People have no interest in going from 24/7 dependable power
So such thing exists. If it seems that way, it's only because of huge diversity, both in source and location. (yet somehow I'm the one who doesn't understand how this works...)
Renewables are no different. Diversity in technology and location goes a long, long way to cover the shortfalls of individual plants. =Smidge=
It wouldn't seem absurd if you used your brain and actually thought about the problem from a real world point of view.
You're the one that needs to think: TWO WEEKS. No sunshine for two weeks!
And power is ferried thousands of miles, at least across the North American grid. So if not the entire planet, then at least an entire *continent* would need to succumb to darkness. For two weeks.
Elsewhere you alluded to a whole month of capacity being necessary. If you're anywhere other than inside the arctic circle that simply is NOT going to be an issue.
All the battery storage in the world isn't going to save us from the apocalypse.
Well, the facts do not agree with you...
"Forecastable" and "fairly consistent" are not synonyms for "constant." With wind, we have a good handle on reliability (consistency) and have reasonably good tools to determine when shortfalls or outages will occur (forceastability). This means we can plan accordingly so the lights don't go out if the winds die down.
Natural gas is currently used because it's cheap and responds quickly. So be it.
If you wanted to use a battery system instead, you certainly would not need TWO WEEKS worth of backup capacity to cover you.
And as I said, you wouldn't even need to use batteries necessarily; there are other storage systems that would work just as well.
real solutions to elude you
Solutions like... what? By your logic we'd already be in the dark, since there does not exist a single power source with a capacity factor of 100%. Don't place nonsensical, fanciful requirements on a system and claim it will never work. =Smidge=
To provide battery backup of 14 days to the whole planet
What the fuckity fuck kind of absurdity is this? If the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining and the waters stop flowing everywhere on the planet for two weeks straight we all have MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS to worry about.
Winds are forecastable and, amazingly, wind farms tend to be built where the winds are fairly consistent. It's almost like that consider this when planning them.
Chemical batteries aren't the only tool we have for storing power, either. Pumped hydro, compressed air, hydrogen, thermal storage, magnetic storage and flywheels are all viable options depending on the specific requirements and all of them have been scaled up to utility grade storage facilities... and storage is nowhere near as critical for renewable energy as everyone seems to think.
And that also would require replacing and redesigning much of the world's power grids.
Levelized cost, which includes the cost of building, operating, maintaining and decommissioning the facility.
This may not bear any sensible correlation to the price your utility charges you, depending on how dickish they feel that can get away with being. =Smidge=
Tesla has dozens of service stations around the country, and partners with existing local shops. In cases like this, it's even possible that a Tesla technician will be sent to your home or wherever to handle the problem; they already offer on-site service for an additional fee, so they are equipped to do it.
I think they've considered service coverage and have a plan to handle it. =Smidge=
Good luck with that. Someone somewhere with oil will decide they need money, and they will go forth and make some with it.
Except that's not going to work if there's no market for it.
Earlier this year the cost of producing bitumen (tar sands oil) exceeded the market value. The plants remained in operation only because they were gambling that the price would rise again and the cost of shutting down/restarting everything would be greater than a potential short-term loss. Tar sands oil is currently a financial loser.
Now imagine what would happen if the market crashed again due to lack of demand. You really think they'd keep it up?
Also, historically, OPEC has colluded to DECREASE production for the sake of stabilizing the price. The only reason they haven't done so lately is (I'm speculating) to hurt non OPEC producers. If that's true, it's working. =Smidge=
Very little of our electricity comes from oil, so there actually isn't much infrastructure for it. It's also not very cost effective especially with the price of oil being so volatile.
So why not divert the oil into not pumping it out of the ground in the first place until we need it? =Smidge=
So sure, you can argue that the average price is skewed because a lot of larger, more expensive vehicles are included. However, the larger, more expensive vehicles also seem to sell more. Perhaps the average sell price and average paid price aren't so different after all.
