of power whether day or night. I know profit may seem to be a bad word but that profit goes to pay dividends to retires and to invest in new infrastructure to support growing demand.
Note: I put the variable costs for daytime quite high at 4 times the day costs. It even gets worse if the costs for day power is less. For example if daytime production costs were twice night time variable costs the profit would drop from $17.50 to $5.50 or 68.5%.
This would be a great tool for getting a medic to an injured person in rugged terrain.
As long as the following conditions exist; 1. There is sufficient open flat ground for the rather large machine to land. 2. The machine has the weight capacity to to carry the operator and all life saving equipment. 3. The "rugged terrain" is within 15 km of the station. While the machine has range of 30km it has to get back to the station. Sure one could truck the machine closer to the accident but then a helicopter would probably be faster.
Why point out that worst case in january you only get X... that is a no brainer.
Because too many people only look at June when figuring out capacity
There are plenty of days in January where the sun contributed a huge amount of _power_ (W) not energy (Wh), no idea why you not see them.
Point them out on the document I linked. Take a look at page 56. There is no place where solar produced 10%, let alone 50% of the electricity.
That does not change the fact that one of the first January days (before 7th) of the resent years had the highest solar production of a January day ever.
That is a meaningless fact. Sure it is the highest but it still is less than 10% of generation. Being slightly higher than the lowest is not hard.
In terms of _power_ about 50% of power was produced during peak times by the sun.
Absolutly false. Only in the months of May, June and July does that happen. Look at the document I linked. That is real data. Show me where in October to April where solar production was over 50%.
You're paying one way or the other regardless, either you pay 50 euros for 1 MWh + 100 extra euros
Where are these numbers coming from? A MWh of electricity in Germany is 291.80Euro. Also, removing coal may triple the cost of electricity. So using your numbers the difference would be 391.80Euro with coal and 583.60 Euro of an extra cost of 191.80 Euro. If it tripped the extra cost would be 483.60Euro more expensive to get rid of coal.
There's no sensible metric by which total costs of coal being more expensive are a benefit. The only reason it remains that way is because of politicians fear of upsetting vested interests and corporate lobbying by the fossil fuel industries.
You have not shown that the total cost of coal is more than the total cost of green energy. If we stopped using coal today what would happen to the millions of coal miners and all the people involved in shipping coal to where it is burned? The reason people an Appalachia work in the mines is that it is the only jobs available.
If this i such a good idea then why are vanpools that have been around for decades not taking over?
Uber buys a couple of their own vans (they got tons of cash) and hires fulltime drivers for some of their high volume routes.
A couple of vans would only cover a very few routes. Di you really think an hour or two between pickups is viable? Secondly it would completely shed Uber's fatasy of "ride share". Being picked up by a company owned vehicle with a company paid driver is no no way "ride sharing". Therefore Uber would have to comply with the same rules as taxis. It also adds employees to Uber and employees are expensive.
It's viable from the start and the start state isn't much different from what they're doing now.
Sorry but company owned, company driven buses on semi-set routes is very different than a dispatch service which is what they are right now.
That would be interesting but not what Uber/Lyft is doing. Uber works because there is no initial investment in vehicles. The vehicles are already owned by the drivers. The issue with your idea is that it takes a lot of capitol to buy vehicles and pay drivers until the service catches on. Services like this are in a catch 22 situation. Not enough people use the service because there are not enough vehicles on the road. There are not enough vehicles on the road because not enough people are using the system.
it's something the system described in the article could grow into organically
Things grow when there is an excess. For quite a while a service like this will be bleeding money. If you don't have enough money to get over that initial loss period the the service dies.
The 12% you are talking about is the panel efficiency and is already factored into the rated capacity of the panel. Basically the ratio of the output energy to the incoming light energy. That is used to calculate the rated capacity of a panel. Rated capacity is based on the following incoming base;
STC specifies a temperature of 25 C and an irradiance of 1000 W/m2 with an air mass 1.5 (AM1.5) spectrum.
So your 10W/ft2 would be 107.6W/m2 making it 107.6/1000= 10.7% efficient.
The problem is that the sun is rarely shines at a temperature of 25 C and an irradiance of 1000 W/m2 with an air mass 1.5 (AM1.5) spectrum. With less irradiance there is less power output. You will rarely ever get the rated output from a BV panel. If you take the actual output and divide it by the rated capacity you get the usable percentage of the rated capacity for the area. That number will tell you how much PV area that is requires for a desired output in a specific area.
