So for the smallest 3000 metre mountain, only 1.13 cubic kilometres of granite.
That sounds like a lot, but if you're getting thousands of years of benefit from it, effectively free after the initial outlay, it might be viable.
Just googled some mining operations for comparison (since no-one really builds mountains), and some of them are moving half a million tons of stuff a day. So if my maths is right that's about 6 years worth of material from a large a mine.
No, I'm not saying that. When your best argument is to lie about what I said, then the discussion is over.
"You then charge for the lines, not the generation".
And you have still failed to answer how you get electricity after dark when there's "No need to make big plants, or any of that."
Oh but apparently no-one ever needs electricity after the sun goes down, or on cloudy days: " Solar works where you need it most. Most places have the peak around 12-2", even though most residential peaks are after 5pm.
But it's all irrelevant because:" Plenty of people live off grid (in many 3rd world countries, they do so by necessity, not choice)".
When you dig yourself a hole, sometimes it pays to stop digging....
Apple has made mountains of cash selling iDevices for years now, and will continue to do so. They will also take a cut of all music, entertainment and apps people purchase on these devices. I'm not worried about them disappearing like they were about to in the mid 90s.
The problem is that their billions of revenue are dependent on a critical mass, one that is starting to shrink. And once it reaches a tipping point, there is unavoidable death spiral.
That won't happen in the next 5 years, but it could kick off soon. iPhone is stagnant, iPad is going backwards, Macbooks still ok, but small market, Watch is a dead duck, Apple music is dependent on all those things and it's a crowded market.
Once the slide starts it will be nearly impossible to stop. MS knows this which is why they play so hard with enterprise lock-in. Corporates can't change quickly, but consumer trends can kill you in just a few short years.
Assuming you're sincere, there's a few reasons.
While with the newer generation of Androids this might not hold true, but I bought an iPhone 5 some years back because:
Times have changed. The iPhone 5 was probably the cutover point when Apple lost the lead.
The wife has a iPhone 5 and she has issues just like everyone else (fucking lightning cables are ridiculously crap).
The difference for me is I hate being forced to do things I don't want, so the Apple ecosystem shits me. Like the un-configurable home screen or keyboard, the inability to replace a battery (I use my phone a bit and keep them for a while, so easily replaceable battery is a requirement), or inability for drag and drop storage.
Lots of little things that say "don't do it your way, we know better than you." that are deal breakers.
The Galaxy S7 does more and costs less. I have the Note 3 (2.5 years old now) and still goes well. I use the stylus, so it's funny after years of Apple taking the piss, they finally copy the idea.
I was reading for example that the bicycle literally changed the DNA of England in a measurable way when people could now find mates a few villages over. The train would have had a similar type impact but might not qualify as a gadget..
My grandmother, who before passing away not too long ago at the age of 99, felt that despite seeing automobiles, computers and television all come of age, the microwave oven was the thing that made the largest impact in her life as a housewife.
Another Apple hater. Why deny the iPhone as the greatest invention mankind ever created? The only reason there are starving kids in Africa is because they don't have iPhones yet...
Before the iPhone, people were lamenting several things about cell phones:
1) They all had...
I had an O2 XDA in 2004 that did most of the things a iPhone did, only much worse. It was a full screen touch screen, with WinCE, and ran apps and had internet. All Apple did was design all those features into slick highend package. Sure it was a generation shift, but it wasn't anything like refrigeration, or the wheel.
The other way around, you can get by without a K, because C serves this purpose.
Q can be replaced with CW.
X can go, as ecks or Z does the job, (or ecs if you've already lost the K).
J can be served by G, and Z can be replaced with TS.
So that's all the high scoring scrabble letters made obsolete.
The rain that falls on mountains comes from moisture in the air. If the moisture is there, the rain will fall. If you see a big mountain and rain does not fall, this is a pretty clear indication that the moisture isn't there.
Or that the mountain is in the wrong place, or the wrong shape, or not tall enough.
Moisture exists in the troposphere at various altitudes, so clearly the problem is that the current mountain is simply too short.
Yes. And the reason is profit. Not technical superiority, not better in any way. It may be, or it may not be, but profit and control is the reason centralized generation is ubiquitous.
That you don't understand the basics indicates you don't understand any of the issues at hand.
