Hopefully they'll be smart and go for sustainable energy alternatives rather than turning their countryside upside-down in search of fossil fuels.
The latecomers to the modern energy economy have the advantage of other nation's experiences... Hopefully they also have the wisdom to exploit it. =Smidge=
This is not the whole story, and sort of misses the point.
By not buying coal power, it doesn't matter that it's fungible: You are creating a market for non-coal power. Every MWHr of coal power not purchased by the state of Oregon needs to be replaced with a MWHr from some other source.
It does necessarily not follow that other markets will simply offset the usage, either. Since generation capacity and usage must be matched, and it is safe to assume that the coal plant already operates at or near capacity for maximum economy, then by shrinking the market for coal power you are necessarily requiring more usage of non-coal power sources. This in turn incentivizes the construction of more non-coal power sources.
Finally, buy pledging to buy non-coal power, they are economically supporting existing non-coal producers while economically hurting coal producers. Faced with a shrinking markets, coal producers will have to lower their prices to get people to buy from them.
In fewer words: Electricity is not perfectly fungible, and purchasing strategies can influence the production market. =Smidge=
[1] If a thermodynamic system gets hotter as in you increase the temperature they get more efficient.
No: Thermodynamic efficiency is based on the DIFFERENCE in temperature.
You are trying so hard to salvage this you can't even get the basics right anymore. Nothing of what you said is even coherent. It's not even wrong. We're done here. =Smidge=
Paper money only has value because enough people think it does. People will be willing to give you things of tangible value (goods and services) in exchange for paper money and tin coin because they have confidence they can turn around and trade it for more goods and services from someone else at a later date.
Gold only has value because enough people think it does. Most people, however, will NOT be willing to accept gold in exchange for goods and services. In all but a handful of special cases you'll have to first convert that gold to an agreed upon currency first, possibly via some process that certifies the quantity and purity of the gold first.
Both paper money and gold are fiat currencies in this way: They have little or no intrinsic value, but instead serve as proxy of value. It's traded based on a level of trust that the per-unit-value will remain relatively stable (or increase) in the time it takes to turn around and trade it to someone else.
All of this is true for Cryptocurrencies as well. It has value because people want it, not because it's intrinsically valuable. If nobody wants it or is willing to accept it in trade, then it's worthless. You can't even burn it for warmth like paper money or make decorations and tableware out of it like you can with gold... it is absolutely devoid of intrinsic value. =Smidge=
Yes... someone edited a wiki article with incorrect information. Not only that, there's an entire page dedicated to the incorrect concept, including citations. The nerve of some people.
And the problem only gets worse! If you google "thermodynamics of photovoltaics" it seems hundreds, possibly thousands of researchers have been duped by a malicious wikipedia edit, publishing all sorts of scholarly papers analyzing photovoltaic cells from a thermodynamics perspective. Good lord, man, you should get a Nobel in Physics for your ground-breaking refutations!
Or... and hear me out on this... OR: You're wrong.
"Read a book" I believe was your advice. That's good advice, too; shame you apparently never practice what you preach. =Smidge=
No it is not. Especially it has nothing to do with "Laws of Thermodynamics" at all.
Solar PV cells are energy conversion devices and are absolutely subject to thermodynamic efficiency limits. At no point is the conversion of photon to electrical potential energy 100% efficient, nor can it be.
If photons below the band gap threshold can't be absorbed, that's just another problem hindering efficiency in a practical application.
And yes, the efficiency of a PV cell is dependent on temperature: Actively cooled panels perform better than passively cooled panels. Output voltage can vary by as much as 10-15% during winter-summer swings (higher in winter). Current for the same lighting intensity varies slightly in the opposite direction, but overall you get more power from cold panels all else being equal.
The theoretical limit of a single silicon P-N junction cell is ~32%. If you change the temperature of the material, the band gap changes and the efficiency changes accordingly. If you don't plan for that, you're likely going to have a very bad time. =Smidge=
1) That's not how capital investment works. You invest $x now with the goal of saving $(x+y) over some period of time, and this is not calculated on an hourly basis.