In fact, since light duty trucks (which includes pickups and SUVs) outsell passenger cars (Small, midsize and luxury), I'd wager that the average amount people spend on a new car is actually *higher* than the average sticker price. =Smidge=
Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, and even if only a relatively small proportion of them are screwed (realistically, MOST people will be screwed...) it's a safe bet that problems will persist for *many* generations.
Sea level rise alone stands to displace over a billion people, and that doesn't account for all of the other problems like violent weather and impacts to food and fresh water supplies.
I don't think "billions" is at all histrionic, or even much of an exaggeration. =Smidge=
In so far as there are no founding principles or higher laws (In the case of the US, the Constitution and Federal law) then that's the risk inherent in a democratic system.
And, like it or not, it is exactly how this country has been run since its inception. "Tyranny of the masses" is already the status quot, and it takes quite a lot of effort to establish a higher (read: Federal) law to overcome it.
Of course, you have unwittingly equated requiring manufacturers to inform consumers what's in their products to *tyranny*... so I'm not sure how serious your point deserves to be considered. =Smidge=
It's not that easy because they probably don't employ that many people directly. (This is also why it's kinda stupid to call them "job creators"). Businesses are legally and financially separate entities. The business pays the employees, not the business owners.
With an RJ-45 connector, properly installed, the outer insulating jacket of the cable is inside the head of the connector. All eight wires AND the jacket are crimped at the same time, so the jacket takes the strain if the cable is pulled on.
If you have two "layers" of wires, I don't know how you'd crimp that on at all in a single operation. =Smidge=
One of the reasons, I think, that the RJ-45 connector has lasted so long is it's very easy to field install. A bag of cable ends and a relatively inexpensive crimp tool is all you need, and the wires are easy to insert. Making a connector that's appreciably smaller would make field installation of ends that much more difficult.
Introduce a new standard and now you'll need new cables (wall jacks to device) or adapters (cables to device) to keep new things interchangeable with existing things. That doesn't simplify anything.
That's assuming it CAN be made smaller, given the cable is unlikely to change. =Smidge=
Sometimes they are, but the key things is that they are voluntary and not required by law
The FDA has a pretty long list of requirements for food labeling, including but not limited to identifying what's in the package.
I literally said exactly how in my post. There is a certain list of things you avoid, or by explicitly labeled as non-GMO variants. That's how you do it.
What you actually said was, people should avoid anything that MIGHT be a GMO. (The words you used were "reasonably assume"). Good luck avoiding things that contain corn, rice and wheat. =Smidge=
Not that it matters WHY, but what makes you think that it's a safety concern?
It could be out of environmental concern, since a lot of GMO crops are made to allow use or more pesticides and herbicides.
Or it could be out of concern that the companies that produce GMOs end up having an effective monopoly on the crops, since it's explicitly illegal to replant using seeds from the harvest... in other words, farmers have to buy more seed every crop cycle.
Or it could just be on general principle.
Safety is only one of several potential reasons why someone might not want to purchase foods made with GMOs. =Smidge=
Except there's a slight but important difference: Kosher/Halal are about ingredients, which are already labeled on the packaging.
If a product contains "corn" you have no way of knowing what kind of corn.
I don't think it is too much to ask that those who do not wish to consume GE crops take responsibility for their own belief system like everyone else.
And how does one "take responsibility" if they do not have all the requisite information? What you are suggesting is that people just assume, which is not at all the same as being informed. =Smidge=
...so it's okay if manufacturers lie just a little bit?
I understand that you're taking this position from the perspective that GMOs are harmless. It's not like labeling foods that contain or may contain traces of peanuts, where a small population are demonstrably, deathly allergic to peanuts. Let me say that I agree that GMOs (at least so far) do not pose any health threats.
However, there are reasons beyond health and safety that people might choose one product over another... even irrational reasons. For a "free market" to work, consumers need to be informed. Therefore manufacturers lying consumers *in any capacity* then that is, in my opinion, an injustice to the general population: how are the people who do not want GMOs in their foods supposed to have their voices heard in the "free market" if they can't tell what foods contain GMOs?