You're contradicting yourself again. Your idea was sold on distributed generation being cheaper (free electricity!) now you're saying it's not. You can't have it both ways.
You generate power in your car for your car. The largest consumption of power for an average person is their personal transport, and the primary generation for the primary power use is distributed generation. Again, you are so focused on hating renewables that you can't grasp the basics of the conversation.
"if we roofed all human structures with solar panels, we'd have much more power than we need (even if not where we needed it). No need to make big plants, or any of that."
Do you even read what you write?
the location is millions of off-grid locations. Plenty of people live off grid (in many 3rd world countries, they do so by necessity, not choice). That you've never heard of "off grid" doesn't mean it doesn't exist. By definition, someone "off grid" doesn't pay for centralized generation.
And this is your solution. People that currently live in a developed country, with access to modern services should give it all away to live like third world goat herders? And we'll all make love and sing kumbaya by the fire.
There's no need to make big plants or anything like that, because if a goat herder can get by, so can you.
Awesome stuff. Your genius knows no bounds.
I had it from the beginning. It's being done now, and you are acting like it's an insane idea. I'm just talking about expanding it, and changing the thinking of the central electric companies.
No it isn't. Current solar power is only used a supplementary source. It is not feasible to use it as your only source, which is what you suggested.
Electric companies have already thought about it. People who know more about this than you or me have thought about it, and they still have centralised generation for a reason.
It's not my scheme. It's being done now. That you are too ignorant to know about it, and too stupid to understand it doesn't change the fact that it's happening now.
No it isn't, you are confusing two different concepts.
If I have this wrong, please provide a link to a location that relies solely on distributed rooftop solar panels, with no central generation, and everyone gets electricity for free.
Nobody has chosen it. We have decentralized power distribution. You are just being disingenuous again, ignoring all power other than electric. Or do you consider wide-spread decentralized gasoline/diesel power distribution to not count?
You power your house from diesel? Or is this a lame attempt at a strawman?
Replacing a decentralized distribution of power for cars with a centralized one is a larger change than what I'm talking about. That you don't understand doesn't change reality.
This leads me to strongly think that the air may not be the best available resource for getting potable water. I'd try desalination of the stuff in which the artificial islands are built.
Over the course of a thousand years, I think a mountain would be more efficient.
And pays for it, so it's not free. Do you get this now? 50 million houses all paying $10k+ for panels does not equal free electricity. Add in the admin of co-ordinating this deployment and all the niggles of 50 million different individual projects and those costs are substantial.
Combined peak is generally during work hours, though it changes based on climate and users.
No, for most houses, ie the people you are trying to convince to get solar panels, their peak is after the sun has gone down. So completely useless.
You don't have 50 million plants. You have 50 million suppliers.
Who each have plant hardware (panels, inverters, meters and cables), that has to be paid for and maintained by someone.
If the suppliers don't supply, they will lose money.
They won't lose a cent, because they're not buying into your harebrained scheme.
The line charges will drop, because electricity doesn't have to go as far, so interties and such will be smaller, with less capital cost and less efficiency loss. And generation cost will drop, because you are a generator of electricity.
When the sun goes down, I still need the same line infrastructure I have now. Those costs are still there and have to be paid for by anyone who wants electricity on a cloudy day, or after the sun goes down.
You are assuming the worst of any possible implementation, and picking and choosing the worst possible view from consumer or electric company. Take a deep breath. Leave your ego aside, where you've decided you need to pick a fight.
I'm picking a very real scenario that happens every day at around 5pm. You are the one living in la-la land pretending this doesn't exist
And think of the best possible result. What is that?
Centralised power distribution, which is why every single developed country has chosen that model.
one for each block he generated...... Given how careful he was...... it would be highly unlikely he kept......all his keys......unless he "lost" them...
For someone supposedly anonymous, you've made a rather large assumption there.
It seems that almost everyone relies on 15 and 20-year old equipment.
Not anywhere I've worked. I know they exist, but I tend to gravitate to new, start-up type businesses as the work is a lot more fun. No rules, make stuff up as you go, leave when thing get too routine and process driven. And you never ever have to deal with archaic legacy shit that drags you down.
You wouldn't own or manage the plants. They are raw suppliers, not plants you run.
Someone has to own and maintain the hardware, or do you think it just magically appears out of thin air? And when parts break, they magically fix themselves? These are operational costs.
