Your core assumption about me. I'm not trying to make solar look bad. Don't you get it? I like solar, I just don't have blinders on that it can be installed in vast amounts without adjustments elsewhere. That's ALL I've tried to say. As solar installs grow, the grid has to adjust. How the fuck is this supposed to be a 'stupid lie'?
If you disagree with that statement, explain why. I don't think you can.
If that's not enough wikipedia is a good starting point these days.
I don't think you're an engineer and I think you need to move past wikipedia. Because you obviously don't understand the issues.
Now I know you're not an engineer, despite what you said earlier. 1. You have yet to post anything of merit. 2. You ignore the citations of the studies I've shown 3. 10% of homes have solar power, per the citation 4. Which is HUGE in the scale of a power grid. Still a minority, yes, but something that must be planned for 4. Hawaii isn't exactly 'low density', though it's not high density either. 5. Solar installs are picking up in the state of Alaska; this is not small. 6. Again - you ignore the multiple studies I've posted that state adjustments will have to be made. 7. I never stated that it wouldn't make financial sense to do this stuff, just that it'd have to be done.
Yes, Hawaii is darn near perfect test case in the USA. As long as solar panels keep getting cheaper though, they'll make sense in more and more areas.
The plants had some place to ship it once in casks. The prospect of the local NPP becoming a waste storage site would of course cause screaming and yelling, even though that is exactly what they already are, but less safe. West Texas seems gung ho about it, now accepting "temporarily" the Los Alamos stuff that was headed to WIPP for now.
Given that spent reactor rods can be reprocessed into new reactor rods with a minor contribution of new material, and that the radioactivity of spent rods declines quite rapidly at first*, declining over time, I wonder if letting them sit for a century or so might reduce their radioactivity to the point that reprocessing is no where near as big of a deal as it would be for a 'fresh' rod.
*reactor rods are a composition of quite a few radioactive materials, some with half-lifes measured in the minutes, some measured in the decades, etc...
Your "argument" does not work if retail and industry are anywhere near the houses you describe which is why your pretence is very stupid.
Never been to the USA have you, good chap? Due to zoning laws there is a history of separating housing and industry as much as possible, generally with commercial stuck in between.
We have LOTS of housing where you have to go several miles to reach the nearest store.
Yes, there's lots of housing near commercial properties, but it's more like the border of a country than actually being 'common'.
So yes, there are commercial and residential properties on the same substation. But no where near the majority.
Then what exactly is your problem? Why are you stirring up fear with your "As long as you don't have so many people install solar that power flows in reverse through switching yards"
I don't know, maybe you need medication for your fear problem? "What's for dinner tonight?" "Ah! You're spreading fear about the security of the food supply!".
Look, 'concern' doesn't equal 'problem'. It means 'We have to address it, or it may become a problem'. A problem is something that has to be fixed NOW, or it'll cause damage.
Why can't you see that because the transistor was invented such a thing is not going to happen unless it is seen as a desirable thing by whoever controls the network?
Perhaps you can cite an article explaining why the transistor is such a magical device for an electrical grid?
Even before the transistor it was possible but a bit more expensive to do so may have actually required some modifications - but these days it's built in to existing equipment.
Considering we were still running one of Edison's DC electrical grids until 2k, I'm probably assuming that the grid is older than you assume.
You say upgrading the grid is no big deal, but when I say they have to upgrade the grid, I'm spreading fear.
The only downside here is less profits for electricity monopolies that have raised the local price of electricity to such a high level that it becomes financially viable for consumers to spend a lot of money for the capital cost of their own solar panels. It is capitalism in action.
What an interesting world outlook you have. Conspiracy theories all over the place. And here I was happy that the price of solar panels had dropped to the point that they're competitive with commercial power.
Keep that in mind when next time someone feeds you one of these utterly stupid political talking points.
I came to my conclusions WITHOUT having to listen to some political agency. They're a bunch of lying bastards anyways.
I came to the conclusions from my understanding of electricity, reading of the current situation from various sources, pricing out solar panels myself, looking at the rebates and such available, etc...
Of course, you need to keep in mind that my views are a lot less extreme than you seem to keep assuming. As such, stop viewing a comment like 'the sub-station needs to be upgraded' as a 'SOLAR POWER ISN'T FEASABLE!!!' rant, and that I'm actually saying something more like: "Hey, they gotta go in and replace that system that's been in place since 1902 with a modern one capable of bidirectional power". Or at least have an engineer look at the substation and certify it's good to go.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that a solar generating unit can't just be taken off the grid like any other unit when the desired capacity is reached. What did you think those very expensive controllers that come with mains connected solar panels do?
In what context do you mean 'taken off the grid'? If you mean that the power company can refuse to purchase the power being produced, that's true, but remember that homeowners are installing power in order to make money. They aren't going to appreciate being told 'no thank you'. As for the 'very expensive controllers', most aren't that expensive, and are designed to only take themselves offline if power shifts out of parameters. The NREL link shows that HECO wants solar systems that stay online through a higher amount of variance than is standard in order to limit how much standby generation they need.
Solar power is a bit like nuclear - It's generation cost is essentially zero, but the capital cost is so high that in order to justify using it you need to use pretty much every kwh it generates.
All of that should be very obvious once you know that there is zero threat of "overload" or whatever you have been imagining.
You know, maybe you should stop assuming what you think I know/think/imagine.
If we ever do get to the point where an area can supply your mythical 120% then that is actually very good news.
First, 120% isn't 'mythical', it's the HECO standard limit. Though I wonder what you think I meant by that 120% - I meant 120% of 'MDL' or 'Minimum Daytime Load'. Below 100%, as long as everything is operating normally, power will never go past the transfer station. Above it, it starts happening. Given that HECO has customers like Ron Hayashi, I don't think it'll take long before they're at 120% of MDL in areas.-
"Ron Hayashi, 61, this week had solar panels installed on his Oahu home, despite not having HECO approval to connect to the grid. The neighborhood where he lives already has solar capacity at 100 percent of the minimum daily load."