Enough people care if their foods contain GMOs that they got laws passed to require labeling. In a properly democratic society, that means food should require labeling regardless of if it makes sense or not. And since there are no higher or existing laws that overrule or prevent this requirement, guess what? I think manufacturers should label their products. =Smidge=
So why should they charge people for entering a movie theater? One more person doesn't add to the cost of showing the movie... Really, it's kind of a silly proposition you're running with especially when applied to most other things.
Almost the entire cost of running a public transport system is independent of actual utilization.
That is demonstrably false any way you slice it. Yes, there is a fixed cost, but utilization incurs wear and tear on equipment, requires more man-hours of operator's time, requires more logistics support (more buses = more scheduling, coordination and support) and most importantly more energy. None of those things are free.
When you consider that a bus might easily be in service for 10-15 years or more, the lion's share of the total cost over that time is going to be maintenance and fuel... both of which will increase proportionally to utilization. =Smidge=
The bus doesn't cost more because there's one more person on it
In a sense, it does.
Let's say that a bus carries 40 people. If you have 41 people that want to take the bus, that one passenger will "cost" an entire bus that otherwise would not be necessary. In this sense, each additional rider uses up capacity that will need to be expanded, albeit in discreet chunks of whole busloads.
Another way to think of it is that each individual fare is collected as proceeds towards covering the cost of an additional bus should the current one become full.
Or you can flip it around at a more traditional business model, and each fare collected is an attempt to recover the up-front cost of providing the bus in the first place. =Smidge=
Let's suppose the standard will shape the qualification process for instructors, leading to instructors who spend far too much time in their own careers learning a standard instead of learning real math and how to teach it
Based on what the post you replied to said, I don't see how this could possibly be the case.
The "standard" only dictates what must be taught at a certain grade level, and not how it should be taught. From the teacher's perspective it's exactly the same as before since the school or state typically sets the curriculum requirements anyway. =Smidge=
" it neither uses temperature nor pressure of idealized gases to perform work"
Wrong. PV cells exploit the temperature difference between the surface of the sun and ambient. Black body radiation is an important part of the Shockley-Queisser limit, and is a major part of why concentrated PV is more efficient than flat panels.
If you have no temperature difference, then you have no net radiative transfer, and thus you have no potential for photon absorption, and thus no ability to extract useful work.
I'm sure you never learned this in whatever podunk high school intro to physics class you've had, but the laws of thermodynamics are not the same thing as gas laws. Efficiency of energy conversion as a function of the energy gradient is true regardless of the type of conversion or forms of energy involved. In ANY system, you need a source of energy ("high temperature") to tap into and a sink of energy ("low temperature") into which you can dump the excess entropy, and so keep the useful energy portion as work.
As such, ALL energy conversion systems are subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
Maybe not the gas laws, but absolutely the laws of thermodynamics. You'll note that Carnotâ(TM)s theorem has nothing in it about gasses... =Smidge=
"Night" is no more a failure of solar power than a scheduled shutdown is a failure of any other type of plant. The problem is when it goes offline unexpectedly, and in that respect solar is extremely reliable.
(Most people are not surprised by nightfall.) =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
People have no interest in going from 24/7 dependable power
So such thing exists. If it seems that way, it's only because of huge diversity, both in source and location. (yet somehow I'm the one who doesn't understand how this works...)
Renewables are no different. Diversity in technology and location goes a long, long way to cover the shortfalls of individual plants.
=Smidge=
It wouldn't seem absurd if you used your brain and actually thought about the problem from a real world point of view.
You're the one that needs to think: TWO WEEKS. No sunshine for two weeks!
And power is ferried thousands of miles, at least across the North American grid. So if not the entire planet, then at least an entire *continent* would need to succumb to darkness. For two weeks.