Even so, It doesn't matter if the panels aren't producing anything at night because they were never intended to, and that would not have been part of the calculus to begin with.
2) Peak electricity is often - particularly for commercial and industrial consumers - the most expensive. Solar is a great fit in these situations precisely because it directly offsets the most expensive costs.
3) Batteries COULD help, in two situations: You are producing more power than you need and can afford to store some of it for later, or the difference in peak vs off-peak power costs is great enough that it's more economical to recharge batteries from grid during off-peak hours for consumption during peak hours.
In the former case, you can often "use the grid" through net metering: KWh you put back into the grid are effectively credited to your account and the balance is allowed to go negative (meaning you put into the grid more than you've taken out). You can then use these "banked" KWh during other times, and the account is settled periodically (say, annually) when you pay the utility for a positive balance or they pay you for a negative balance.
For the latter, the difference would have to be pretty huge to make it worthwhile. it's more common where there is a very high power draw but not much total energy, which would result in a huge demand surcharge, but can be absorbed by a modest battery system. =Smidge=
The inefficiency is not in in photos going through un-absorbed, but a consequence of thermodynamics: Solar panels get hot, and heat reduces their efficiency. You can even see this effect in action: manufacturers publish data on their panels on how their open circuit voltage varies with temperature! This is important to know when designing systems since, on a really cold day, system voltages can get high enough to damage equipment if not taken into consideration.
IIRC the only work done on multi-layer PV was attempting to tune the cells to work optimally for specific wavelengths, and stacking very thin layers sensitive to different wavelengths in an attempt to capture a broader range of the spectrum. I don't think this has ever panned out since you don't hear much about it anymore. =Smidge=
Except for how you improperly applied capacity factor to power (GW) rather than energy (GWh), you're basically right.
For your next assignment, though. consider the time of day the power is generated with the time of day the power is used. For example, it's all fine and good that a nuclear plant can produce 1.1GW with 90% uptime, but you generally don't need 1.1GW all the time anyway. The result is your nuclear plant spends a lot of time very under-utilized - a bad thing considering how expensive they are.
On the other hand, solar tends to produce peak output right around the same time that demand is at peak... so even if it's only producing 15% of the time, every watt it produces counts towards shaving the peak loads. Nothing is wasted.
Then there's something like Wind, where it's so plentiful that it's not unheard of for producers to offer negativeprices to encourage people to use it all. =Smidge=
The students are essentially the customers: They pay for the benefit of getting an education... or at least for the opportunity to get an education (they may completely waste that opportunity...)
Because of corporate inertia, mostly. There's too much money to be made in the status quot and the risks to breaking out into a new market are not clear enough for some.
For others, however, it's clearly the way forward. Nissan in particular has bet a lot on electric cars being a sizable market segment and have been making good progress despite being one of the first to really stick their necks out.
Tell me, do you have an electric car?
No, but then again I've owned my current car for about 10 years and it's still in great shape. I've never advocated junking a perfectly good car for new and shiny.
However, my next car will absolutely be electric. It's a question of when, not if.
Would you buy a Tesla without the ability to charge it anywhere?
If I didn't have the ability to charge an electric car, I would think twice about buying *any* car - because that would mean I don't have access to electricity, which implies I don't even have a place to live. So I guess the answer to your question is "No" but not for the reasons you wanted it to be.
I see electric cars constantly, and I do see e-Golfs around the place.
This statement conflicts with things you've said earlier. So where you being a disingenuous dickhead previously, or are you lying now?
On the other hand someone cheated on regulations. Are you saying your regulations and regulatory bodies have no teeth?
The teeth are in forcing the manufacturers to act a certain way, like producing a product that meets specific requirements.
You are now simultaneously complaining about a regulatory agency not having teeth AND that same regulatory agency using its teeth to force manufacturers into compliance with the law. Can't have it both ways, bub. =Smidge=
Maybe they have a product but aren't selling it because it is no viable or finished?