Now Ron is doing something interesting - he's installing a battery system that should theoretically allow him to actually load follow to some extent, rather than just supply. But he probably spent an extra $10k to do that. Me? I got a quote on solar today. $4k for a 1kw system, $10.5k for a 3kw. Keep in mind I'm in Alaska. The system would not be the smartest available. No power generation without a functioning grid and all that.
it becomes financially viable to put in some gear to move the excess across to the next substation,.
Which is precisely what I've been talking about doing... Your previous arguments have seemed to imply that nothing would need to be done.
I think they burn oil there so taking units off line means you can stop feeding them expensive fuel and get them up pretty quick when you need them later.
I KNOW they burn oil there. It's the primary reason their power is so expensive.
That's the only reason why windmills are in the mainstream of electricity generation at all - you need another 1.5MW so you connect another expensive and tiny windmill but the alternative is spending hours warming up 250MW of cheap coal capacity that devours fuel at a tremendous rate so at low demand costs a hell of a lot more per MW than a few little windmills.
Citation on this? Per the NREL study and others it seems the opposite - they utilize the power from solar & wind as primary sources and keep a 'spinning reserve' of various types of generator in case the solar/wind generators go offline for whatever reason.
The people living under it won't even notice unless they are getting paid for whatever they feed back into the local power network.
1. 953,207. Not a 'few thousand'. 2. As a small monopoly, HECO can't really have a world-wide impact. But it serves as a useful case study. 3. You have failed to address the technical problems listed in the links, ergo I still consider them a real-world problem, not 'invented'. Remember, equivalents to 'Nu-huh' don't count. 4. If you're an engineer who's worked with electrical systems, you should realize that powering up said generation capacity takes time, often an OOM slower than supply&demand can change at. A power supply that takes an hour to stand up isn't very useful when you need the power in 60 seconds. 5. The NREL study covers specific ways HECO wants any solar system installs to be set up, concerns about rolling standby power to cover fluxuations*, etc... If you don't think it points out concerns that I have, you're still making silly assumptions about my position(which is the definition of strawman): To restate yet again: I think there's nothing wrong with using solar power. However, as the deployment grows significant the power company/electrical grid MUST change the way they do business in order to cope. This includes altering their generation mix($$$), updating the grid to properly handle bidirectional power flow($$$), and changing their charging system to maintain cash flow in order to pay to maintain electrical infrastructure in areas that are now net neutral for electricity consumption.
*Some of which still needs to be built as solar installs expand.
Stop pretending to be too stupid to breath and take this seriously. It should be obvious that I was talking about the standard home install covering 100% of that home's net usage. IE they sell as much electricity to the grid as they purchase.
Also, at this point I'm going to say that attempting to argue that I don't realize that retail and industry exist is a strawman. It's not like I didn't address commercial(including retail) 3 times in that one post, and industry 4 times. Hell, I'm saying that they'd be putting panels up as well. I've already posted a picture of a retail site in Alaska with them, and a link to a manufacturing company with solar panels. I'm not going to say that their installs will cover 100% of their daytime need, but they can cut a good chunk out of their usage all the same.
Doesn't compute with what you're saying otherwise chap. 100% of residences with the standard install essentially covering 100% of net usage results in massive amounts of over-generation during with the problem that either you get rid of the grid and go to batteries or other storage method or need MASSIVE industry to consume the extra daytime power because if 100% of homes have them then 100% of commercial stores will have them, as will light industry.
Residential is 38.2% of usage, commercial 36.4%, industrial 26.2%.
That 26.2% wouldn't be enough to cover over-generation by homes if their installs are net even, the commercial installs average 'daytime use 100% covered', and industry* does what it can.
At least I'm TRYING to not be insulting here. Again, try to avoid thinking I'm trying to deceive you or even be deliberately stupid. Explain WHY it's stupid.
*Link is to the solar install of the company that made my boiler.
On Oahu, 10 percent of utility customers will have rooftop solar by year-end, Rosegg said. That compares with California, where it is 2 to 3 percent, he said. And demand for new connections for PV has been heavy. The new edict for Oahu mostly focuses on grid circuits where power available from rooftop solar reaches or exceeds 100 percent of the minimum daytime load, the low point of the total power that customers on a circuit are using. About one-fourth of circuits on Oahu are at 100 percent, Rosegg said. At the current rate of adoption, Harris said, all electrical circuits controlled by the utility could be closed to small-scale solar within six months. Changes could include adding grounding transformers or increasing the capacity of a substation, Rosegg said.
Combine the above statements with the power company allowing 120% Daytime Minimum Load(DML) that I found earlier, how long will it be before substations are seeing that 120%? Don't forget that commercial companies can install solar panels as well. I drive by that building fairly frequently, and it's not the only one with solar panels. Another NREL study on Hawaii's issues, detailing technical information on WHY they're concerned.
I think you need to re-read what 'strawman' means: "The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" implies an adversarial, polemic, or combative debate, and creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and then to refute or defeat that false argument, ("knock down a straw man,") instead of the original proposition."
I'll admit that I changed your proposition a bit - but I did so with the intent of firming it up enough to actually analyze it. While doing so I used public data that was available for basically the exact situation you described. I even cited it.
Second, While it might be a while if HECO has it's way, the fact that HECO was stopping connections because areas were hitting 100%(check the links!) tends to indicate that without those brakes 'not likely to happen any time soon' could be next year.
Though I should probably ask what you mean by 'substation level'. How many homes do you expect to see served by a substation? Do substations typically service mixed user groups, IE residential, commercial and industrial?
The problem with this is 'how do you define saturation?'. I took in the context of 'everyone who wants to and has property suitable for the install'.
In a 'upper-middle' class neighborhood you're looking at fairly large single family houses*, so the answer would generally be 'most of them'.
If you define 'saturated' in this case as ~20% or so of homes, it's a matter of language differences. American is a bit different than English, after all, even if we 'mostly' understand each other. Torch/Flashlight, Boot/Trunk is easy, it's the more subtle stuff that'll really trip you up.
It'd also explain some of our differences of opinion. You think of roughly 20% as 'saturation', no more solar installs, I think of it as the point at which things become interesting.