Elsewhere you alluded to a whole month of capacity being necessary. If you're anywhere other than inside the arctic circle that simply is NOT going to be an issue.
All the battery storage in the world isn't going to save us from the apocalypse.
Well, the facts do not agree with you...
"Forecastable" and "fairly consistent" are not synonyms for "constant." With wind, we have a good handle on reliability (consistency) and have reasonably good tools to determine when shortfalls or outages will occur (forceastability). This means we can plan accordingly so the lights don't go out if the winds die down.
Natural gas is currently used because it's cheap and responds quickly. So be it.
If you wanted to use a battery system instead, you certainly would not need TWO WEEKS worth of backup capacity to cover you.
And as I said, you wouldn't even need to use batteries necessarily; there are other storage systems that would work just as well.
real solutions to elude you
Solutions like... what? By your logic we'd already be in the dark, since there does not exist a single power source with a capacity factor of 100%. Don't place nonsensical, fanciful requirements on a system and claim it will never work.
=Smidge=
In the real world, moving electricity a thousand miles is very expensive
Yet we already do it, everywhere. Grand parent was asserting we'd have to modify the grid substantially, which is simply not true.
and the grid in most places is very close to capacity
Irrelevant; We would not be increasing grid capacity and faster than is already necessary, only displacing existing capacity with new sources.
The quantity of hydro is small and as a fraction of power production shrinking.
Also irrelevant.
We have enough data to determine how often these events occur and it's a huge problem, just unlikely inside of 20 years
What events? The sun vanishing for two weeks straight? I don't think there's any precedent for that...
=Smidge=
To provide battery backup of 14 days to the whole planet
What the fuckity fuck kind of absurdity is this? If the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining and the waters stop flowing everywhere on the planet for two weeks straight we all have MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS to worry about.
Winds are forecastable and, amazingly, wind farms tend to be built where the winds are fairly consistent. It's almost like that consider this when planning them.
Chemical batteries aren't the only tool we have for storing power, either. Pumped hydro, compressed air, hydrogen, thermal storage, magnetic storage and flywheels are all viable options depending on the specific requirements and all of them have been scaled up to utility grade storage facilities... and storage is nowhere near as critical for renewable energy as everyone seems to think.
And that also would require replacing and redesigning much of the world's power grids.
No, it wouldn't.
=Smidge=
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
Levelized cost, which includes the cost of building, operating, maintaining and decommissioning the facility.
This may not bear any sensible correlation to the price your utility charges you, depending on how dickish they feel that can get away with being.
=Smidge=
Tesla has dozens of service stations around the country, and partners with existing local shops. In cases like this, it's even possible that a Tesla technician will be sent to your home or wherever to handle the problem; they already offer on-site service for an additional fee, so they are equipped to do it.
I think they've considered service coverage and have a plan to handle it.
=Smidge=
One of the higher estimates is, since the 1850s, we've extracted about 125 billion tons of oil.
According to the summary, Greenland alone has lost over 600 trillion pounds - or 300 billion tons. That's *just* Greenland.
I think ice water redistribution has oil extraction beat by at least an order of magnitude, easily.
=Smidge=
Good luck with that. Someone somewhere with oil will decide they need money, and they will go forth and make some with it.
Except that's not going to work if there's no market for it.
Earlier this year the cost of producing bitumen (tar sands oil) exceeded the market value. The plants remained in operation only because they were gambling that the price would rise again and the cost of shutting down/restarting everything would be greater than a potential short-term loss. Tar sands oil is currently a financial loser.
Now imagine what would happen if the market crashed again due to lack of demand. You really think they'd keep it up?
Also, historically, OPEC has colluded to DECREASE production for the sake of stabilizing the price. The only reason they haven't done so lately is (I'm speculating) to hurt non OPEC producers. If that's true, it's working.
=Smidge=
Very little of our electricity comes from oil, so there actually isn't much infrastructure for it. It's also not very cost effective especially with the price of oil being so volatile.
So why not divert the oil into not pumping it out of the ground in the first place until we need it?