Let's try that again. Germany = 1000 - 1400 kWh/m2-yr (go with 1200)
Where do these numbers come from? Your square meter of panel will at most produce 107.6 W of power. To produce 1200kWh it would take 1,200,000/107.6 = 11152 hours. Since there are 365 days in the year the panel would need to produce for 11152/365 = 30.55 hours per day. Sorry but your numbers are incorrect. Even at 100% of rated power one square meter would produce on average 107.6 * 365 days * 12 hours of light per day = 471 KWh/m2. That is the rated capacity and not the actual capacity(see above).
All the figures you used are either incorrect or theoretical. I used actual output vs installed capacity to calculate the installed capacity to produce the actual desired output. I will go over it in detail and I will even remove heating from the equation. The rated output of German PV installed solar capacity is 38.124 GW. In winter the sun shines at a sufficient height for maximum output for about 5 hours/day. There are 31 days in January. Therefore the rated output capacity would be 38.124 * 5 * 31 = 5.9TWhrs. In January Germany actually produced 0.8TWhrs. That means that their actual production was 0.8/5.9 = 13.5%. Using your a rated capacity of 10W/ft2 and the factor of 13.5 you get an actual capacity of 1.35W/ft2. A German home uses 3,612KWh/yr or about 10,000wh/day. 10,000/1.35/5years=1,481 square feet or 137.59m2. That is about 100 3ftx5ft panels.
These vehicles for hire are typically smaller than buses and usually take passengers on a fixed or semi-fixed route without timetables, but instead departing when all seats are filled.
Uber/Lyft vehicles do not have fixed or semi-fixed routs. They do not pick up multiple fairs at a time. They do get dispatched to a specific location, pick up a specific person or persons, and take them to another specific location by the shortest route. They do exactly the same thing that a taxi does.
I never said it couldn't produce it. I just said it is expensive and produces it in the wrong place at the wrong time. Producing loads of electricity in the Sahara at noon does not help people in Norway at midnight.
No one in his sane mind will use solar energy in the north to power a country.
I guess Germany and Denmark are insane as they are investing heavily in solar. Also many posters on this site must me insane as they talk about putting solar panels on ever roof in Denmark.
So when I say actual costs, I mean actual costs, not the up front direct costs on paper you've quoted- those have no relevance to the actual in practice cost of using coal as an energy source.
I think the ability to buy electricity at a reasonable cost is very relevant. Yes, some people will die sooner and have higher health costs but even more will die if we price electricity out of reach and the economy collapses.
Slashdot Mirror
And why exactly does the US think Dotcom doesn't have the right to defend himself?
He does have that right which he can exercise by coming to the US and presenting himself for trial. He does not have the right to select which parts of the legal system to defend himself against.
Only people who are fugitives have extradition preceding lodged against them. Therefore since Dotcom has extradition preceding against him he is is a fugitive. All the extradition preceding do is determine if the country that the fugitive is hiding in agrees that the charges are valid. It does not change the fact that he is a fugitive. If he gets spotted in the US before the statute of limitations runs out he will be arrested.
It is interesting that Dotcom wants to use the US legal system to get his assets back but not stand up to the charges against him. You can't just pick which parts of the legal system to use. It is an all or nothing thing.
basically the same as saying that appealing a conviction is a subtype of prison escape attempt.
No, Appealing a conviction is a legal measure to released from detention while an escape attempt is an illegal measure to release oneself from detention. See the difference.
Astroturfing;
Paying people/companies to make statements they do not believe to support a cause.
Not Astroturfing;
Convincing someone you view is correct and providing a venue to display these actual honest views.
Labeling something astroturfing does not mean it really is astroturfing. Why shouldn't a company be able to show statements made by people who are not paid to make them? The environmental lobby does it all the time.
WHY IT ISN'T THE DEFAULT - is anyone's guess.
Simple answer: People type poroly and have speling difficulties.
Do you really think the 10% of search queries that go through Yahoo will have much if any effect on Firefox use? I doubt it.
I love this quote from this article;
“I worry about her whole approach,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, who is the chairman of a subcommittee that on Monday scheduled a hearing on the incident for next week. “I do question the director’s leadership. This is a place where we can never, ever make a mistake.”