Speaking of interesting, another one of my 'green power' topics is electric vehicles. I love the every aspect of them except for one: The batteries are too expensive.:( Elon Musk is trying to fix that, of course. Back in the day I figured out that for Americans, if you replaced every personally owned vehicle with an EV that the average household's electricity usage would go up by about 50%. The relatively massive increase in night time power usage would be interesting in the context of baseload, load balancing, and have implications for solar power. If solar power is sufficiently widely deployed you might actually be encouraged to charge up during the day.
*Americans tend towards bigger houses than Europeans.
There are clearly many more things using electricity than residences and you should take that into account
I've mentioned it a number of times, haven't I? Things like "significant numbers of commercial and industrial facilities have also installed solar", "back to using transformers" if you have to ship the power to commercial areas, and "generally pay less per kwh".
even if those that want to protect generation monopolies like to pretend otherwise to push the line you are following.
NREL wants to protect 'generation monopolies'? I've mostly been trying to ignore these points, but I think I'm going to have to address it. I came to these conclusions by doing research on the web. I've priced out solar panels and complete systems, looked at total power generation of the USA, isolation maps for various areas(including myself and my parents; Alaska and Florida respectively, the use cases are very different). This is combined with my knowledge of how electricity transmission works. I don't claim to be an expert on it - which is why I browse the web for a lot of this stuff.
If there's some 'vast conspiracy', it's well hidden and surprisingly subtle.
Finally: I assumed that we would choose our target planet well before launching, so no terraforming necessary
I figure it's always going to be a battle between compatibility and sheer distance. The more earth-like you insist the planet be the further away it's going to be, on average. Also, the higher the odds that there will already be intelligent life when you get there.
One prospect is to precede the colony ship with one that's either/both launched earlier or faster that contains non-human construction and terraforming equipment/programming. Part of the terraforming system would be earth-type microbes. No need for large multicellular life yet; I'm thinking bacteria, algae, lichens, and such.
Even an embryo ship would have to be large enough that I don't think a 'pollen' type colonization type to be a practical system.
Ford's innovations with the model T, most of which were in the manufacturing, are among the earliest examples of exceptions
Indeed. Ford didn't invest so much money into making his cars better, he invested the money into making them cheaper. Better manufacturing techniques, lower maintenance requirements(early cars often assumed that the owner/driver would have a dedicated mechanic working for him to keep the car working), etc...
I haven't extensively studied the Model T, but I don't remember any 'features' introduced with the line that weren't utilized on higher-end vehicles first.
Obviously, it's not a legal barrier, since dozens of other car companies have followed this model for a long, long time.
Dozens of other car companies have failed. There's a reason we're down to the 'big 3' - Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Is it coincidence that these are also the companies that started up BEFORE all the franchise laws? That the franchise laws work to provide regulatory capture, protecting these companies against competition from smaller, more agile companies? That the only ones able to compete with them are other huge international car companies?
It seems to me the real issue at hand is that Tesla wants an exception made to the law, just for them. Now that would be unconstitutional.
Simple fix. Get rid of the dealership laws completely. Give the auto companies the choice. McDonalds franchises seem to do just fine even though McDonalds can legally own it's own restaurants, they just often choose not to.
The only thing more evil than a used car dealer being a new car dealer?
Especially today, the idea that stealerships compete with each other is mostly a misnomer. They add a huge amount to the price of the vehicles they sell.
The problem with living crew is that-- as you mentioned-- they would evolve enough over time that they would lose interest in their original purpose. "Screw those embryonic proto-xenohumans, we xenohumans need to look out for 'Number One'."
Remember, the 'xeno-humans' would be as much our descendants as the embryos, just more removed. It's entirely possible to have far more massive populations in space than on the ground.
Hell, at some point intellectual curiosity would probably ensure the 'rebirth' of ground based humans. It'd just be after there's 10B or so space-humans in the system. As a bonus, that gives a goodly amount of time to conduct some terraforming on the target planet to improve it's suitability.
Because really, if the planet varies much from earth you're going to eventually get a new species, just like the space-humans would eventually become their own species.
On second thought you're going to get new species no matter what unless you artificially suspend evolution* even if the new planet is identical to earth due to non-interbreeding populations(hundreds of ly will do that...)
Though that brings up a sci-fi idea that could be in a book: The various planets transmit genetic information between each other, with each planet creating genetically engineered babies each year equal to roughly 1% of births. The babies introduce new genetic profiles from the other planets in order to at least try to keep the populations as part of the 'same species'.
Oddly enough,.01c = 1PSL = 1% of the speed of light.;) Your estimate is the same as mine.
However, I figure that it'd be more than 'a few centuries' of building up before we reach for the next one. You have to figure that you have this whole system to colonize combined with that a colony ship arrives with something like a millionth of the resources used to launch it.
Due to the expense and time it'd probably take a fairly extreme motivation to get a group to gather the resources and launch a colony ship, so I figure it's pretty rare.
What about the crew? I'm not sure that an automated vessel of sufficient sophistication to make the journey while maintaining itself and the stored blastocysts* might count as life itself.
Don't forget that when you start growing the embryos that you not only need an iron womb, you need caretakers to raise them to be healthy breeding adults as well. Another reason to have a core crew. Might be interesting as the crew raise 'planet variant' humans.
Oh yeah, and Terraforming - you'll probably want to remain in space for a while as the planet is 'tweaked'.
*And I'm concerned about the viability of them after such a long time as well.
Maybe, maybe not. Electrical companies in the USA are generally highly regulated, and in a state like Hawaii said move is going to be both highly visible and unpopular. IE the state government IS going to get involved, so the power company needs to have a good explanation ready.
Let's say an incident kicks the local substation off the grid - what do you think happens?
Right now? Roughly 90% of the area goes dark, despite there being more than enough solar to power the area at the moment. Those that stay lit are the ones with backup generators or (slightly)more expensive inverter systems that aren't dependent upon the 'heartbeat' of the grid and will automatically isolate themselves so they aren't putting power on the grid(which presumably will shortly have line workers on it).
What will happen is that even at the extreme end of the solar ownership graph there are enough people, small businesses etc without their own generating capacity but plenty of fridges, pool pumps etc that the total consumed in that area is still much less than the total generated.
If you read the links, they're only refusing to allow new solar hookups when solar production EXCEEDS minimum local daytime demand, possibly resulting in backfeed past the substation. - FTA:In neighborhoods where the daytime minimum load(DML) for PV has gone above 100 percent, HECO may require an interconnectivity study and circuit upgrades that could cost a homeowner several thousands of dollars.
