What you say may be true. I work for a startup that started in Santa Clara CA. This is their world headquarters. They have many manufacturing plants world wide. The bean counters decide where it is good to build plants based on the people and the economy. If California were so great, you would expect plenty of new plants to take advantage of the opportunity and resources there.
In reality there are NO new plants in California and resulting jobs for California. This does not mean they are not expanding and building new plants. They have been having record quarters lately with quarters over 20 Billion in revenue.
Prop 13 was a drop in the bucket. The state made up for the shortfall in state income in other areas. As mentioned by a grandparent post, the State Governement spending as a portion of GDP is too high. Someone is getting the bill and leaving for greener pastures.
California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy. According to the Pacific Research Institute, it has the fourthlargest government of all U.S. states, with spending equal to 18.3 percent of GDP. The comparable figure for Texas is 12.1 percent. Survey respondents uniformly say the state’s regulators are hostile. “No one in his right mind would start a new manufacturing concern here,” said one California CEO.
Speaking of MS Word, I looked at the list of celebrations for one in Microsoft's back yard. None are listed in Washington state. Time to get busy for next year. This year I'll looking to cross the river to Portland, but the link doesn't list a location for the event. Portland is a big place. I'll have to Google Wordpress to see if there is more info.
So seriously.. What is your state doing to attract and retain businesses and jobs?
High unemployment and businesses leaving for greener pastures is not the problem. The problem is the pasture is no longer green there.
California has become one of the most liberal states with fantastic benifits. The side effect is budget problems when the economy is not so great. Raising taxes instead of cutting entitlements has caused the problem.
Again, I ask, what is California doing to attract and retain businesses? We know why they are leaving. They have publicly stated why they left. It is not a secret.
I don't live in California because the cost of living is way too high.
This is a reversal of a trend in the 1960's. It was so bad that there was a billboard that I remember there..
Will the last person leaving Seattle, turn out the lights?
Do a Google search for "Will the last person leaving" and you will find it in the top hits.
On April 16, 1971, real-estate agents Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren put the words, "Will the last person leaving SEATTLE -- Turn out the lights" on a billboard at S 167th Street and Pacific Highway S near Sea-Tac International Airport. The two realtors, who work for Henry Broderick, Inc., put up the billboard as a humorous response to pessimism generated by the national aerospace industry's nosedive, known locally as the Boeing Bust.
Forgot to include The Tri Cities in the post above. If you want Sun, check near Pasco.
With more than 300 sunny days each year, the Tri-Cities is perfect for Golfing, Swimming, Boating, Hiking, Hunting... Anything and everything under the Sun!!
This could have been caused by nothing more than a slight craft orientation issue when beginning reentry. Without proper alignment, an alteration of the course could have created an alignment problem with a communications satellite. Without proper orientation on reentry, a dirversion off course would result in a longer blackout.
From the same Wikipedia article;
Until the creation of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, the Space Shuttle would, like Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and others, endure a 30 minute long communications blackout before landing. However, the Shuttle can communicate with a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite during re-entry. This is because the shape of the Shuttle creates a "hole" in the ionized air envelope, at the tail end of the craft, through which it can communicate upwards to a satellite in orbit and thence to a ground station.[1]
If the hole was not pointed at a satellite, the communications link would fail.
For Apollo missions, the communications blackout was approximately three minutes long.[3] For Apollo 16, for example, pre-advisory data (PAD) for re-entry listed the expected times for re-entry communications blackout to be from 0 minutes 16 seconds after entry interface to 3 minutes 33 seconds after entry interface (a total of 3 minutes 17 seconds).[4] For the Apollo 13 mission, the blackout was much longer than normal because the flight path of the spacecraft was unexpectedly at a much shallower angle than normal.[4] According to the mission log maintained by Gene Kranz, the Apollo 13 re-entry blackout lasted around 6 minutes, beginning at 142:39 and ending at 142:45, and was 1 minute 27 seconds longer than had been predicted.[5]
The connection between the modem and the ISP contains the modem MAC address. Why was this not brought up yet? Unless the modem was not provisioned by the ISP, the duplicate IP address could have been locked out by the ISP.
Does anyone in the cable industry or network engineers visit Slashdot?