Solar works where you need it most. Most places have the peak around 12-2, though some areas have the peak in early evening.
Um no. Commercial sites might peak during work hours, but residential peaks at night.
And as the line charge increases, your usage drops even faster. Eventually everyone ends up with "free" electricity, with a line charge to fill in any personal generation gaps.
No, you end up with free electricity during the day, when it's sunny, but all other times you still need the same centralised plants to cover the losses. But the line charges also now cost more than your total bill now, because instead of hiring a few hundred people to maintain a large static power plant, you need thousands of people, parts, and administrators to maintain 50 million installations, all constantly changing and breaking at inconvenient times and in inconvenient locations. So it's a net loss.
At some point, there is either a small number of large plants (nuke, coal, hydro, solar etc), or a very large number of small plants for every house in the country (ie a solar panel and an inverter on your house counts as plant infrastructure). So a plant has to be run somewhere.
Statistical averaging.. backup generation... distributed generation... charge for the lines, not the generation, and generation is metered and co-oped...
This is the "administration and operational" part of the equation I already addressed. To co-ordinate this effort among millions of 'plants', is a lot more costly than just building a centralised power plant. And since you have to build them anyway since solar turns off when you need it most, your solution doesn't work.
Some of the systems I've seen mimic this. You pay for the line, then a separate charge for the power you use.
Most energy companies already charge a service fee and a usage fee. This is standard practice, and when more people put solar on their roof, the electricity company makes less money, so drive up the service component to cover the loss. The end result is you pay anyway
There are no easy solutions here.
The few times I've seen all the maths done, you could power the entire world from the roofs of the world. You'd need some lines to connect continents, but the power would be there and usable at all times.
And what sort of efficiency losses do you think you'd incur transmitting electricity over 20000km? Don't think about, I'll tell you, it's about 100%.
Slashdot Mirror
So for the smallest 3000 metre mountain, only 1.13 cubic kilometres of granite.
That sounds like a lot, but if you're getting thousands of years of benefit from it, effectively free after the initial outlay, it might be viable.
Just googled some mining operations for comparison (since no-one really builds mountains), and some of them are moving half a million tons of stuff a day. So if my maths is right that's about 6 years worth of material from a large a mine.
No, I'm not saying that. When your best argument is to lie about what I said, then the discussion is over.
"You then charge for the lines, not the generation".
:" Plenty of people live off grid (in many 3rd world countries, they do so by necessity, not choice)".
And you have still failed to answer how you get electricity after dark when there's "No need to make big plants, or any of that."
Oh but apparently no-one ever needs electricity after the sun goes down, or on cloudy days: " Solar works where you need it most. Most places have the peak around 12-2", even though most residential peaks are after 5pm.
But it's all irrelevant because
When you dig yourself a hole, sometimes it pays to stop digging....
No idea. But based on other mountains that have regular snow on them, probably upwards of 3000 metres.
So the working middle class, who the vast majority of which are just trying to make ends meet every month,
Which is it, Working class or Middle class? Or is this the new name for the other 99%'ers now?
Apple has made mountains of cash selling iDevices for years now, and will continue to do so. They will also take a cut of all music, entertainment and apps people purchase on these devices. I'm not worried about them disappearing like they were about to in the mid 90s.
The problem is that their billions of revenue are dependent on a critical mass, one that is starting to shrink. And once it reaches a tipping point, there is unavoidable death spiral.
That won't happen in the next 5 years, but it could kick off soon. iPhone is stagnant, iPad is going backwards, Macbooks still ok, but small market, Watch is a dead duck, Apple music is dependent on all those things and it's a crowded market.
Once the slide starts it will be nearly impossible to stop. MS knows this which is why they play so hard with enterprise lock-in. Corporates can't change quickly, but consumer trends can kill you in just a few short years.
Assuming you're sincere, there's a few reasons. While with the newer generation of Androids this might not hold true, but I bought an iPhone 5 some years back because:
Times have changed. The iPhone 5 was probably the cutover point when Apple lost the lead.
The wife has a iPhone 5 and she has issues just like everyone else (fucking lightning cables are ridiculously crap).
The difference for me is I hate being forced to do things I don't want, so the Apple ecosystem shits me. Like the un-configurable home screen or keyboard, the inability to replace a battery (I use my phone a bit and keep them for a while, so easily replaceable battery is a requirement), or inability for drag and drop storage.