=Smidge=
It appears "small" cars account for a disproportionately small segment of total vehicle sales, though;
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/publ...
So sure, you can argue that the average price is skewed because a lot of larger, more expensive vehicles are included. However, the larger, more expensive vehicles also seem to sell more. Perhaps the average sell price and average paid price aren't so different after all.
In fact, since light duty trucks (which includes pickups and SUVs) outsell passenger cars (Small, midsize and luxury), I'd wager that the average amount people spend on a new car is actually *higher* than the average sticker price.
=Smidge=
Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, and even if only a relatively small proportion of them are screwed (realistically, MOST people will be screwed...) it's a safe bet that problems will persist for *many* generations.
Sea level rise alone stands to displace over a billion people, and that doesn't account for all of the other problems like violent weather and impacts to food and fresh water supplies.
I don't think "billions" is at all histrionic, or even much of an exaggeration.
=Smidge=
In so far as there are no founding principles or higher laws (In the case of the US, the Constitution and Federal law) then that's the risk inherent in a democratic system.
And, like it or not, it is exactly how this country has been run since its inception. "Tyranny of the masses" is already the status quot, and it takes quite a lot of effort to establish a higher (read: Federal) law to overcome it.
Of course, you have unwittingly equated requiring manufacturers to inform consumers what's in their products to *tyranny* ... so I'm not sure how serious your point deserves to be considered.
=Smidge=
It's not that easy because they probably don't employ that many people directly. (This is also why it's kinda stupid to call them "job creators"). Businesses are legally and financially separate entities. The business pays the employees, not the business owners.
=Smidge=
You'll still have eight wires.
With an RJ-45 connector, properly installed, the outer insulating jacket of the cable is inside the head of the connector. All eight wires AND the jacket are crimped at the same time, so the jacket takes the strain if the cable is pulled on.
If you have two "layers" of wires, I don't know how you'd crimp that on at all in a single operation.
=Smidge=
One of the reasons, I think, that the RJ-45 connector has lasted so long is it's very easy to field install. A bag of cable ends and a relatively inexpensive crimp tool is all you need, and the wires are easy to insert. Making a connector that's appreciably smaller would make field installation of ends that much more difficult.
Introduce a new standard and now you'll need new cables (wall jacks to device) or adapters (cables to device) to keep new things interchangeable with existing things. That doesn't simplify anything.
That's assuming it CAN be made smaller, given the cable is unlikely to change.
=Smidge=
Sometimes they are, but the key things is that they are voluntary and not required by law
The FDA has a pretty long list of requirements for food labeling, including but not limited to identifying what's in the package.
I literally said exactly how in my post. There is a certain list of things you avoid, or by explicitly labeled as non-GMO variants. That's how you do it.
What you actually said was, people should avoid anything that MIGHT be a GMO. (The words you used were "reasonably assume"). Good luck avoiding things that contain corn, rice and wheat.
=Smidge=
for safety purposes
Not that it matters WHY, but what makes you think that it's a safety concern?
It could be out of environmental concern, since a lot of GMO crops are made to allow use or more pesticides and herbicides.
Or it could be out of concern that the companies that produce GMOs end up having an effective monopoly on the crops, since it's explicitly illegal to replant using seeds from the harvest... in other words, farmers have to buy more seed every crop cycle.
Or it could just be on general principle.
Safety is only one of several potential reasons why someone might not want to purchase foods made with GMOs.
=Smidge=
Except there's a slight but important difference: Kosher/Halal are about ingredients, which are already labeled on the packaging.
If a product contains "corn" you have no way of knowing what kind of corn.
I don't think it is too much to ask that those who do not wish to consume GE crops take responsibility for their own belief system like everyone else.
And how does one "take responsibility" if they do not have all the requisite information? What you are suggesting is that people just assume, which is not at all the same as being informed.
=Smidge=
...so it's okay if manufacturers lie just a little bit?