If you own the account and own the router, than you will be the first in line for legal action. Your best course of action short of kicking him off, is to block torrents at the router. Then if you get that letter, respond with your response to the first letter that came in. You blocked access due to violations of TOS.
If you have not kicked him off or blocked torrents, it is time to cancel the account and let him sign up for the ISP connection. Then he is first in line.
Fractional HP motors are not the problem. Bad motors are a problem. Case in point, the circulation pump on a solar installation used a 1/10th HP pump. The pump drew about 300 watts or about the energy of 1/2 hp. The pump was replaced with a DC brushless motor. A single 60 watt PE panel was placed on the roof. Now when the sun shines on the collector the pump runs. This eliminated the differential thermostat controller and 3/4 of the power use to circulate the water. It removed 100% of the need for utility power to run the pump.
The move was made for two reasons. One was power efficiency. The other was for reliability. The old system would boil over in a power outage. The new one is unaffected by power outages.
You are correct that when the cost of energy rises and ways to conserve become affordable as a result, more investment in energy savings will be made.
I now have a HE washing machine. Almost all incandescent lamps have been replaced with either CF or LED, A PE installation is slowly growing as the cost per watt drops. Insulation has been added. Wall warts are replaced with switch mode instead of transformer type, and I moved to a better insulated home. Sold my old house in the housing bubble to upgrade to an energy efficient home. After moving, upgraded the older windows for better insulation.
In the last 6 years, my home energy use has been cut by about 2/3's. Some people only count the cost of their mortgage. I count the total cost. Cutting the electric from 250//month to 75/month was part of the budget.
Part of where I chose to live affects cost. Mild winters with few below freezing days in the winter and mild summers play a part of the annual energy cost. I have not had an over 100 degree F day this year. Only a few days reached into the 90's. I don't do severe summers or winters.
I wondered how much stronger those magnets are then the one used in MRI. I've not felt the effect of an MRI on my thinking or speech. How is a small local magnet going to do this with a much weaker field that can be "localized". I think this is another pseudo science article. Ouijai boards are proven to work. So do divining rods. Even over unity power generation works for some. I think they all work for the same reasons.
For the same reasons I don't meddle in the other fringe science, I don't give this much credence.
I have only recently set up SIP so I have not tried FAX yet. To get Google Voice to ring an analog phone, I simply forwarded the number to a Sipgate type number. I'm using a free IPTel SIP account (who is perpetually out of phone numbers) with an IPKall free phone number. If Google Voice won't handle a Fax, I think IPKall and the IPTel SIP numbers will work for incoming as my ATA is set to use the Fax friendly protocol g.723 or g.728.
Below is a list mentioning modem and fax friendly protocols.
I'm glad you brought up VOIP. Using Google Voice, a free SIP account, and an analog telephone adaptor, a free dedicated home fax line is a simple reality. You only need the computer to open Google Voice to dial out to send a fax. For receiving a fax, it's automatic.
A two way fax is harder, but not impossible to spoof. Fax machines often include caller ID, the fax machine ID etc. If my pharmasist and doctor use fax to verify my refill, it would be extreemly difficult for me to spoof my doctor's reply by fax to the pharmasist. I don't know exactly the content of the exchange, or the confirmation information between machines.
No mail spam filter will eat the fax for lunch because it used a couple of restricted words. Connection is real time two way connections unlike email. Email does not do end to end handshakes.
For this reason, there are some things I still fax.
This may be simply a way to store energy on a line with few cars on it. Most power supplies are rectifies and are unable to put excess power back into the grid for storage. Excess regen power must be consumed by another train or dissapated as heat in braking load resistors. I think what they are trying to do is use the flywheel so voltage rise due to excess regenerative braking is captured in the flywheel in the powerhouse.
Most trains do not have this. They rely on braking resistors for excess regenerative braking. Elevators have this same issue in locations that prohibit regenerative breaking putting power back into the grid.
The bailout is automatic. It is the US government guaranteeing the loan. You can sell the loan to investors with the 100% guarantee. If this is false, then what is a government guaranteed loan?
A guaranteed student loan is one that is provided by a lending institution but guaranteed by the federal government. What this means is that the federal government takes on the responsibility for seeing that the loan is repaid as agreed.