It is finished. It's on the market, but only if you happen to live in on the of the handful of places that sells it. Even if you find a dealer what sells them, you'll have to ask for it explicitly and they'll probably try to sell you something else anyway.
The government should not be dictating the technology used, they should be dictating the goals and letting manufacturers chose the technology.
They DID set the goals, and the manufacturers cheated. So now the manufacturers blew their chance and they get more restrictions. Good, I say.
Nothing good ever comes from stifling potential innovation by telling someone what to design.
Well, good thing that's not at all what's being discussed then, huh? =Smidge=
VW has been teasing an all-electric Golf for a few years now, including auto show appearances, but has been dragging their feet bringing it to market. The 2016 e-Golf is only available at select dealers in a handful of states.
They *have* the product, they just aren't selling it 'cause their bread-n-butter is internal combustion. So the choice is a few billion in fines, or a few billion in getting serious about selling electric cars....and the fine won't do anything to offset the environmental damage done, which is what the requirements were for in the first place. It's not only an equitable solution, it's a logical one that actually fulfills the purpose of the law that was broken. =Smidge=
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "They don't get the laundry detergent out of the water" ? here's a rinse cycle for that. I WOULD be interested in the analysis you mentioned, if you could manage to find it again. Sounds interesting.
I don't use perfumed detergents (or dryer sheets, for that matter) and I'm still extremely confident my clothes get cleaned. At least as good as hand washing.
Fraudulent safety certifications - which was the focus of my example - are a non-problem?
How many millions of dollars in property damage, and how many people need to die, before the problem is big enough for the free market to act?
Or are you just being deliberately obtuse to the point being made so you don't have to admit that free market ideology is completely bankrupt in the face of reality? =Smidge=
Don't confuse "does not address" with "cannot address". It does not address the issue -now- because the issue is trivial.
This is a flat assertion on your part. You're making a few assumptions common to the "free market solutions" point of view:
1) Consumers are properly informed. (They are not.) 2) Consumers are properly aware of what is in their best interest. (They generally are not.) 3) Manufacturers have no vested interest in hiding or manipulating information from consumers. (They clearly do.) 4) Either manufacturers or Consumers are properly aware of, and care about, what is in the COLLECTIVE interest.
Consider the existing issue of UL or equivalent ratings on devices. Many devices fraudulently show listed stickers/emblems where no such certification exists. Consumers are not properly informed (there is no way to verify if a certification is real), they do not understand the importance f these ratings (assuming NOT having one's house burn down or getting electrocuted is favorable to most consumers), and manufacturers have a vested interest in hiding the truth (what few consumers and resellers that MIGHT know about the certifications could possibly be fooled by false markings, and real certs cost money).
Real world "free markets" are absolutely powerless to combat this, as evidenced by the fact that it happens routinely and there is nothing preventing the free market from doing so. The ONLY THING that can possibly be even remotely effective is an independent authority to check, verify and enforces proper labeling of products, preventing distribution of fraudulently labeled devices and levying punitive fines where possible.
Only because the government has deemed it so. If the government would actually do its job and issue licenses for nuclear power plants then it might not be so expensive.
False. Setting aside the fact that you have no way to demonstrate that the high cost is in any way related to the number of plants being built, the US government has actually been trying to encourage development of civilian nuclear power for the past few decades;
If licenses are being withheld it's because of technical and economic deficiencies, not malice.
As opposed to what?
As opposed to renewable alternatives. The elephant in the room is the waste these plants produce, which nobody wants to take responsibility for and we have no reliable way of dealing with. Beyond that, the environmental damage done during the mining and refining of the fuel is often overlooked, as is the immediate local impact of having such a large plant in one location due to thermal pollution.
I recognize nuclear power as an important component of a sustainable and environmentally conscious future, but it has more than it's fair share of problems that many people are too willing to overlook.
The reason the wall warts are considered inefficient is because they were made cheaper than a more efficient model.