I understand that you're taking this position from the perspective that GMOs are harmless. It's not like labeling foods that contain or may contain traces of peanuts, where a small population are demonstrably, deathly allergic to peanuts. Let me say that I agree that GMOs (at least so far) do not pose any health threats.
However, there are reasons beyond health and safety that people might choose one product over another... even irrational reasons. For a "free market" to work, consumers need to be informed. Therefore manufacturers lying consumers *in any capacity* then that is, in my opinion, an injustice to the general population: how are the people who do not want GMOs in their foods supposed to have their voices heard in the "free market" if they can't tell what foods contain GMOs?
Enough people care if their foods contain GMOs that they got laws passed to require labeling. In a properly democratic society, that means food should require labeling regardless of if it makes sense or not. And since there are no higher or existing laws that overrule or prevent this requirement, guess what? I think manufacturers should label their products.
=Smidge=
So why should they charge people for entering a movie theater? One more person doesn't add to the cost of showing the movie... Really, it's kind of a silly proposition you're running with especially when applied to most other things.
Almost the entire cost of running a public transport system is independent of actual utilization.
That is demonstrably false any way you slice it. Yes, there is a fixed cost, but utilization incurs wear and tear on equipment, requires more man-hours of operator's time, requires more logistics support (more buses = more scheduling, coordination and support) and most importantly more energy. None of those things are free.
When you consider that a bus might easily be in service for 10-15 years or more, the lion's share of the total cost over that time is going to be maintenance and fuel... both of which will increase proportionally to utilization.
=Smidge=
The bus doesn't cost more because there's one more person on it
In a sense, it does.
Let's say that a bus carries 40 people. If you have 41 people that want to take the bus, that one passenger will "cost" an entire bus that otherwise would not be necessary. In this sense, each additional rider uses up capacity that will need to be expanded, albeit in discreet chunks of whole busloads.
Another way to think of it is that each individual fare is collected as proceeds towards covering the cost of an additional bus should the current one become full.
Or you can flip it around at a more traditional business model, and each fare collected is an attempt to recover the up-front cost of providing the bus in the first place.
=Smidge=
Let's suppose the standard will shape the qualification process for instructors, leading to instructors who spend far too much time in their own careers learning a standard instead of learning real math and how to teach it
Based on what the post you replied to said, I don't see how this could possibly be the case.
The "standard" only dictates what must be taught at a certain grade level, and not how it should be taught. From the teacher's perspective it's exactly the same as before since the school or state typically sets the curriculum requirements anyway.
=Smidge=
Dude, listen to yourself.
"is not restricted by the laws of thermodynamics"
Seriously?
" it neither uses temperature nor pressure of idealized gases to perform work"
Wrong. PV cells exploit the temperature difference between the surface of the sun and ambient. Black body radiation is an important part of the Shockley-Queisser limit, and is a major part of why concentrated PV is more efficient than flat panels.
If you have no temperature difference, then you have no net radiative transfer, and thus you have no potential for photon absorption, and thus no ability to extract useful work.
I'm sure you never learned this in whatever podunk high school intro to physics class you've had, but the laws of thermodynamics are not the same thing as gas laws. Efficiency of energy conversion as a function of the energy gradient is true regardless of the type of conversion or forms of energy involved. In ANY system, you need a source of energy ("high temperature") to tap into and a sink of energy ("low temperature") into which you can dump the excess entropy, and so keep the useful energy portion as work.
As such, ALL energy conversion systems are subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
Maybe not the gas laws, but absolutely the laws of thermodynamics. You'll note that Carnotâ(TM)s theorem has nothing in it about gasses...
=Smidge=
No, offline unexpectedly as in the whole plant goes down for three days because of some errant bird poop.
=Smidge=
"Night" is no more a failure of solar power than a scheduled shutdown is a failure of any other type of plant. The problem is when it goes offline unexpectedly, and in that respect solar is extremely reliable.
(Most people are not surprised by nightfall.)
=Smidge=