I don't stamp the plans. I do examine failures and run experiments to find the best known method of making something better. The engineer gets to stamp the plan. I get to tell him that it failed and what went wrong. I don't need a stamp to submit that.
Having enough education to understand the problem and recognize the failure to provide feedback to the engineers is an essential task. It pays well too.
I'm currently using Kahn Academy to supplement my education in math, the economy, and physics. I don't need a lab for those subjects. There are some fields where even the university is obsolete. They learn from Industry, and when they have a class put together, it is out of date. The field where I am now is in this category. Most of what we do is covered by patents and IP protections and is not taught in your university or in their library books.
In many fields, a basic reading, writing, Arithmetic, etc does not need a lab. An apprenticeship in a real field can replace the college lab. I went through an apprenticeship instead of college. I took some college classes, but not for a degree, but to learn new tech as it came out. I took classes such as Camcorder repair, Class 2 Electrical License, and Compact Disk repair long ago as those technologies came on the market.
My education has continued throughout my life since then. I moved from consumer electronics and broadcast into R & D. Most of it is self study and related to my line of work. Keeping your skill set current is essential to avoid obsolescence.
Those loans are safe for investors. They come with a government guarantee. The next bailout is will come due soon. The bailout will be bigger than Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac combined.
Think about it. The loans are made to people that are out of work. There is no collateral.
When the student remains unemployed after graduation, doesn't graduate, or is under employed, what assets do you have? The only card is the debt is not forgivable. It will haunt them for the remainder of their life.
The losers are the unemployed with high debt they can never repay and as always, the US taxpayer. This results in a workforce that can't compete in the global marketplace due to overhead.
There is a shortage of engineering jobs paying engineering wages. Due to the rising cost of education, it is hard to find enough low paid engineers and they have to pay their student loans.
Why is education prices high?
Education is expensive for the same reason home prices spiked. There was easy access to low interest government backed loans. If you are out of work, the answer is go back to school and learn a new skill. When you can't find an opening in your new field at your minimum income needs, you become underemployeed in a field other than engineering, while your engineering position goes to someone with lower overhead.
The student loan crises is the next Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. Only problems are there are no short sales, no ropo, and no forgiveness of debt on student loans. The student loan crises is larger than the housing bubble. Tuition fees are the bubble. Nice if you are a school selling your wares. Bad if you are borrowing money to buy their wares.
The engineers will be working outside of the engineering field, in an under the table payment, so they can eat and not have their wages completely taken away to pay the student loans.
The bubble will collapse when free education of the likes of Kahn Academy become recognized as legitimate schools by employers and the high text book fees and admissions are replaced by on-line content.
For these reasons, I am NOT an Engineer, but I still work in R & D in high tech in the semiconductor industry. I am officially an Engineering Technician. I work under engineers. I have no student loan. I have not had any history of unemployment longer than 7 days. Without the overhead of a big loan, I keep more of my lower take home pay.
I know way too many friends and relatives with student dept that are unemployed, or under employed.
I'm currently on Hydro power and Wind power. Don't assume my lack of solar is due to burning cheap coal. On the West coast of the US, there is little coal and the transportation cost over the continental divide is expensive. About 1/2 our days are not sunny. I stated this. Due to this Hydro is a good option.
Places without cheap hydro and wind pay much higher electrical rates, even where sun is plentiful. Don't be ignorant. Do your homework and learn the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
What you say may be true. I work for a startup that started in Santa Clara CA. This is their world headquarters. They have many manufacturing plants world wide. The bean counters decide where it is good to build plants based on the people and the economy. If California were so great, you would expect plenty of new plants to take advantage of the opportunity and resources there.
In reality there are NO new plants in California and resulting jobs for California. This does not mean they are not expanding and building new plants. They have been having record quarters lately with quarters over 20 Billion in revenue.
So where are the manufacturing plants that are recently built or are being built?
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1011245/intel-fab-israel
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/10/intels_new_hillsboro_factory_w.html
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/02/18/intel-to-invest-more-than-5-billion-to-build-new-factory-in-arizona
http://semimd.com/blog/2011/09/13/intel-mum-about-capex-ireland-fab-plans/
The headquarters is here.
2200 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
What have they recently built in California?