So, going fairly real-world and given that you're explicitly specifying a 'world-leading' solar install, they'd probably be somewhere around 200% DML, having paid the power company any monies necessary for the modifications(or gotten the company to pay).
At which point, given your scenario they'd be closer to the DML(not running AC is a big one) so theoretically there would be enough power for the area to operate normally if it wasn't for safety regulations.
it will be asking for less than anywhere else but will still be getting quite a bit off the grid and won't be sending anything back.
At 120%+ they will be sending power back at least occasionally.
Thus all locally generated power is used locally which means nearly zero line losses and no conversion up from 110/240V to 11kV or whatever so no losses there either.
True so long as < 20% of the community has solar panels. Thing is, when solar panels become cheaper than utility power there's a strong motivation to install them. Given an ideal area like Hawaii(lots of sunlight and expensive local power), and you can hit that point very quickly. ~450k households, 20% would be 90k. They were installing 3k systems a month for a while.
Household solar is still a tiny proportion of generating capacity and even if it reaches saturation the electricity consumption of local retail, light industry etc is going to take all excess and ask for many times more in just about every situation.
The problem with this is that the moment you assume that retail and light industry will 'take up the slack' because solar homes are generating excess power you're back to needing transformers, switches, and transmission lines designed for bidirectional power transfer.
but you have been pushing complete and utter bullshit very hard despite my initially polite rebuttal
Perhaps you see it as bullshit, but now I think part of the problem is that you were conflating me with Blindseer, causing you to make assumptions about my views and going ballistic. It doesn't help that I generally respond to personal attacks by becoming more abrasive myself.
A lot of the problem is that your posts mostly seem to be attacking me, not my statements. That's bad debating, not very useful. You're not going to change my views by merely doing the equivalent of screaming 'YOU'RE WRONG!!!' at me. I will change them if they turn out to be incorrect, but you're going to have to prove it. Really, that's what I kept asking for. Pointing out avoided power plants a dozen posts ago would have short-circuited a lot of this.
BTW, Hawaii is hitting the 20% mark and the local power company is actually refusing to let more homes with solar panels hook up to the grid. Well, at least requiring permission and thousands of dollars in feasibility studies and grid upgrades, which amounts to the same thing...
These days solar and wind are increasingly filling that niche.
At least in the states, the marginal cost of solar/wind is so low that you want to use as much of it as you can, however it's not 100% reliable(maybe when we get some more interconnects; the continental USA is actually 4-5 power grids right now). We really need more load balancing - things like shutting off high-demand appliances like AC units and water heaters during high demand times*, or even just when solar/wind isn't producing like it normally does.
Hydro in the USA is already pretty much maxed out, and usage is tightly controlled by environmental concerns. It's still a good peaking plant, but we have a severe water shortage in many reservoirs.
So most peaking plants are natural gas, and it's expanding. But that's expensive for electricity. Me, I'm kinda hoping that EOL Tesla batteries can still be used for a number of years to help provide peaking power....
No, you were very clearly playing the "fear uncertainty and doubt" game based on a VERY faulty premise, reality is the opposite of your suggestion.
Vague, Generic, and without proof. Meaningless.
Not having to upgrade links between power stations and cities makes a lot of costs go away.
Good point. I was concentrating mostly on actions the power company would have to do in order to fully utilize the power produced by solar roofs when penetration exceeded certain parameters. Even 10% of roofs having solar panels adds up to quite a few avoided power plants, and of course if you can avoid building a power plant you don't need transmission lines for it either. So it is millions saved, but you still have millions/billions invested in the power grid. Maybe you can tell me this though - if you look at it by joule moved, which is cheaper, residential power lines or HV transmission lines from a generating station?
Though I wonder at a coal plant that would have only operated during the day. Though I suppose it could have operated at a fraction of it's capacity during the night, along with a few others, all of which would ramp up during the day, and due to the solar power the others are able to take the load without that 500MW, so it's left shuttered, allowing the other plants to operate at a higher percentage of capacity, which is more efficient.
It's nice to see you finally making real arguments as well instead of vague 'you're wrong' rants without actually specifying why.
There's a 500MW coal fired unit near me that has been mothballed because the summer daytime peak it was built to provide capacity for is instead being dealt with by lots of panels on roofs.
Nice. I like the pollution prevention of not operating a coal plant.
His sig is I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Huh. why wasn't it showing earlier? I know I looked for his sig; didn't see one. Either that or I'm blind. In either case, conceded.
Life itself is the 'original' Von Neumann machines...
My theory on it is a bit different: If you posit that travel is indeed restricted to 'slow' speeds, IE 1-2% of light speed, and that habitable planets are rare enough that they're quite far apart, you run into that travel between solar systems with habitable planets can take sufficient time for significant amounts of evolution to take place.
Summary: By the time the generation ship manages to reach the new system, it's significantly likely to have evolved to be more suited to live in space, not a planet. At which point it concentrates on colonizing the asteroid belt and such, not bothering with the planet that so interested their ancestors.
Alternatively: We're becoming more and more concerned with conservation today. If this is a common function of intelligent life, our system could have been identified as a potential life-evolving one millions and millions of years ago and declared a nature preserve or something, in the hope that something like us would evolve.
There are cases where "deflation" should happen, though. If a boomtown of 2000 people becomes a ghost town of two, it's not fair to those who choose to live in viable communities, to pour enormous resources into subsidizing continued service to the two holdouts.
You have a legitimate point here, which is why I said it's a concern, not that it's completely broken.
We already see problems like this crop up with high speed internet companies - they often just don't want to build out to you if you're out of their mandated service area.
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make solar look bad
Your core assumption about me. I'm not trying to make solar look bad. Don't you get it? I like solar, I just don't have blinders on that it can be installed in vast amounts without adjustments elsewhere. That's ALL I've tried to say. As solar installs grow, the grid has to adjust. How the fuck is this supposed to be a 'stupid lie'?
If you disagree with that statement, explain why. I don't think you can.
If that's not enough wikipedia is a good starting point these days.
