Charlie Sheen although fallen far, at least used to be productive and Lohan and Spears did have to work their butts off for years.
But Paris and the Kardashians? Complete wastes of sperm.
Let's hope that will change but right now, and for the next 10 yrs or so, I don't think that usage is practical for a home owner.
If you ran a business out of your home that was even somewhat energy intensive, say an Internet cafe or restaurant, that would easily be worth it.
I'm sure they could be significantly, perhaps radically, improved if we started paying attention to them again.
Even stodgy old lead-acid has come a long way in the last 40 years. But given the renewed and growing interest in energy storage, I anticipate the next decade or two to be full of breakthrough in battery tech.
It's about getting your foot in the door. As a tech project manager, he'll be exposed to a variety of projects where his past experience may or may not be highly relevant.
If he's able to make a direct contribution on a significant project, he'll be noticed, trust me. If he ends up leading a team, the amount of code he gets to write is up to him.
Upper management won't care if the job gets done well.
And, speaking for myself, I'd rather be a tech proj mgr who dreams of being a coder than an ex-coder who's forced to become a paralegal - but that's me.
How about banding together, forming an Grumpy Old Geezers consultancy? Throw together a website, tout your years of experience and print up a few business cards. I'm not saying it'll be easy but there are possibilities for those with real skills.
Maybe even start a low-cost academy - teach the whippersnappers a thing or two.
With your experience, try technical project management, maybe in something related to healthcare.
No luck with any of the big consultancy firms, like Cap Gemini?
As of the end of 2011, it's now up to 3%, a 50% increase in only 1 year, despite the cuts in subsidies. It's safe to say that power was produced in daytime unless the Germans have found a way to trap solar rays at night and peak solar production usually matches well to demand, especially in the summer months.
Why not use Edison batteries? Robust as all heck, its relatively high cost would still be a small fraction of that of a solar or wind installation and it's rather poor charge retention shouldn't be a problem in this type of application.
But from a cost perspective, I guess the Isentropic gravel storage would be a clear winner, if it pans out.
The Sumitomo battery, if successful, would be a much cooler, safer version of the ZEBRA battery which powered vehicles over several million miles. Due to the thermal mass of the battery, even without insulation, it would take some time to cool down.
Also, for any rational design, a crash so bad that the battery burst and sprayed the passengers, would be doing so over their already cooling corpses.
I haven't looked into flow batteries for a while but I think the molten-salt, whether high or moderate temp probably has them beat on cost. Of course the ability to easily drain and replenish your depleted electrolyte is very attractive.
I would expect that the molten-salt battery would be great for city fleet vehicles, postal or delivery vans and even as a diesel-electric hybrid for long haul trucks.
They were a major producer prior to their invasion of Kuwait and were still managing 1.5 - 2 million barrels a day until the 2003 US invasion.
The north still has Kirkuk which, although mismanaged, could keep them going for 10 - 15 years, even if they doubled current production.
But it's been clear for years what a cock-up the Iraq war truly was. America has nothing to show for it - no oil, no peace, no strong ally in the region and at a cost that could have rebuilt every bit of the USA's crumbling infrastructure.
Not to mention, there's a good chance that conflict with Iran and possibly North Korea might become inevitable in the next few years
Iraq's proven reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia ( I'm discounting tar sands and kerogen deposits ), they were producing 2-2.5 million barrels/day before the war and the Bush administration used to claim there was sufficient oil to pay the war costs.
Google-funded research shows huge potential for enhanced geothermal and I've read about projects that aim to combine geothermal with rare earth refining.
But if you're ramping up nuclear to 40%, I guess there won't be huge need for geothermal. It's time to get past the fear of reprocessing; if terrorists want nukes, there's always Russia.
Not exactly. The anti-wind blowhards use it to mean that there must be a spinning reserve for every turbine out there because it'll abruptly stop spinning the second you look at it the wrong way.
The backup capacity limitation would apply to every form of generation; it's just that with wind turbines, you'd be potentially relying on it more often - but not all at once.
Also, I'm not clear as to whether peaker plants are included in the 20% backup or are separate.
I'm down with your mix - it seems there's no coal in your blend, which is just fine by me. But, it'll likely take several decades to get those percentages.
How do you feel about offshore or Great Lakes wind? I'm in favor but I get a lot of heat when I bring it up.
Okay, but that still means that if you can lose one ( or more ) supersized power plant, you should also be able to withstand the wide-area windless days, provided that the overall percentage provided by wind is below some manageable threshold.
I'm seen quite a few talks from different experts that state that up to 20% from wind alone, is currently doable.