Lots of little things that say "don't do it your way, we know better than you." that are deal breakers.
The Galaxy S7 does more and costs less. I have the Note 3 (2.5 years old now) and still goes well. I use the stylus, so it's funny after years of Apple taking the piss, they finally copy the idea.
I'll willing to bet that if you try and configure *any* laptop to meet the same specs as an Apple system you will end up at the same or greater price
What about if you try to spec an Apple laptop with only the things you want?
Of course because you said so right? I have an Apple TV, I find nothing special about it. When it breaks I won't be buying another one.
I was reading for example that the bicycle literally changed the DNA of England in a measurable way when people could now find mates a few villages over. The train would have had a similar type impact but might not qualify as a gadget..
Tinder has to top all of those then :)
My grandmother, who before passing away not too long ago at the age of 99, felt that despite seeing automobiles, computers and television all come of age, the microwave oven was the thing that made the largest impact in her life as a housewife.
Another Apple hater. Why deny the iPhone as the greatest invention mankind ever created? The only reason there are starving kids in Africa is because they don't have iPhones yet...
Before the iPhone, people were lamenting several things about cell phones:
1) They all had ...
I had an O2 XDA in 2004 that did most of the things a iPhone did, only much worse. It was a full screen touch screen, with WinCE, and ran apps and had internet. All Apple did was design all those features into slick highend package. Sure it was a generation shift, but it wasn't anything like refrigeration, or the wheel.
The other way around, you can get by without a K, because C serves this purpose.
Q can be replaced with CW.
X can go, as ecks or Z does the job, (or ecs if you've already lost the K).
J can be served by G, and Z can be replaced with TS.
So that's all the high scoring scrabble letters made obsolete.
The rain that falls on mountains comes from moisture in the air. If the moisture is there, the rain will fall. If you see a big mountain and rain does not fall, this is a pretty clear indication that the moisture isn't there.
Or that the mountain is in the wrong place, or the wrong shape, or not tall enough.
Moisture exists in the troposphere at various altitudes, so clearly the problem is that the current mountain is simply too short.
Yes. And the reason is profit. Not technical superiority, not better in any way. It may be, or it may not be, but profit and control is the reason centralized generation is ubiquitous. That you don't understand the basics indicates you don't understand any of the issues at hand.
You're contradicting yourself again. Your idea was sold on distributed generation being cheaper (free electricity!) now you're saying it's not. You can't have it both ways.
You generate power in your car for your car. The largest consumption of power for an average person is their personal transport, and the primary generation for the primary power use is distributed generation. Again, you are so focused on hating renewables that you can't grasp the basics of the conversation.
Do you even read what you write?
the location is millions of off-grid locations. Plenty of people live off grid (in many 3rd world countries, they do so by necessity, not choice). That you've never heard of "off grid" doesn't mean it doesn't exist. By definition, someone "off grid" doesn't pay for centralized generation.
And this is your solution. People that currently live in a developed country, with access to modern services should give it all away to live like third world goat herders? And we'll all make love and sing kumbaya by the fire.
There's no need to make big plants or anything like that, because if a goat herder can get by, so can you.
Awesome stuff. Your genius knows no bounds.
I had it from the beginning. It's being done now, and you are acting like it's an insane idea. I'm just talking about expanding it, and changing the thinking of the central electric companies.
No it isn't. Current solar power is only used a supplementary source. It is not feasible to use it as your only source, which is what you suggested.
Electric companies have already thought about it. People who know more about this than you or me have thought about it, and they still have centralised generation for a reason.
It's not my scheme. It's being done now. That you are too ignorant to know about it, and too stupid to understand it doesn't change the fact that it's happening now.
No it isn't, you are confusing two different concepts.
If I have this wrong, please provide a link to a location that relies solely on distributed rooftop solar panels, with no central generation, and everyone gets electricity for free.
Nobody has chosen it. We have decentralized power distribution. You are just being disingenuous again, ignoring all power other than electric. Or do you consider wide-spread decentralized gasoline/diesel power distribution to not count?
You power your house from diesel? Or is this a lame attempt at a strawman?
Replacing a decentralized distribution of power for cars with a centralized one is a larger change than what I'm talking about. That you don't understand doesn't change reality.
Lame strawman then...
Yes and have a fruit tree that bears no fruit, that doesn't mean I can't plant another and get a different result.