I don't think you're an engineer and I think you need to move past wikipedia. Because you obviously don't understand the issues.
Now I know you're not an engineer, despite what you said earlier.
1. You have yet to post anything of merit.
2. You ignore the citations of the studies I've shown
3. 10% of homes have solar power, per the citation
4. Which is HUGE in the scale of a power grid. Still a minority, yes, but something that must be planned for
4. Hawaii isn't exactly 'low density', though it's not high density either.
5. Solar installs are picking up in the state of Alaska; this is not small.
6. Again - you ignore the multiple studies I've posted that state adjustments will have to be made.
7. I never stated that it wouldn't make financial sense to do this stuff, just that it'd have to be done.
Yes, Hawaii is darn near perfect test case in the USA. As long as solar panels keep getting cheaper though, they'll make sense in more and more areas.
The plants had some place to ship it once in casks. The prospect of the local NPP becoming a waste storage site would of course cause screaming and yelling, even though that is exactly what they already are, but less safe. West Texas seems gung ho about it, now accepting "temporarily" the Los Alamos stuff that was headed to WIPP for now.
Given that spent reactor rods can be reprocessed into new reactor rods with a minor contribution of new material, and that the radioactivity of spent rods declines quite rapidly at first*, declining over time, I wonder if letting them sit for a century or so might reduce their radioactivity to the point that reprocessing is no where near as big of a deal as it would be for a 'fresh' rod.
*reactor rods are a composition of quite a few radioactive materials, some with half-lifes measured in the minutes, some measured in the decades, etc...
Your "argument" does not work if retail and industry are anywhere near the houses you describe which is why your pretence is very stupid.
Never been to the USA have you, good chap? Due to zoning laws there is a history of separating housing and industry as much as possible, generally with commercial stuck in between.
We have LOTS of housing where you have to go several miles to reach the nearest store.
Yes, there's lots of housing near commercial properties, but it's more like the border of a country than actually being 'common'.
So yes, there are commercial and residential properties on the same substation. But no where near the majority.
Then what exactly is your problem? Why are you stirring up fear with your "As long as you don't have so many people install solar that power flows in reverse through switching yards"
I don't know, maybe you need medication for your fear problem? "What's for dinner tonight?" "Ah! You're spreading fear about the security of the food supply!".
Look, 'concern' doesn't equal 'problem'. It means 'We have to address it, or it may become a problem'. A problem is something that has to be fixed NOW, or it'll cause damage.
Why can't you see that because the transistor was invented such a thing is not going to happen unless it is seen as a desirable thing by whoever controls the network?
Perhaps you can cite an article explaining why the transistor is such a magical device for an electrical grid?
Even before the transistor it was possible but a bit more expensive to do so may have actually required some modifications - but these days it's built in to existing equipment.
Considering we were still running one of Edison's DC electrical grids until 2k, I'm probably assuming that the grid is older than you assume.
You say upgrading the grid is no big deal, but when I say they have to upgrade the grid, I'm spreading fear.
The only downside here is less profits for electricity monopolies that have raised the local price of electricity to such a high level that it becomes financially viable for consumers to spend a lot of money for the capital cost of their own solar panels. It is capitalism in action.
What an interesting world outlook you have. Conspiracy theories all over the place. And here I was happy that the price of solar panels had dropped to the point that they're competitive with commercial power.
Keep that in mind when next time someone feeds you one of these utterly stupid political talking points.
I came to my conclusions WITHOUT having to listen to some political agency. They're a bunch of lying bastards anyways.
I came to the conclusions from my understanding of electricity, reading of the current situation from various sources, pricing out solar panels myself, looking at the rebates and such available, etc...
Of course, you need to keep in mind that my views are a lot less extreme than you seem to keep assuming. As such, stop viewing a comment like 'the sub-station needs to be upgraded' as a 'SOLAR POWER ISN'T FEASABLE!!!' rant, and that I'm actually saying something more like: "Hey, they gotta go in and replace that system that's been in place since 1902 with a modern one capable of bidirectional power". Or at least have an engineer look at the substation and certify it's good to go.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that a solar generating unit can't just be taken off the grid like any other unit when the desired capacity is reached. What did you think those very expensive controllers that come with mains connected solar panels do?
In what context do you mean 'taken off the grid'? If you mean that the power company can refuse to purchase the power being produced, that's true, but remember that homeowners are installing power in order to make money. They aren't going to appreciate being told 'no thank you'. As for the 'very expensive controllers', most aren't that expensive, and are designed to only take themselves offline if power shifts out of parameters. The NREL link shows that HECO wants solar systems that stay online through a higher amount of variance than is standard in order to limit how much standby generation they need.
Solar power is a bit like nuclear - It's generation cost is essentially zero, but the capital cost is so high that in order to justify using it you need to use pretty much every kwh it generates.
All of that should be very obvious once you know that there is zero threat of "overload" or whatever you have been imagining.
You know, maybe you should stop assuming what you think I know/think/imagine.
If we ever do get to the point where an area can supply your mythical 120% then that is actually very good news.
First, 120% isn't 'mythical', it's the HECO standard limit. Though I wonder what you think I meant by that 120% - I meant 120% of 'MDL' or 'Minimum Daytime Load'. Below 100%, as long as everything is operating normally, power will never go past the transfer station. Above it, it starts happening. Given that HECO has customers like Ron Hayashi, I don't think it'll take long before they're at 120% of MDL in areas.-
"Ron Hayashi, 61, this week had solar panels installed on his Oahu home, despite not having HECO approval to connect to the grid. The neighborhood where he lives already has solar capacity at 100 percent of the minimum daily load."
Now Ron is doing something interesting - he's installing a battery system that should theoretically allow him to actually load follow to some extent, rather than just supply. But he probably spent an extra $10k to do that. Me? I got a quote on solar today. $4k for a 1kw system, $10.5k for a 3kw. Keep in mind I'm in Alaska. The system would not be the smartest available. No power generation without a functioning grid and all that.
it becomes financially viable to put in some gear to move the excess across to the next substation,.
Which is precisely what I've been talking about doing... Your previous arguments have seemed to imply that nothing would need to be done.
I think they burn oil there so taking units off line means you can stop feeding them expensive fuel and get them up pretty quick when you need them later.