No, the reason wall warts are considered inefficient is because they generally ARE inefficient. Older transformer based units are likely under 50%, while quality switchmode units probably get into the 80% range. That's pretty terrible. Depending on their design they might have horrible power factors, too.
I find your faith in government disturbing. More government is not the solution to every problem.
Neither is deregulation. Of course, if roughly half of the country's population wasn't actively trying to sabotage the government it might actually have a chance to do it s job properly... =Smidge=
Look at the dubious results of lowering the standards on washing machines - so now they don't clean all that well.
They don't? Honest skepticism here - it's pretty hard to screw up "soak cloth in water and detergent, agitate, drain and rinse"..
In any event, the devices will still put out X watts of power; manufacturers will just need to put an extra fifty cents worth of components into it to make them more efficient. Given how long wall-wart chargers last in the consumer market it'll probably be about five years until the vast majority of them are the new, efficient type. =Smidge=
1) Nuclear power is stupidly expensive and environmentally dubious.
2) Improving efficiency would reduce power requirements, which not only would reduce the size and quantity of power plants required (regardless of type) but also improves economics in other ways.
3) Quite frankly, given the potential for abuse, environmental damage and public health hazards posed by nuclear power, government regulation is really the ONLY solution that would have sufficient clout and impartiality to be even remotely effective. Power plants have essentially zero incentive to do things properly, and huge financial incentive to cut corners that could result in severe and widespread problems. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully they'll be smart and go for sustainable energy alternatives rather than turning their countryside upside-down in search of fossil fuels.
The latecomers to the modern energy economy have the advantage of other nation's experiences... Hopefully they also have the wisdom to exploit it.
=Smidge=
This is not the whole story, and sort of misses the point.
By not buying coal power, it doesn't matter that it's fungible: You are creating a market for non-coal power. Every MWHr of coal power not purchased by the state of Oregon needs to be replaced with a MWHr from some other source.
It does necessarily not follow that other markets will simply offset the usage, either. Since generation capacity and usage must be matched, and it is safe to assume that the coal plant already operates at or near capacity for maximum economy, then by shrinking the market for coal power you are necessarily requiring more usage of non-coal power sources. This in turn incentivizes the construction of more non-coal power sources.
Finally, buy pledging to buy non-coal power, they are economically supporting existing non-coal producers while economically hurting coal producers. Faced with a shrinking markets, coal producers will have to lower their prices to get people to buy from them.
In fewer words: Electricity is not perfectly fungible, and purchasing strategies can influence the production market.
=Smidge=
And hydro is the only power source cheaper than coal.
...except for natural gas, geothermal and wind.
=Smidge=
[1] If a thermodynamic system gets hotter as in you increase the temperature they get more efficient.
No: Thermodynamic efficiency is based on the DIFFERENCE in temperature.
You are trying so hard to salvage this you can't even get the basics right anymore. Nothing of what you said is even coherent. It's not even wrong. We're done here.
=Smidge=
Paper money only has value because enough people think it does. People will be willing to give you things of tangible value (goods and services) in exchange for paper money and tin coin because they have confidence they can turn around and trade it for more goods and services from someone else at a later date.
Gold only has value because enough people think it does. Most people, however, will NOT be willing to accept gold in exchange for goods and services. In all but a handful of special cases you'll have to first convert that gold to an agreed upon currency first, possibly via some process that certifies the quantity and purity of the gold first.
Both paper money and gold are fiat currencies in this way: They have little or no intrinsic value, but instead serve as proxy of value. It's traded based on a level of trust that the per-unit-value will remain relatively stable (or increase) in the time it takes to turn around and trade it to someone else.
All of this is true for Cryptocurrencies as well. It has value because people want it, not because it's intrinsically valuable. If nobody wants it or is willing to accept it in trade, then it's worthless. You can't even burn it for warmth like paper money or make decorations and tableware out of it like you can with gold... it is absolutely devoid of intrinsic value.