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/company-overview/intel-museum.html
California has published their rated for doing business in California. Businesses shop for places that are business friendly.
California may have great opportunities, but for many the pasture is greener elsewhere.
This is only one example. There are many more.
Prop 13 was a drop in the bucket. The state made up for the shortfall in state income in other areas. As mentioned by a grandparent post, the State Governement spending as a portion of GDP is too high. Someone is getting the bill and leaving for greener pastures.
California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy. According to the Pacific Research Institute, it has the fourthlargest government of all U.S. states, with spending equal to 18.3 percent of GDP. The comparable figure for Texas is 12.1 percent. Survey respondents uniformly say the state’s regulators are hostile. “No one in his right mind would start a new manufacturing concern here,” said one California CEO.
http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business
The root cause is not fixed. It has a few band aids, but it is still broken.
Speaking of MS Word, I looked at the list of celebrations for one in Microsoft's back yard. None are listed in Washington state. Time to get busy for next year. This year I'll looking to cross the river to Portland, but the link doesn't list a location for the event. Portland is a big place. I'll have to Google Wordpress to see if there is more info.
So seriously.. What is your state doing to attract and retain businesses and jobs?
High unemployment and businesses leaving for greener pastures is not the problem. The problem is the pasture is no longer green there.
California has become one of the most liberal states with fantastic benifits. The side effect is budget problems when the economy is not so great. Raising taxes instead of cutting entitlements has caused the problem.
Again, I ask, what is California doing to attract and retain businesses? We know why they are leaving. They have publicly stated why they left. It is not a secret.
I don't live in California because the cost of living is way too high.
This is a reversal of a trend in the 1960's. It was so bad that there was a billboard that I remember there..
Will the last person leaving Seattle, turn out the lights?
Do a Google search for "Will the last person leaving" and you will find it in the top hits.
On April 16, 1971, real-estate agents Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren put the words, "Will the last person leaving SEATTLE -- Turn out the lights" on a billboard at S 167th Street and Pacific Highway S near Sea-Tac International Airport. The two realtors, who work for Henry Broderick, Inc., put up the billboard as a humorous response to pessimism generated by the national aerospace industry's nosedive, known locally as the Boeing Bust.
This page includes a photo of the billboard. Looks like California is the next to get the billboard.
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=1287
Seattle has tried not to repeat losing major businesses leave.
Forgot to include The Tri Cities in the post above. If you want Sun, check near Pasco.
With more than 300 sunny days each year, the Tri-Cities is perfect for Golfing, Swimming, Boating, Hiking, Hunting... Anything and everything under the Sun!!
65 days a year without sun is what part of the rest of the state has.
http://www.viewourhomes.com/tri-cities.html
I've been to the rest of the state. Feel free to discover the rest of the state.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Clarkston-Washington.html
The average commute to work is less than 10 minutes.
This could have been caused by nothing more than a slight craft orientation issue when beginning reentry. Without proper alignment, an alteration of the course could have created an alignment problem with a communications satellite. Without proper orientation on reentry, a dirversion off course would result in a longer blackout.
From the same Wikipedia article;
Until the creation of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, the Space Shuttle would, like Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and others, endure a 30 minute long communications blackout before landing. However, the Shuttle can communicate with a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite during re-entry. This is because the shape of the Shuttle creates a "hole" in the ionized air envelope, at the tail end of the craft, through which it can communicate upwards to a satellite in orbit and thence to a ground station.[1]
If the hole was not pointed at a satellite, the communications link would fail.
Hmm.. Reminds me of the Apollo program except they expected the plasma issue. Maybe they thought another frequency would be immune to the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_blackout
For Apollo missions, the communications blackout was approximately three minutes long.[3] For Apollo 16, for example, pre-advisory data (PAD) for re-entry listed the expected times for re-entry communications blackout to be from 0 minutes 16 seconds after entry interface to 3 minutes 33 seconds after entry interface (a total of 3 minutes 17 seconds).[4] For the Apollo 13 mission, the blackout was much longer than normal because the flight path of the spacecraft was unexpectedly at a much shallower angle than normal.[4] According to the mission log maintained by Gene Kranz, the Apollo 13 re-entry blackout lasted around 6 minutes, beginning at 142:39 and ending at 142:45, and was 1 minute 27 seconds longer than had been predicted.[5]
The connection between the modem and the ISP contains the modem MAC address. Why was this not brought up yet? Unless the modem was not provisioned by the ISP, the duplicate IP address could have been locked out by the ISP.