I KNOW they burn oil there. It's the primary reason their power is so expensive.
That's the only reason why windmills are in the mainstream of electricity generation at all - you need another 1.5MW so you connect another expensive and tiny windmill but the alternative is spending hours warming up 250MW of cheap coal capacity that devours fuel at a tremendous rate so at low demand costs a hell of a lot more per MW than a few little windmills.
Citation on this? Per the NREL study and others it seems the opposite - they utilize the power from solar & wind as primary sources and keep a 'spinning reserve' of various types of generator in case the solar/wind generators go offline for whatever reason.
The people living under it won't even notice unless they are getting paid for whatever they feed back into the local power network.
1. 953,207. Not a 'few thousand'.
2. As a small monopoly, HECO can't really have a world-wide impact. But it serves as a useful case study.
3. You have failed to address the technical problems listed in the links, ergo I still consider them a real-world problem, not 'invented'. Remember, equivalents to 'Nu-huh' don't count.
4. If you're an engineer who's worked with electrical systems, you should realize that powering up said generation capacity takes time, often an OOM slower than supply&demand can change at. A power supply that takes an hour to stand up isn't very useful when you need the power in 60 seconds.
5. The NREL study covers specific ways HECO wants any solar system installs to be set up, concerns about rolling standby power to cover fluxuations*, etc... If you don't think it points out concerns that I have, you're still making silly assumptions about my position(which is the definition of strawman): To restate yet again: I think there's nothing wrong with using solar power. However, as the deployment grows significant the power company/electrical grid MUST change the way they do business in order to cope. This includes altering their generation mix($$$), updating the grid to properly handle bidirectional power flow($$$), and changing their charging system to maintain cash flow in order to pay to maintain electrical infrastructure in areas that are now net neutral for electricity consumption.
*Some of which still needs to be built as solar installs expand.
Stop pretending to be too stupid to breath and take this seriously. It should be obvious that I was talking about the standard home install covering 100% of that home's net usage. IE they sell as much electricity to the grid as they purchase.
Also, at this point I'm going to say that attempting to argue that I don't realize that retail and industry exist is a strawman. It's not like I didn't address commercial(including retail) 3 times in that one post, and industry 4 times. Hell, I'm saying that they'd be putting panels up as well. I've already posted a picture of a retail site in Alaska with them, and a link to a manufacturing company with solar panels. I'm not going to say that their installs will cover 100% of their daytime need, but they can cut a good chunk out of their usage all the same.
Doesn't compute with what you're saying otherwise chap. 100% of residences with the standard install essentially covering 100% of net usage results in massive amounts of over-generation during with the problem that either you get rid of the grid and go to batteries or other storage method or need MASSIVE industry to consume the extra daytime power because if 100% of homes have them then 100% of commercial stores will have them, as will light industry.
Residential is 38.2% of usage, commercial 36.4%, industrial 26.2%.
That 26.2% wouldn't be enough to cover over-generation by homes if their installs are net even, the commercial installs average 'daytime use 100% covered', and industry* does what it can.
At least I'm TRYING to not be insulting here. Again, try to avoid thinking I'm trying to deceive you or even be deliberately stupid. Explain WHY it's stupid.
*Link is to the solar install of the company that made my boiler.
On 120% being a strawman:
Hawaii solar boom so successful, it's been halted, Dec 20, 2013:
On Oahu, 10 percent of utility customers will have rooftop solar by year-end, Rosegg said. That compares with California, where it is 2 to 3 percent, he said. And demand for new connections for PV has been heavy.
The new edict for Oahu mostly focuses on grid circuits where power available from rooftop solar reaches or exceeds 100 percent of the minimum daytime load, the low point of the total power that customers on a circuit are using.
About one-fourth of circuits on Oahu are at 100 percent, Rosegg said. At the current rate of adoption, Harris said, all electrical circuits controlled by the utility could be closed to small-scale solar within six months.
Changes could include adding grounding transformers or increasing the capacity of a substation, Rosegg said.
Combine the above statements with the power company allowing 120% Daytime Minimum Load(DML) that I found earlier, how long will it be before substations are seeing that 120%? Don't forget that commercial companies can install solar panels as well. I drive by that building fairly frequently, and it's not the only one with solar panels.
Another NREL study on Hawaii's issues, detailing technical information on WHY they're concerned.
I think you need to re-read what 'strawman' means:
"The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" implies an adversarial, polemic, or combative debate, and creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and then to refute or defeat that false argument, ("knock down a straw man,") instead of the original proposition."
I'll admit that I changed your proposition a bit - but I did so with the intent of firming it up enough to actually analyze it. While doing so I used public data that was available for basically the exact situation you described. I even cited it.
Second, While it might be a while if HECO has it's way, the fact that HECO was stopping connections because areas were hitting 100%(check the links!) tends to indicate that without those brakes 'not likely to happen any time soon' could be next year.
Though I should probably ask what you mean by 'substation level'. How many homes do you expect to see served by a substation? Do substations typically service mixed user groups, IE residential, commercial and industrial?
"even if it reaches saturation"
The problem with this is 'how do you define saturation?'. I took in the context of 'everyone who wants to and has property suitable for the install'.
In a 'upper-middle' class neighborhood you're looking at fairly large single family houses*, so the answer would generally be 'most of them'.
If you define 'saturated' in this case as ~20% or so of homes, it's a matter of language differences. American is a bit different than English, after all, even if we 'mostly' understand each other. Torch/Flashlight, Boot/Trunk is easy, it's the more subtle stuff that'll really trip you up.
It'd also explain some of our differences of opinion. You think of roughly 20% as 'saturation', no more solar installs, I think of it as the point at which things become interesting.
Speaking of interesting, another one of my 'green power' topics is electric vehicles. I love the every aspect of them except for one: The batteries are too expensive. :( Elon Musk is trying to fix that, of course. Back in the day I figured out that for Americans, if you replaced every personally owned vehicle with an EV that the average household's electricity usage would go up by about 50%. The relatively massive increase in night time power usage would be interesting in the context of baseload, load balancing, and have implications for solar power. If solar power is sufficiently widely deployed you might actually be encouraged to charge up during the day.