=Smidge=
In fact, let me even offer a book to read:
Physics of Solar Cells: From Basic Principles to Advanced Concepts
Peter Wurfel
Wiley Publishing, ISBN: 978-3-527-40857
Enjoy!
=Smidge=
Yes... someone edited a wiki article with incorrect information. Not only that, there's an entire page dedicated to the incorrect concept, including citations. The nerve of some people.
And the problem only gets worse! If you google "thermodynamics of photovoltaics" it seems hundreds, possibly thousands of researchers have been duped by a malicious wikipedia edit, publishing all sorts of scholarly papers analyzing photovoltaic cells from a thermodynamics perspective. Good lord, man, you should get a Nobel in Physics for your ground-breaking refutations!
Or... and hear me out on this... OR: You're wrong.
"Read a book" I believe was your advice. That's good advice, too; shame you apparently never practice what you preach.
=Smidge=
Well if you see fit to use Wikipedia as a reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"However, solar cells operate as quantum energy conversion devices, and are therefore subject to the "thermodynamic efficiency limit"."
Click through the link in the article for more.
=Smidge=
No it is not. Especially it has nothing to do with "Laws of Thermodynamics" at all.
Solar PV cells are energy conversion devices and are absolutely subject to thermodynamic efficiency limits. At no point is the conversion of photon to electrical potential energy 100% efficient, nor can it be.
If photons below the band gap threshold can't be absorbed, that's just another problem hindering efficiency in a practical application.
And yes, the efficiency of a PV cell is dependent on temperature: Actively cooled panels perform better than passively cooled panels. Output voltage can vary by as much as 10-15% during winter-summer swings (higher in winter). Current for the same lighting intensity varies slightly in the opposite direction, but overall you get more power from cold panels all else being equal.
The theoretical limit of a single silicon P-N junction cell is ~32%. If you change the temperature of the material, the band gap changes and the efficiency changes accordingly. If you don't plan for that, you're likely going to have a very bad time.
=Smidge=
1) That's not how capital investment works. You invest $x now with the goal of saving $(x+y) over some period of time, and this is not calculated on an hourly basis.
Even so, It doesn't matter if the panels aren't producing anything at night because they were never intended to, and that would not have been part of the calculus to begin with.
2) Peak electricity is often - particularly for commercial and industrial consumers - the most expensive. Solar is a great fit in these situations precisely because it directly offsets the most expensive costs.
3) Batteries COULD help, in two situations: You are producing more power than you need and can afford to store some of it for later, or the difference in peak vs off-peak power costs is great enough that it's more economical to recharge batteries from grid during off-peak hours for consumption during peak hours.
In the former case, you can often "use the grid" through net metering: KWh you put back into the grid are effectively credited to your account and the balance is allowed to go negative (meaning you put into the grid more than you've taken out). You can then use these "banked" KWh during other times, and the account is settled periodically (say, annually) when you pay the utility for a positive balance or they pay you for a negative balance.
For the latter, the difference would have to be pretty huge to make it worthwhile. it's more common where there is a very high power draw but not much total energy, which would result in a huge demand surcharge, but can be absorbed by a modest battery system.
=Smidge=
The inefficiency is not in in photos going through un-absorbed, but a consequence of thermodynamics: Solar panels get hot, and heat reduces their efficiency. You can even see this effect in action: manufacturers publish data on their panels on how their open circuit voltage varies with temperature! This is important to know when designing systems since, on a really cold day, system voltages can get high enough to damage equipment if not taken into consideration.
IIRC the only work done on multi-layer PV was attempting to tune the cells to work optimally for specific wavelengths, and stacking very thin layers sensitive to different wavelengths in an attempt to capture a broader range of the spectrum. I don't think this has ever panned out since you don't hear much about it anymore.
=Smidge=
Except for how you improperly applied capacity factor to power (GW) rather than energy (GWh), you're basically right.