Does anyone in the cable industry or network engineers visit Slashdot?
If you own the account and own the router, than you will be the first in line for legal action. Your best course of action short of kicking him off, is to block torrents at the router. Then if you get that letter, respond with your response to the first letter that came in. You blocked access due to violations of TOS.
If you have not kicked him off or blocked torrents, it is time to cancel the account and let him sign up for the ISP connection. Then he is first in line.
Fractional HP motors are not the problem. Bad motors are a problem. Case in point, the circulation pump on a solar installation used a 1/10th HP pump. The pump drew about 300 watts or about the energy of 1/2 hp. The pump was replaced with a DC brushless motor. A single 60 watt PE panel was placed on the roof. Now when the sun shines on the collector the pump runs. This eliminated the differential thermostat controller and 3/4 of the power use to circulate the water. It removed 100% of the need for utility power to run the pump.
The move was made for two reasons. One was power efficiency. The other was for reliability. The old system would boil over in a power outage. The new one is unaffected by power outages.
You are correct that when the cost of energy rises and ways to conserve become affordable as a result, more investment in energy savings will be made.
I now have a HE washing machine. Almost all incandescent lamps have been replaced with either CF or LED, A PE installation is slowly growing as the cost per watt drops. Insulation has been added. Wall warts are replaced with switch mode instead of transformer type, and I moved to a better insulated home. Sold my old house in the housing bubble to upgrade to an energy efficient home. After moving, upgraded the older windows for better insulation.
In the last 6 years, my home energy use has been cut by about 2/3's. Some people only count the cost of their mortgage. I count the total cost. Cutting the electric from 250//month to 75/month was part of the budget.
Part of where I chose to live affects cost. Mild winters with few below freezing days in the winter and mild summers play a part of the annual energy cost. I have not had an over 100 degree F day this year. Only a few days reached into the 90's. I don't do severe summers or winters.
I wondered how much stronger those magnets are then the one used in MRI. I've not felt the effect of an MRI on my thinking or speech. How is a small local magnet going to do this with a much weaker field that can be "localized". I think this is another pseudo science article. Ouijai boards are proven to work. So do divining rods. Even over unity power generation works for some. I think they all work for the same reasons.
For the same reasons I don't meddle in the other fringe science, I don't give this much credence.
I have only recently set up SIP so I have not tried FAX yet. To get Google Voice to ring an analog phone, I simply forwarded the number to a Sipgate type number. I'm using a free IPTel SIP account (who is perpetually out of phone numbers) with an IPKall free phone number. If Google Voice won't handle a Fax, I think IPKall and the IPTel SIP numbers will work for incoming as my ATA is set to use the Fax friendly protocol g.723 or g.728.
Below is a list mentioning modem and fax friendly protocols.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk1077/technologies_tech_note09186a00800b6710.shtml
I'm glad you brought up VOIP. Using Google Voice, a free SIP account, and an analog telephone adaptor, a free dedicated home fax line is a simple reality. You only need the computer to open Google Voice to dial out to send a fax. For receiving a fax, it's automatic.
A two way fax is harder, but not impossible to spoof. Fax machines often include caller ID, the fax machine ID etc. If my pharmasist and doctor use fax to verify my refill, it would be extreemly difficult for me to spoof my doctor's reply by fax to the pharmasist. I don't know exactly the content of the exchange, or the confirmation information between machines.
No mail spam filter will eat the fax for lunch because it used a couple of restricted words. Connection is real time two way connections unlike email. Email does not do end to end handshakes.
For this reason, there are some things I still fax.
This may be simply a way to store energy on a line with few cars on it. Most power supplies are rectifies and are unable to put excess power back into the grid for storage. Excess regen power must be consumed by another train or dissapated as heat in braking load resistors. I think what they are trying to do is use the flywheel so voltage rise due to excess regenerative braking is captured in the flywheel in the powerhouse.