Solar has a power profile that is typically opposite to wind but what are the chances of a very cloudy, windless day?
I do fully appreciate that large integration of intermittent sources is not a slamdunk but the 100% backup meme has to be stomped flat - it's never been true for a mixed, distributed grid and never will be.
I know that many large parts of the US grid is somewhat isolated but they too have mixed power generation and work is underway to tie some of the big ones together.
You took a wrong turn at one of the denier blogs. Back up and go away if being here upsets you. But having spent far too much time on several of the more prominent, supposed "skeptic" blogs, I can tell you that they have far more idiots, far more flamers and far more pseudoscience per poster / page view that Slashdot can hope for.
You seem to think that Slashdot should be a clone of WUWT. Sorry, it's not and it shouldn't be. And modding down is a way of filtering out the useless noise; it's not perfect but it works.
That 100% backup bullshit has to die - it's not true. There's plenty of spinning and backup reserve in most large energy markets. So long as the new generation you're adding is a small fraction of the total or of the available reserve, you DO NOT have to add 100% reserve generation.
When you build a 1 GW nuclear plant, do you add another 1GW of reserve onto the grid? If not, why? If something unexpected happens, you've lost ONE FREAKING GIGAWATT from a single source - you'd be a fucking idiot to not have it fully backed up, right?
So that means that every amount of power needs 100% backup and this is absolutely critical for the high-density plants like large nuke and coal because if they went offline, they could knock out the grid.
Indeed, as the Better Place taxi demo project ( which ran for a year) in Yokohama showed. I would like to see a big push to convert taxis and fleet vehicles to EVs which, as you pointed out, are never very far from home base even if they're racking up many miles.
And those vehicles with their near-constant running & stop-start behavior are likely more polluting than similar consumer vehicles and a larger contributor to smog in cities. Since they won't be consuming power when stationary and therefore no wear on the engine, a rapid conversion of these classes of vehicles would be a big win all around ( if not cost-prohibitive)
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That much I agree with; I was using it from the 1st release and it's Mandrake to me, nothing else.
Well said.
Charlie Sheen although fallen far, at least used to be productive and Lohan and Spears did have to work their butts off for years. But Paris and the Kardashians? Complete wastes of sperm.
Fracking fluid consists of nothing but clay? Then why the big list of secret proprietary ingredients?
Let's hope that will change but right now, and for the next 10 yrs or so, I don't think that usage is practical for a home owner.
If you ran a business out of your home that was even somewhat energy intensive, say an Internet cafe or restaurant, that would easily be worth it.
I'm sure they could be significantly, perhaps radically, improved if we started paying attention to them again. Even stodgy old lead-acid has come a long way in the last 40 years. But given the renewed and growing interest in energy storage, I anticipate the next decade or two to be full of breakthrough in battery tech.
It's about getting your foot in the door. As a tech project manager, he'll be exposed to a variety of projects where his past experience may or may not be highly relevant.
If he's able to make a direct contribution on a significant project, he'll be noticed, trust me. If he ends up leading a team, the amount of code he gets to write is up to him. Upper management won't care if the job gets done well.
And, speaking for myself, I'd rather be a tech proj mgr who dreams of being a coder than an ex-coder who's forced to become a paralegal - but that's me.
How about banding together, forming an Grumpy Old Geezers consultancy? Throw together a website, tout your years of experience and print up a few business cards. I'm not saying it'll be easy but there are possibilities for those with real skills. Maybe even start a low-cost academy - teach the whippersnappers a thing or two.
With your experience, try technical project management, maybe in something related to healthcare.
No luck with any of the big consultancy firms, like Cap Gemini?
4.2.2.2 is one I've used for a long time ( provided by Level 3 ) although from .1 to .6 works as well.
Here's the story behind it: http://www.tummy.com/Community/Articles/famous-dns-server/
As of the end of 2011, it's now up to 3%, a 50% increase in only 1 year, despite the cuts in subsidies. It's safe to say that power was produced in daytime unless the Germans have found a way to trap solar rays at night and peak solar production usually matches well to demand, especially in the summer months.
Why not use Edison batteries? Robust as all heck, its relatively high cost would still be a small fraction of that of a solar or wind installation and it's rather poor charge retention shouldn't be a problem in this type of application. But from a cost perspective, I guess the Isentropic gravel storage would be a clear winner, if it pans out.
Mr Chekhov, is that you? Stop messing around on the Internet and get back on course, please.
The Sumitomo battery, if successful, would be a much cooler, safer version of the ZEBRA battery which powered vehicles over several million miles. Due to the thermal mass of the battery, even without insulation, it would take some time to cool down.