*Americans tend towards bigger houses than Europeans.
There are clearly many more things using electricity than residences and you should take that into account
I've mentioned it a number of times, haven't I? Things like "significant numbers of commercial and industrial facilities have also installed solar", "back to using transformers" if you have to ship the power to commercial areas, and "generally pay less per kwh".
even if those that want to protect generation monopolies like to pretend otherwise to push the line you are following.
NREL wants to protect 'generation monopolies'? I've mostly been trying to ignore these points, but I think I'm going to have to address it. I came to these conclusions by doing research on the web. I've priced out solar panels and complete systems, looked at total power generation of the USA, isolation maps for various areas(including myself and my parents; Alaska and Florida respectively, the use cases are very different). This is combined with my knowledge of how electricity transmission works. I don't claim to be an expert on it - which is why I browse the web for a lot of this stuff.
If there's some 'vast conspiracy', it's well hidden and surprisingly subtle.
Finally: I assumed that we would choose our target planet well before launching, so no terraforming necessary
I figure it's always going to be a battle between compatibility and sheer distance. The more earth-like you insist the planet be the further away it's going to be, on average. Also, the higher the odds that there will already be intelligent life when you get there.
One prospect is to precede the colony ship with one that's either/both launched earlier or faster that contains non-human construction and terraforming equipment/programming. Part of the terraforming system would be earth-type microbes. No need for large multicellular life yet; I'm thinking bacteria, algae, lichens, and such.
Even an embryo ship would have to be large enough that I don't think a 'pollen' type colonization type to be a practical system.
Ford's innovations with the model T, most of which were in the manufacturing, are among the earliest examples of exceptions
Indeed. Ford didn't invest so much money into making his cars better, he invested the money into making them cheaper. Better manufacturing techniques, lower maintenance requirements(early cars often assumed that the owner/driver would have a dedicated mechanic working for him to keep the car working), etc...
I haven't extensively studied the Model T, but I don't remember any 'features' introduced with the line that weren't utilized on higher-end vehicles first.
Heh. For some reason this reminded me of the George Carlin bit:
"Sex is legal, Selling is legal, so why is selling sex illegal?"
Obviously, it's not a legal barrier, since dozens of other car companies have followed this model for a long, long time.
Dozens of other car companies have failed. There's a reason we're down to the 'big 3' - Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Is it coincidence that these are also the companies that started up BEFORE all the franchise laws? That the franchise laws work to provide regulatory capture, protecting these companies against competition from smaller, more agile companies? That the only ones able to compete with them are other huge international car companies?
It seems to me the real issue at hand is that Tesla wants an exception made to the law, just for them. Now that would be unconstitutional.
Simple fix. Get rid of the dealership laws completely. Give the auto companies the choice. McDonalds franchises seem to do just fine even though McDonalds can legally own it's own restaurants, they just often choose not to.
The only thing more evil than a used car dealer being a new car dealer?
Especially today, the idea that stealerships compete with each other is mostly a misnomer. They add a huge amount to the price of the vehicles they sell.
The problem with living crew is that-- as you mentioned-- they would evolve enough over time that they would lose interest in their original purpose. "Screw those embryonic proto-xenohumans, we xenohumans need to look out for 'Number One'."
Remember, the 'xeno-humans' would be as much our descendants as the embryos, just more removed. It's entirely possible to have far more massive populations in space than on the ground.
Hell, at some point intellectual curiosity would probably ensure the 'rebirth' of ground based humans. It'd just be after there's 10B or so space-humans in the system. As a bonus, that gives a goodly amount of time to conduct some terraforming on the target planet to improve it's suitability.
Because really, if the planet varies much from earth you're going to eventually get a new species, just like the space-humans would eventually become their own species.
On second thought you're going to get new species no matter what unless you artificially suspend evolution* even if the new planet is identical to earth due to non-interbreeding populations(hundreds of ly will do that...)
Though that brings up a sci-fi idea that could be in a book: The various planets transmit genetic information between each other, with each planet creating genetically engineered babies each year equal to roughly 1% of births. The babies introduce new genetic profiles from the other planets in order to at least try to keep the populations as part of the 'same species'.
*ALL MUTATIONS MUST BE DESTROYED!!!
Oddly enough, .01c = 1PSL = 1% of the speed of light. ;) Your estimate is the same as mine.
However, I figure that it'd be more than 'a few centuries' of building up before we reach for the next one. You have to figure that you have this whole system to colonize combined with that a colony ship arrives with something like a millionth of the resources used to launch it.
Due to the expense and time it'd probably take a fairly extreme motivation to get a group to gather the resources and launch a colony ship, so I figure it's pretty rare.
What about the crew? I'm not sure that an automated vessel of sufficient sophistication to make the journey while maintaining itself and the stored blastocysts* might count as life itself.
Don't forget that when you start growing the embryos that you not only need an iron womb, you need caretakers to raise them to be healthy breeding adults as well. Another reason to have a core crew. Might be interesting as the crew raise 'planet variant' humans.
Oh yeah, and Terraforming - you'll probably want to remain in space for a while as the planet is 'tweaked'.
*And I'm concerned about the viability of them after such a long time as well.
Also known as rent seeking behaviour.
Maybe, maybe not. Electrical companies in the USA are generally highly regulated, and in a state like Hawaii said move is going to be both highly visible and unpopular. IE the state government IS going to get involved, so the power company needs to have a good explanation ready.
Let's say an incident kicks the local substation off the grid - what do you think happens?
Right now? Roughly 90% of the area goes dark, despite there being more than enough solar to power the area at the moment. Those that stay lit are the ones with backup generators or (slightly)more expensive inverter systems that aren't dependent upon the 'heartbeat' of the grid and will automatically isolate themselves so they aren't putting power on the grid(which presumably will shortly have line workers on it).
What will happen is that even at the extreme end of the solar ownership graph there are enough people, small businesses etc without their own generating capacity but plenty of fridges, pool pumps etc that the total consumed in that area is still much less than the total generated.
If you read the links, they're only refusing to allow new solar hookups when solar production EXCEEDS minimum local daytime demand, possibly resulting in backfeed past the substation. -
FTA: In neighborhoods where the daytime minimum load(DML) for PV has gone above 100 percent, HECO may require an interconnectivity study and circuit upgrades that could cost a homeowner several thousands of dollars.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory seems to agree that it's a legitimate concern for the power company.