Most trains do not have this. They rely on braking resistors for excess regenerative braking. Elevators have this same issue in locations that prohibit regenerative breaking putting power back into the grid.
The bailout is automatic. It is the US government guaranteeing the loan. You can sell the loan to investors with the 100% guarantee. If this is false, then what is a government guaranteed loan?
A guaranteed student loan is one that is provided by a lending institution but guaranteed by the federal government. What this means is that the federal government takes on the responsibility for seeing that the loan is repaid as agreed.
from http://oedb.org/loan/guaranteed
I don't stamp the plans. I do examine failures and run experiments to find the best known method of making something better. The engineer gets to stamp the plan. I get to tell him that it failed and what went wrong. I don't need a stamp to submit that.
Having enough education to understand the problem and recognize the failure to provide feedback to the engineers is an essential task. It pays well too.
I'm currently using Kahn Academy to supplement my education in math, the economy, and physics. I don't need a lab for those subjects. There are some fields where even the university is obsolete. They learn from Industry, and when they have a class put together, it is out of date. The field where I am now is in this category. Most of what we do is covered by patents and IP protections and is not taught in your university or in their library books.
In many fields, a basic reading, writing, Arithmetic, etc does not need a lab. An apprenticeship in a real field can replace the college lab. I went through an apprenticeship instead of college. I took some college classes, but not for a degree, but to learn new tech as it came out. I took classes such as Camcorder repair, Class 2 Electrical License, and Compact Disk repair long ago as those technologies came on the market.
My education has continued throughout my life since then. I moved from consumer electronics and broadcast into R & D. Most of it is self study and related to my line of work. Keeping your skill set current is essential to avoid obsolescence.
Kahn Academy video on the low interest loans and the spike in price due to increased demand is covered in this Kahn Academy video. The Academy has a full section on the Credit Crisis. Student loans are next.
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/the-housing-price-conundrum?playlist=Credit%20Crisis
Those loans are safe for investors. They come with a government guarantee. The next bailout is will come due soon. The bailout will be bigger than Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac combined.
Think about it. The loans are made to people that are out of work. There is no collateral.
When the student remains unemployed after graduation, doesn't graduate, or is under employed, what assets do you have? The only card is the debt is not forgivable. It will haunt them for the remainder of their life.
The losers are the unemployed with high debt they can never repay and as always, the US taxpayer. This results in a workforce that can't compete in the global marketplace due to overhead.
There is a shortage of engineering jobs paying engineering wages. Due to the rising cost of education, it is hard to find enough low paid engineers and they have to pay their student loans.
Why is education prices high?
Education is expensive for the same reason home prices spiked. There was easy access to low interest government backed loans. If you are out of work, the answer is go back to school and learn a new skill. When you can't find an opening in your new field at your minimum income needs, you become underemployeed in a field other than engineering, while your engineering position goes to someone with lower overhead.
The student loan crises is the next Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. Only problems are there are no short sales, no ropo, and no forgiveness of debt on student loans. The student loan crises is larger than the housing bubble. Tuition fees are the bubble. Nice if you are a school selling your wares. Bad if you are borrowing money to buy their wares.
The engineers will be working outside of the engineering field, in an under the table payment, so they can eat and not have their wages completely taken away to pay the student loans.
The bubble will collapse when free education of the likes of Kahn Academy become recognized as legitimate schools by employers and the high text book fees and admissions are replaced by on-line content.
For these reasons, I am NOT an Engineer, but I still work in R & D in high tech in the semiconductor industry. I am officially an Engineering Technician. I work under engineers. I have no student loan. I have not had any history of unemployment longer than 7 days. Without the overhead of a big loan, I keep more of my lower take home pay.
I know way too many friends and relatives with student dept that are unemployed, or under employed.
I'm currently on Hydro power and Wind power. Don't assume my lack of solar is due to burning cheap coal. On the West coast of the US, there is little coal and the transportation cost over the continental divide is expensive. About 1/2 our days are not sunny. I stated this. Due to this Hydro is a good option.
Places without cheap hydro and wind pay much higher electrical rates, even where sun is plentiful. Don't be ignorant. Do your homework and learn the facts.
Look up Portland Oregon which is near me. Less than 1/2 the days are sunny. 68 days per year.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/westcomp.clr.html