For your next assignment, though. consider the time of day the power is generated with the time of day the power is used. For example, it's all fine and good that a nuclear plant can produce 1.1GW with 90% uptime, but you generally don't need 1.1GW all the time anyway. The result is your nuclear plant spends a lot of time very under-utilized - a bad thing considering how expensive they are.
On the other hand, solar tends to produce peak output right around the same time that demand is at peak... so even if it's only producing 15% of the time, every watt it produces counts towards shaving the peak loads. Nothing is wasted.
Then there's something like Wind, where it's so plentiful that it's not unheard of for producers to offer negative prices to encourage people to use it all.
=Smidge=
The students are essentially the customers: They pay for the benefit of getting an education... or at least for the opportunity to get an education (they may completely waste that opportunity...)
=Smidge=
I wonder why that is?
Because of corporate inertia, mostly. There's too much money to be made in the status quot and the risks to breaking out into a new market are not clear enough for some.
For others, however, it's clearly the way forward. Nissan in particular has bet a lot on electric cars being a sizable market segment and have been making good progress despite being one of the first to really stick their necks out.
Tell me, do you have an electric car?
No, but then again I've owned my current car for about 10 years and it's still in great shape. I've never advocated junking a perfectly good car for new and shiny.
However, my next car will absolutely be electric. It's a question of when, not if.
Would you buy a Tesla without the ability to charge it anywhere?
If I didn't have the ability to charge an electric car, I would think twice about buying *any* car - because that would mean I don't have access to electricity, which implies I don't even have a place to live. So I guess the answer to your question is "No" but not for the reasons you wanted it to be.
I see electric cars constantly, and I do see e-Golfs around the place.
This statement conflicts with things you've said earlier. So where you being a disingenuous dickhead previously, or are you lying now?
On the other hand someone cheated on regulations. Are you saying your regulations and regulatory bodies have no teeth?
The teeth are in forcing the manufacturers to act a certain way, like producing a product that meets specific requirements.
You are now simultaneously complaining about a regulatory agency not having teeth AND that same regulatory agency using its teeth to force manufacturers into compliance with the law. Can't have it both ways, bub.
=Smidge=
Maybe they have a product but aren't selling it because it is no viable or finished?
It is finished. It's on the market, but only if you happen to live in on the of the handful of places that sells it. Even if you find a dealer what sells them, you'll have to ask for it explicitly and they'll probably try to sell you something else anyway.
The government should not be dictating the technology used, they should be dictating the goals and letting manufacturers chose the technology.
They DID set the goals, and the manufacturers cheated. So now the manufacturers blew their chance and they get more restrictions. Good, I say.
Nothing good ever comes from stifling potential innovation by telling someone what to design.
Well, good thing that's not at all what's being discussed then, huh?
=Smidge=
Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy then, isn't it?
=Smidge=
The typical electric vehicle battery pack - a lithium technology - uses no rare earth metals.
Don't confuse it with NiMH cells which often do use rare earth metals.
=Smidge=
Except it wouldn't be a new product.
VW has been teasing an all-electric Golf for a few years now, including auto show appearances, but has been dragging their feet bringing it to market. The 2016 e-Golf is only available at select dealers in a handful of states.
They *have* the product, they just aren't selling it 'cause their bread-n-butter is internal combustion. So the choice is a few billion in fines, or a few billion in getting serious about selling electric cars. ...and the fine won't do anything to offset the environmental damage done, which is what the requirements were for in the first place. It's not only an equitable solution, it's a logical one that actually fulfills the purpose of the law that was broken.
=Smidge=
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "They don't get the laundry detergent out of the water" ? here's a rinse cycle for that. I WOULD be interested in the analysis you mentioned, if you could manage to find it again. Sounds interesting.
I don't use perfumed detergents (or dryer sheets, for that matter) and I'm still extremely confident my clothes get cleaned. At least as good as hand washing.
Maybe you're not using it properly?
=Smidge=
Fraudulent safety certifications - which was the focus of my example - are a non-problem?