This just shows how little Representative Jason Chaffetz actually knows about personal security. Security Agents are human and will make mistakes. Security systems are designed to take that into consideration by designing security in layers. One or more layers may be breached due to mistakes but unless the person being secured is harmed then the system worked. Lets look at what happened.
1. He climbed the fence. While a security layer it is designed to deter entry not prevent entry. Layer worked as designed.
2. He ran across the lawn and was seen by a security agent who sounded the alarm. Security layer worked as designed.
3. He opened the door. Layer failed due to alarm being muted.
4. He ran past startled security guard. Layer failed due to alarm being muted.
5. He ran up some stairs and was tackled by counter assault agent. Security layer successful.
There were probably a few more security layers between that point and the President. The only mistakes I see are the alarm being muted and the door not being automatically locked by the alarm. Would you rather have snipers shooting anyone who climbs over the fence?
Personal security everywhere has a few conflicting objectives.
- Protect the person from physical threats
- Do not appear intimidating to the general public
- React quickly to perceived threats
- Do not overreact to perceived threats
Sure you could put a concrete wall around the White House and shoot anyone who climbed over but that would be very bad.
This incident has been blown way out of proportion. Lets look at what really happened.
1. I guy jumps a fence.
2. He runs across the lawn. He was seen at this point and an alarm was triggered (the problem is that the alarm was muted for some reason)
3. He enters an unlocked door (Which would have been locked had the alarm sounded).
4. He runs past a startled security guard (The one who would have locked the door if the alarm had sounded).
5. He runs up the stairs and across a long room.
6. He is tackled by a counterassault agent.
The only people he encountered were security personnel and he did not damage anything and harmed no one.
Lets look at what contributed to the incident.
1. He was not shot as he had no visible weapons.
2. The door to remain unlocked because the alarm was muted. The article claims that is was muted on the orders of the Usher's office
3. The President was in the process of leaving the building. During movement security is concentrated around the president as that is when he is most vulnerable. That left the front lawn less protected as there was less there to protect.
How to fix the issue?
1. Never mute the alarms
2. Connect the front door lock to the alarm so it locks when the alarm goes off.
Those are simple solutions to a small problem.
Mr Gonzalez is a Iraq War veteran with mental health issue. Though he had a knife on him he never brandished it and no one knew of it's existence until he was arrested. What do you think the comments would have been if it turned out that an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD was shot dead while trying to enter the White House? So the Secret Service has to choose between being damned for letting someone into an an empty area of the White House or damned for shooting an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD. You choose.
Perhaps Congress could start by dissolving the enivronment that has caused so many people to want to do antisocial things
Between 2000 and now there have been 14 "intruders" at the White House. Only one of which actually broke into the building. These intruders include a toddler who squeezed through the fence and a couple who crashed a Sate dinner. That is an average of less than one per year who had antisocial intent. From a population of 360 million less than one per year is not many.
I hope I live long enough to see "the grid" become just another 20th century artifact.
Take a look at Manhattan and tell me how it would survive without a grid to bring power to it. Off the grid is OK for single family dwellings in the suburbs or country but is impossible in urban areas.
Completely off the grid customers are not the problem. Sure it is relatively easy for a single family dwelling on a reasonable sized plot of land to go off the grid but that will never make up more than a small percentage. Most multifamily dwellings, offices, retail, business, industry, etc will never go off grid. Can you show me how a 40 story office building will ever be off the grid? All that customers going off the grid will do is reduce the need for building new plants to meet increased demand due to the use of electric cars by people who have no other choice but to be on the grid.
What they are concerned with are the partially off the grid customers. They are the ones that do not use grid power most of the time but occasionally need to use grid power when their system does not produce enough to meet demand. The problem is that the grid still needs to maintain and operate the generation facilities to meet demand of the partially off the grid consumers even if they do not use that power. This leads to much higher fixed costs per unit produced and much higher costs to people on the grid. This leaves those people who have no choice but to be on the grid holding the bag.
It's why there are already places where it's illegal to be off the grid.
I found a few articles where not being connected to city water is illegal and/or the building size does not meet code but I have found none where someone was forced to connect to the power grid.
Lets use your numbers. A high daytime rate that where a unit of daytime power pays for four units of nigh time power. Lets put some numbers in this. Say a unit of daytime power is priced at $16. The costs for that power is $8 in variable costs and $.50 in fixed costs. Nighttime power is sold at $4 and the costs are $2 variable costs and $.50 fixed costs. So the profit on daytime power is 16-8-.5 = $7.50. The profit on night time power is 4-2-.5 = $1.50. Profit on daytime power is 5 times that of night time power.