They didn't have Snopes back then obviously: http://www.snopes.com/business...
This leads me to strongly think that the air may not be the best available resource for getting potable water. I'd try desalination of the stuff in which the artificial islands are built.
Over the course of a thousand years, I think a mountain would be more efficient.
The owner of the land owns it.
And pays for it, so it's not free. Do you get this now? 50 million houses all paying $10k+ for panels does not equal free electricity. Add in the admin of co-ordinating this deployment and all the niggles of 50 million different individual projects and those costs are substantial.
Combined peak is generally during work hours, though it changes based on climate and users.
No, for most houses, ie the people you are trying to convince to get solar panels, their peak is after the sun has gone down. So completely useless.
You don't have 50 million plants. You have 50 million suppliers.
Who each have plant hardware (panels, inverters, meters and cables), that has to be paid for and maintained by someone.
If the suppliers don't supply, they will lose money.
They won't lose a cent, because they're not buying into your harebrained scheme.
The line charges will drop, because electricity doesn't have to go as far, so interties and such will be smaller, with less capital cost and less efficiency loss. And generation cost will drop, because you are a generator of electricity.
When the sun goes down, I still need the same line infrastructure I have now. Those costs are still there and have to be paid for by anyone who wants electricity on a cloudy day, or after the sun goes down.
You are assuming the worst of any possible implementation, and picking and choosing the worst possible view from consumer or electric company. Take a deep breath. Leave your ego aside, where you've decided you need to pick a fight.
I'm picking a very real scenario that happens every day at around 5pm. You are the one living in la-la land pretending this doesn't exist
And think of the best possible result. What is that?
Centralised power distribution, which is why every single developed country has chosen that model.
one for each block he generated... ... Given how careful he was... ... it would be highly unlikely he kept... ...all his keys... ...unless he "lost" them...
For someone supposedly anonymous, you've made a rather large assumption there.
It seems that almost everyone relies on 15 and 20-year old equipment.
Not anywhere I've worked. I know they exist, but I tend to gravitate to new, start-up type businesses as the work is a lot more fun. No rules, make stuff up as you go, leave when thing get too routine and process driven. And you never ever have to deal with archaic legacy shit that drags you down.
You wouldn't own or manage the plants. They are raw suppliers, not plants you run.
Someone has to own and maintain the hardware, or do you think it just magically appears out of thin air? And when parts break, they magically fix themselves? These are operational costs.
Solar works where you need it most. Most places have the peak around 12-2, though some areas have the peak in early evening.
Um no. Commercial sites might peak during work hours, but residential peaks at night.
And as the line charge increases, your usage drops even faster. Eventually everyone ends up with "free" electricity, with a line charge to fill in any personal generation gaps.
No, you end up with free electricity during the day, when it's sunny, but all other times you still need the same centralised plants to cover the losses. But the line charges also now cost more than your total bill now, because instead of hiring a few hundred people to maintain a large static power plant, you need thousands of people, parts, and administrators to maintain 50 million installations, all constantly changing and breaking at inconvenient times and in inconvenient locations. So it's a net loss.
Then don't run a plant.
At some point, there is either a small number of large plants (nuke, coal, hydro, solar etc), or a very large number of small plants for every house in the country (ie a solar panel and an inverter on your house counts as plant infrastructure). So a plant has to be run somewhere.
Statistical averaging.. backup generation... distributed generation... charge for the lines, not the generation, and generation is metered and co-oped...
This is the "administration and operational" part of the equation I already addressed. To co-ordinate this effort among millions of 'plants', is a lot more costly than just building a centralised power plant. And since you have to build them anyway since solar turns off when you need it most, your solution doesn't work.
Some of the systems I've seen mimic this. You pay for the line, then a separate charge for the power you use.
Most energy companies already charge a service fee and a usage fee. This is standard practice, and when more people put solar on their roof, the electricity company makes less money, so drive up the service component to cover the loss. The end result is you pay anyway
There are no easy solutions here.
But that isn't one 'thing', it is many 'things'.
The few times I've seen all the maths done, you could power the entire world from the roofs of the world. You'd need some lines to connect continents, but the power would be there and usable at all times.
And what sort of efficiency losses do you think you'd incur transmitting electricity over 20000km? Don't think about, I'll tell you, it's about 100%.