How many millions of dollars in property damage, and how many people need to die, before the problem is big enough for the free market to act?
Or are you just being deliberately obtuse to the point being made so you don't have to admit that free market ideology is completely bankrupt in the face of reality?
=Smidge=
Don't confuse "does not address" with "cannot address". It does not address the issue -now- because the issue is trivial.
This is a flat assertion on your part. You're making a few assumptions common to the "free market solutions" point of view:
1) Consumers are properly informed. (They are not.)
2) Consumers are properly aware of what is in their best interest. (They generally are not.)
3) Manufacturers have no vested interest in hiding or manipulating information from consumers. (They clearly do.)
4) Either manufacturers or Consumers are properly aware of, and care about, what is in the COLLECTIVE interest.
Consider the existing issue of UL or equivalent ratings on devices. Many devices fraudulently show listed stickers/emblems where no such certification exists. Consumers are not properly informed (there is no way to verify if a certification is real), they do not understand the importance f these ratings (assuming NOT having one's house burn down or getting electrocuted is favorable to most consumers), and manufacturers have a vested interest in hiding the truth (what few consumers and resellers that MIGHT know about the certifications could possibly be fooled by false markings, and real certs cost money).
Real world "free markets" are absolutely powerless to combat this, as evidenced by the fact that it happens routinely and there is nothing preventing the free market from doing so. The ONLY THING that can possibly be even remotely effective is an independent authority to check, verify and enforces proper labeling of products, preventing distribution of fraudulently labeled devices and levying punitive fines where possible.
We call such an authority "Government."
=Smidge=
Only because the government has deemed it so. If the government would actually do its job and issue licenses for nuclear power plants then it might not be so expensive.
False. Setting aside the fact that you have no way to demonstrate that the high cost is in any way related to the number of plants being built, the US government has actually been trying to encourage development of civilian nuclear power for the past few decades;
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
If licenses are being withheld it's because of technical and economic deficiencies, not malice.
As opposed to what?
As opposed to renewable alternatives. The elephant in the room is the waste these plants produce, which nobody wants to take responsibility for and we have no reliable way of dealing with. Beyond that, the environmental damage done during the mining and refining of the fuel is often overlooked, as is the immediate local impact of having such a large plant in one location due to thermal pollution.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
I recognize nuclear power as an important component of a sustainable and environmentally conscious future, but it has more than it's fair share of problems that many people are too willing to overlook.
The reason the wall warts are considered inefficient is because they were made cheaper than a more efficient model.
No, the reason wall warts are considered inefficient is because they generally ARE inefficient. Older transformer based units are likely under 50%, while quality switchmode units probably get into the 80% range. That's pretty terrible. Depending on their design they might have horrible power factors, too.
I find your faith in government disturbing. More government is not the solution to every problem.
Neither is deregulation. Of course, if roughly half of the country's population wasn't actively trying to sabotage the government it might actually have a chance to do it s job properly...
=Smidge=
Look at the dubious results of lowering the standards on washing machines - so now they don't clean all that well.
They don't? Honest skepticism here - it's pretty hard to screw up "soak cloth in water and detergent, agitate, drain and rinse" ..
In any event, the devices will still put out X watts of power; manufacturers will just need to put an extra fifty cents worth of components into it to make them more efficient. Given how long wall-wart chargers last in the consumer market it'll probably be about five years until the vast majority of them are the new, efficient type.
=Smidge=
1) Nuclear power is stupidly expensive and environmentally dubious.
2) Improving efficiency would reduce power requirements, which not only would reduce the size and quantity of power plants required (regardless of type) but also improves economics in other ways.
3) Quite frankly, given the potential for abuse, environmental damage and public health hazards posed by nuclear power, government regulation is really the ONLY solution that would have sufficient clout and impartiality to be even remotely effective. Power plants have essentially zero incentive to do things properly, and huge financial incentive to cut corners that could result in severe and widespread problems.
=Smidge=
And what is the window being broken in this situation? What is being destroyed?
=Smidge=