Though it seems that HECO backed off some a couple months ago. They now allow small installations up to 120% of DML.
So, going fairly real-world and given that you're explicitly specifying a 'world-leading' solar install, they'd probably be somewhere around 200% DML, having paid the power company any monies necessary for the modifications(or gotten the company to pay).
At which point, given your scenario they'd be closer to the DML(not running AC is a big one) so theoretically there would be enough power for the area to operate normally if it wasn't for safety regulations.
it will be asking for less than anywhere else but will still be getting quite a bit off the grid and won't be sending anything back.
At 120%+ they will be sending power back at least occasionally.
Thus all locally generated power is used locally which means nearly zero line losses and no conversion up from 110/240V to 11kV or whatever so no losses there either.
True so long as < 20% of the community has solar panels. Thing is, when solar panels become cheaper than utility power there's a strong motivation to install them. Given an ideal area like Hawaii(lots of sunlight and expensive local power), and you can hit that point very quickly. ~450k households, 20% would be 90k. They were installing 3k systems a month for a while.
Household solar is still a tiny proportion of generating capacity and even if it reaches saturation the electricity consumption of local retail, light industry etc is going to take all excess and ask for many times more in just about every situation.
The problem with this is that the moment you assume that retail and light industry will 'take up the slack' because solar homes are generating excess power you're back to needing transformers, switches, and transmission lines designed for bidirectional power transfer.
Commercial power users also tend to pay less
but you have been pushing complete and utter bullshit very hard despite my initially polite rebuttal
Perhaps you see it as bullshit, but now I think part of the problem is that you were conflating me with Blindseer, causing you to make assumptions about my views and going ballistic. It doesn't help that I generally respond to personal attacks by becoming more abrasive myself.
A lot of the problem is that your posts mostly seem to be attacking me, not my statements. That's bad debating, not very useful. You're not going to change my views by merely doing the equivalent of screaming 'YOU'RE WRONG!!!' at me. I will change them if they turn out to be incorrect, but you're going to have to prove it. Really, that's what I kept asking for. Pointing out avoided power plants a dozen posts ago would have short-circuited a lot of this.
BTW, Hawaii is hitting the 20% mark and the local power company is actually refusing to let more homes with solar panels hook up to the grid. Well, at least requiring permission and thousands of dollars in feasibility studies and grid upgrades, which amounts to the same thing...
These days solar and wind are increasingly filling that niche.
At least in the states, the marginal cost of solar/wind is so low that you want to use as much of it as you can, however it's not 100% reliable(maybe when we get some more interconnects; the continental USA is actually 4-5 power grids right now). We really need more load balancing - things like shutting off high-demand appliances like AC units and water heaters during high demand times*, or even just when solar/wind isn't producing like it normally does.
Hydro in the USA is already pretty much maxed out, and usage is tightly controlled by environmental concerns. It's still a good peaking plant, but we have a severe water shortage in many reservoirs.
So most peaking plants are natural gas, and it's expanding. But that's expensive for electricity. Me, I'm kinda hoping that EOL Tesla batteries can still be used for a number of years to help provide peaking power....
*Though I do advocate solar water heaters.
No, you were very clearly playing the "fear uncertainty and doubt" game based on a VERY faulty premise, reality is the opposite of your suggestion.
Vague, Generic, and without proof. Meaningless.
Not having to upgrade links between power stations and cities makes a lot of costs go away.
Good point. I was concentrating mostly on actions the power company would have to do in order to fully utilize the power produced by solar roofs when penetration exceeded certain parameters. Even 10% of roofs having solar panels adds up to quite a few avoided power plants, and of course if you can avoid building a power plant you don't need transmission lines for it either. So it is millions saved, but you still have millions/billions invested in the power grid. Maybe you can tell me this though - if you look at it by joule moved, which is cheaper, residential power lines or HV transmission lines from a generating station?
Though I wonder at a coal plant that would have only operated during the day. Though I suppose it could have operated at a fraction of it's capacity during the night, along with a few others, all of which would ramp up during the day, and due to the solar power the others are able to take the load without that 500MW, so it's left shuttered, allowing the other plants to operate at a higher percentage of capacity, which is more efficient.
It's nice to see you finally making real arguments as well instead of vague 'you're wrong' rants without actually specifying why.
There's a 500MW coal fired unit near me that has been mothballed because the summer daytime peak it was built to provide capacity for is instead being dealt with by lots of panels on roofs.
Nice. I like the pollution prevention of not operating a coal plant.
His sig is I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Huh. why wasn't it showing earlier? I know I looked for his sig; didn't see one. Either that or I'm blind. In either case, conceded.
that you attempt such outrageous lies?
Because I wasn't lying at the time.
By pouring it into the sea, they have prevented it from being burned and poured into the sky as CO2.
Instead it's eaten by bacteria and such and released into the environment as CO2, without even the benefits of us burning it.
Life itself is the 'original' Von Neumann machines...
My theory on it is a bit different: If you posit that travel is indeed restricted to 'slow' speeds, IE 1-2% of light speed, and that habitable planets are rare enough that they're quite far apart, you run into that travel between solar systems with habitable planets can take sufficient time for significant amounts of evolution to take place.
Summary: By the time the generation ship manages to reach the new system, it's significantly likely to have evolved to be more suited to live in space, not a planet. At which point it concentrates on colonizing the asteroid belt and such, not bothering with the planet that so interested their ancestors.
Alternatively: We're becoming more and more concerned with conservation today. If this is a common function of intelligent life, our system could have been identified as a potential life-evolving one millions and millions of years ago and declared a nature preserve or something, in the hope that something like us would evolve.
There are cases where "deflation" should happen, though. If a boomtown of 2000 people becomes a ghost town of two, it's not fair to those who choose to live in viable communities, to pour enormous resources into subsidizing continued service to the two holdouts.
You have a legitimate point here, which is why I said it's a concern, not that it's completely broken.
We already see problems like this crop up with high speed internet companies - they often just don't want to build out to you if you're out of their mandated service area.