Also, for any rational design, a crash so bad that the battery burst and sprayed the passengers, would be doing so over their already cooling corpses.
I haven't looked into flow batteries for a while but I think the molten-salt, whether high or moderate temp probably has them beat on cost.
Of course the ability to easily drain and replenish your depleted electrolyte is very attractive.
I would expect that the molten-salt battery would be great for city fleet vehicles, postal or delivery vans and even as a diesel-electric hybrid for long haul trucks.
They were a major producer prior to their invasion of Kuwait and were still managing 1.5 - 2 million barrels a day until the 2003 US invasion. The north still has Kirkuk which, although mismanaged, could keep them going for 10 - 15 years, even if they doubled current production. But it's been clear for years what a cock-up the Iraq war truly was. America has nothing to show for it - no oil, no peace, no strong ally in the region and at a cost that could have rebuilt every bit of the USA's crumbling infrastructure. Not to mention, there's a good chance that conflict with Iran and possibly North Korea might become inevitable in the next few years
Iraq's proven reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia ( I'm discounting tar sands and kerogen deposits ), they were producing 2-2.5 million barrels/day before the war and the Bush administration used to claim there was sufficient oil to pay the war costs.
Google-funded research shows huge potential for enhanced geothermal and I've read about projects that aim to combine geothermal with rare earth refining. But if you're ramping up nuclear to 40%, I guess there won't be huge need for geothermal. It's time to get past the fear of reprocessing; if terrorists want nukes, there's always Russia.
Not exactly. The anti-wind blowhards use it to mean that there must be a spinning reserve for every turbine out there because it'll abruptly stop spinning the second you look at it the wrong way. The backup capacity limitation would apply to every form of generation; it's just that with wind turbines, you'd be potentially relying on it more often - but not all at once. Also, I'm not clear as to whether peaker plants are included in the 20% backup or are separate. I'm down with your mix - it seems there's no coal in your blend, which is just fine by me. But, it'll likely take several decades to get those percentages. How do you feel about offshore or Great Lakes wind? I'm in favor but I get a lot of heat when I bring it up.
Okay, but that still means that if you can lose one ( or more ) supersized power plant, you should also be able to withstand the wide-area windless days, provided that the overall percentage provided by wind is below some manageable threshold. I'm seen quite a few talks from different experts that state that up to 20% from wind alone, is currently doable. Solar has a power profile that is typically opposite to wind but what are the chances of a very cloudy, windless day? I do fully appreciate that large integration of intermittent sources is not a slamdunk but the 100% backup meme has to be stomped flat - it's never been true for a mixed, distributed grid and never will be. I know that many large parts of the US grid is somewhat isolated but they too have mixed power generation and work is underway to tie some of the big ones together.
You took a wrong turn at one of the denier blogs. Back up and go away if being here upsets you. But having spent far too much time on several of the more prominent, supposed "skeptic" blogs, I can tell you that they have far more idiots, far more flamers and far more pseudoscience per poster / page view that Slashdot can hope for.
You seem to think that Slashdot should be a clone of WUWT. Sorry, it's not and it shouldn't be. And modding down is a way of filtering out the useless noise; it's not perfect but it works.
Greenman3610 (Peter Sinclair) is pretty awesome and Potholer54 (Peter Hadfield), a science journalist of long experience, is amazing as well.
In some areas, deforestation of the lower slopes can lead to a shrinking of upper ice - a likely cause of the reduction of the glaciers on Kilimanjaro
That 100% backup bullshit has to die - it's not true. There's plenty of spinning and backup reserve in most large energy markets. So long as the new generation you're adding is a small fraction of the total or of the available reserve, you DO NOT have to add 100% reserve generation. When you build a 1 GW nuclear plant, do you add another 1GW of reserve onto the grid? If not, why? If something unexpected happens, you've lost ONE FREAKING GIGAWATT from a single source - you'd be a fucking idiot to not have it fully backed up, right? So that means that every amount of power needs 100% backup and this is absolutely critical for the high-density plants like large nuke and coal because if they went offline, they could knock out the grid.
Indeed, as the Better Place taxi demo project ( which ran for a year) in Yokohama showed. I would like to see a big push to convert taxis and fleet vehicles to EVs which, as you pointed out, are never very far from home base even if they're racking up many miles. And those vehicles with their near-constant running & stop-start behavior are likely more polluting than similar consumer vehicles and a larger contributor to smog in cities. Since they won't be consuming power when stationary and therefore no wear on the engine, a rapid conversion of these classes of vehicles would be a big win all around ( if not cost-prohibitive)