Now lets look at two scenarios;
Without solar
Four units of power would have been sold to the would be solar producer for a profit of $6 and one unit of day solar would have been sold for a profit of $7.50 for a total profit of $13.50.
With Solar
The electricity company would have sold one unit of day power for an income of $16. The electric company swaps one unit of day power for four units of night power. There is no income from that transaction and the cost of producing the four units of night power. The production costs of the night power is the variable costs + fixed costs. Lets look at fixed costs. Fixed costs per unit is calculated by dividing the total fixed costs by the number of units sold. Say the use of day solar reduced the electric company's production needs by 20%. That would mean that fixed costs would be spread over 80% of the units. Therefore the new fixed costs would be $0.50/.8= $0.625. So the cost of producing 4 night time units would be (2(variable costs) + 0.625(fixed costs)) *4 = 10.5. Therefore the profit for those transactions is $16.00 - $10.50 = $5.50.
So so by allowing a day solar producer to swap day power for night power reduced the profit to the electricity company from $13.50 to $5.50 a drop of 59%. The issues that cause this are as follows;
1. The company looses all profit from the night time power that would have been sold to the day solar supplier.
2. The costs of producing the four units of night time power may be more than the costs of producing one unit of daytime power.
3. Reduced production can have a significant impact on the fixed costs for producing a unit of power whether day or night.
I know profit may seem to be a bad word but that profit goes to pay dividends to retires and to invest in new infrastructure to support growing demand.
Note: I put the variable costs for daytime quite high at 4 times the day costs. It even gets worse if the costs for day power is less. For example if daytime production costs were twice night time variable costs the profit would drop from $17.50 to $5.50 or 68.5%.
This would be a great tool for getting a medic to an injured person in rugged terrain.
As long as the following conditions exist;
1. There is sufficient open flat ground for the rather large machine to land.
2. The machine has the weight capacity to to carry the operator and all life saving equipment.
3. The "rugged terrain" is within 15 km of the station. While the machine has range of 30km it has to get back to the station. Sure one could truck the machine closer to the accident but then a helicopter would probably be faster.
Why point out that worst case in january you only get X ... that is a no brainer.
Because too many people only look at June when figuring out capacity
There are plenty of days in January where the sun contributed a huge amount of _power_ (W) not energy (Wh), no idea why you not see them.
Point them out on the document I linked. Take a look at page 56. There is no place where solar produced 10%, let alone 50% of the electricity.
That does not change the fact that one of the first January days (before 7th) of the resent years had the highest solar production of a January day ever.
That is a meaningless fact. Sure it is the highest but it still is less than 10% of generation. Being slightly higher than the lowest is not hard.
In terms of _power_ about 50% of power was produced during peak times by the sun.
Absolutly false. Only in the months of May, June and July does that happen. Look at the document I linked. That is real data. Show me where in October to April where solar production was over 50%.
You're paying one way or the other regardless, either you pay 50 euros for 1 MWh + 100 extra euros
Where are these numbers coming from? A MWh of electricity in Germany is 291.80Euro. Also, removing coal may triple the cost of electricity. So using your numbers the difference would be 391.80Euro with coal and 583.60 Euro of an extra cost of 191.80 Euro. If it tripped the extra cost would be 483.60Euro more expensive to get rid of coal.
There's no sensible metric by which total costs of coal being more expensive are a benefit. The only reason it remains that way is because of politicians fear of upsetting vested interests and corporate lobbying by the fossil fuel industries.
You have not shown that the total cost of coal is more than the total cost of green energy. If we stopped using coal today what would happen to the millions of coal miners and all the people involved in shipping coal to where it is burned? The reason people an Appalachia work in the mines is that it is the only jobs available.
If this i such a good idea then why are vanpools that have been around for decades not taking over?
Uber buys a couple of their own vans (they got tons of cash) and hires fulltime drivers for some of their high volume routes.
A couple of vans would only cover a very few routes. Di you really think an hour or two between pickups is viable? Secondly it would completely shed Uber's fatasy of "ride share". Being picked up by a company owned vehicle with a company paid driver is no no way "ride sharing". Therefore Uber would have to comply with the same rules as taxis. It also adds employees to Uber and employees are expensive.
It's viable from the start and the start state isn't much different from what they're doing now.
Sorry but company owned, company driven buses on semi-set routes is very different than a dispatch service which is what they are right now.
That would be interesting but not what Uber/Lyft is doing. Uber works because there is no initial investment in vehicles. The vehicles are already owned by the drivers. The issue with your idea is that it takes a lot of capitol to buy vehicles and pay drivers until the service catches on. Services like this are in a catch 22 situation. Not enough people use the service because there are not enough vehicles on the road. There are not enough vehicles on the road because not enough people are using the system.
it's something the system described in the article could grow into organically
Things grow when there is an excess. For quite a while a service like this will be bleeding money. If you don't have enough money to get over that initial loss period the the service dies.
You double counted efficiency.
The 12% you are talking about is the panel efficiency and is already factored into the rated capacity of the panel. Basically the ratio of the output energy to the incoming light energy. That is used to calculate the rated capacity of a panel. Rated capacity is based on the following incoming base;
STC specifies a temperature of 25 C and an irradiance of 1000 W/m2 with an air mass 1.5 (AM1.5) spectrum.
So your 10W/ft2 would be 107.6W/m2 making it 107.6/1000= 10.7% efficient.
The problem is that the sun is rarely shines at a temperature of 25 C and an irradiance of 1000 W/m2 with an air mass 1.5 (AM1.5) spectrum. With less irradiance there is less power output. You will rarely ever get the rated output from a BV panel. If you take the actual output and divide it by the rated capacity you get the usable percentage of the rated capacity for the area. That number will tell you how much PV area that is requires for a desired output in a specific area.
Let's try that again. Germany = 1000 - 1400 kWh/m2-yr (go with 1200)
Where do these numbers come from? Your square meter of panel will at most produce 107.6 W of power. To produce 1200kWh it would take 1,200,000/107.6 = 11152 hours. Since there are 365 days in the year the panel would need to produce for 11152/365 = 30.55 hours per day. Sorry but your numbers are incorrect. Even at 100% of rated power one square meter would produce on average 107.6 * 365 days * 12 hours of light per day = 471 KWh/m2. That is the rated capacity and not the actual capacity(see above).
All the figures you used are either incorrect or theoretical. I used actual output vs installed capacity to calculate the installed capacity to produce the actual desired output.
I will go over it in detail and I will even remove heating from the equation.
The rated output of German PV installed solar capacity is 38.124 GW. In winter the sun shines at a sufficient height for maximum output for about 5 hours/day. There are 31 days in January. Therefore the rated output capacity would be 38.124 * 5 * 31 = 5.9TWhrs.
In January Germany actually produced 0.8TWhrs. That means that their actual production was 0.8/5.9 = 13.5%.
Using your a rated capacity of 10W/ft2 and the factor of 13.5 you get an actual capacity of 1.35W/ft2.
A German home uses 3,612KWh/yr or about 10,000wh/day.
10,000/1.35/5years=1,481 square feet or 137.59m2. That is about 100 3ftx5ft panels.
From the article you cited;
These vehicles for hire are typically smaller than buses and usually take passengers on a fixed or semi-fixed route without timetables, but instead departing when all seats are filled.
Uber/Lyft vehicles do not have fixed or semi-fixed routs. They do not pick up multiple fairs at a time. They do get dispatched to a specific location, pick up a specific person or persons, and take them to another specific location by the shortest route. They do exactly the same thing that a taxi does.
Can we please stop calling it "ride sharing"? It is no more ride sharing that a grocery store is "food sharing".
I never said it couldn't produce it. I just said it is expensive and produces it in the wrong place at the wrong time. Producing loads of electricity in the Sahara at noon does not help people in Norway at midnight.
Use Mandrill as a mail relay.
No one in his sane mind will use solar energy in the north to power a country.
I guess Germany and Denmark are insane as they are investing heavily in solar. Also many posters on this site must me insane as they talk about putting solar panels on ever roof in Denmark.
So when I say actual costs, I mean actual costs, not the up front direct costs on paper you've quoted- those have no relevance to the actual in practice cost of using coal as an energy source.
I think the ability to buy electricity at a reasonable cost is very relevant. Yes, some people will die sooner and have higher health costs but even more will die if we price electricity out of reach and the economy collapses.