Recycling is great, but that doesn't help if the amount of copper/aluminum in use is ever increasing, since you're still liable to run out regardless of how much unused material is recycled.
The report (link to report proper is in the page linked above) was put together by "The Global Warming Policy Foundation" - a known organization of AGW denialists. It speaks volumes that the only sites that reference the report as an authoritative source are other AGW-denying blogs and websites. Combined with the fact that the report you cite flies contrary to dozens of other reports and technical analyses, you should be really quite suspicious about an ulterior agenda. =Smidge=
And also in my defense, the original post was asking "in the foreseeable future"... 200+ million years is not what any normal person would consider "the foreseeable future.":P
SolarCity is under investigation for pricing shenanigans. Basically they overstate the installed cost of the system in order to cash in on larger direct subsidies and tax incentives. They all do it to some degree, because all that paperwork has to be filed WAY ahead of time and only an estimated job cost is available, but some do it worse than others...
Now overall they probably do good work... just a bit sleazy on the finances when it comes to public funds. =Smidge=
It's called surge. Even your 150W fridge can draw quite a lot of juice when it first starts up. If you don't have the power to handle it, something is not going to be happy. I have a small 750W generator that can't run my 200W fridge because the fridge draws nearly 1500W to get going. It's only for less than a second but the little genny just can't handle it.
Another real-life example: Compressed natural gas fueling site. Two compressors, each with a 250HP electric motor (translates to 300A at 480V 3-phase, plus incidental loads like cooling fans for roughly 350A). Designing engineer calculated a 1200A generator would be enough, based only on the continuous run load and neglecting the 1400A surge these fuckers draw at startup. Needless to say the town - which has a fleet of roughly 40 CNG garbage trucks that were working triple-shifts in the wake of Sandy - was not terribly happy that they could only just barely run one of their compressors for the week they were without power... =Smidge=
Any grid-tie inverter system is required by the National Electric Code to disconnect the PV system in the event of utility power loss. You can not legally install a system that doesn't in any location that uses the NEC (which would be essentially the entire United States...)
What you CAN do, however, is install an AC coupling inverter. These devices are AC-DC-AC converters, so grid power gets converted to DC before being inverted back into AC for final usage. These boxes are essentially magic in their ability to seamlessly integrate utility, generator, battery and PV power. Power goes out? You can safely use a battery system or portable generator to get your PV array back into production. They are a bit pricey but if you're serious about having both grid-tie and island operation then they are well worth looking into. =Smidge=
Not to mention the fact that any disaster which would take out the local power lines will most likely destroy your fancy solar panels at the same time.
Why do people keep saying this? Tree down the road falls over, takes out the feed for the block. How will that damage panels on my roof?
Meanwhile, I was without power for two weeks following Sandy, and gasoline was scarce immediately after (most gas stations that had power, or had the foresight to rent a generator, were out of fuel within a day) and almost impossible to find within a few days. =Smidge=
So you need gas for your car. You get yourself a one-gallon graduated container and visit every gas station within a 2-mile radius, testing their pumps and calculating the true $/gallon at each one.
The problem with this (besides the obvious huge waste of fuel, time wasted, and your vehicle basically being full by the time you've found the best deal) is there is no guarantee all pumps at a particular station are tampered with or that the degree of tampering is constant from day to day. In this hypothetical world where you cannot be sure is a gas pump is dispensing correctly it would be neigh impossible to determine.
For example, if I was an asshole gas station operator in this situation, I'd make try to set it up such that the first one or two gallons are spot-on, perhaps even slightly generous, then the count slowly drifts after that. So the first gallon and the second gallons is 1.00 gallons, but from the third gallon on you're only getting 0.90 or whatever. This would be totally impractical to detect and if I do it carefully it'll be very difficult to catch. =Smidge=
The funds "go into the general fund" by way of the Treasury Bonds. congress has no control over how much money is involved in this transaction since they have no control over the SS surplus. Also, Clinton's surpluses could not have included SSA bond buying since this shows up as a DEBT in the records, due to the treasury bond proxy required to get the funds out. Roughly $2.7 trillion of our national debt (over 16%!) is owed to the SSA.
Nothing I said was untrue. You, however, are insinuating that congress can just stick their hands into the trust fund's coffers any time they wish. THAT is a lie. =Smidge=
Like any other trust fund, Social Security is able to invest portions of the fund to increase its value. The SSA buys special, non-public treasury bonds as a means of investment. This has the net effect of loaning money to the federal government, but it is a loan that, believe it or not, the government is obligated to pay back when the bonds mature.
Congress is not forcing the SSA to buy those bills, so it has no control over how much in bonds are purchased and therefore no control over how much money they can borrow. So this is entirely unlike congress spending or putting money into the SSTF. =Smidge=
Money collected from any means other than Social Security withholdings cannot be used fro Social Security payments, nor can money collected for Social Security be used for any other purpose.
Unfortunately, 3D printer materials are generally not very strong, and have very poor dimensional stability at warmer temperatures.
This has not been my personal experience. 3D printed parts tend to have a "Grain" which might make them weaker than an injection molded plastic part of the same material, but that same grain makes them stronger in the other directions. This is simply something to consider when designing the part for printing.
And I suppose it really depends on what you mean by "warmer temperatures" if you want to talk about dimensional stability. =Smidge=
The only reason this MIGHT compete with solar is the ability to store the thermal energy overnight. Storing heat (as molten salt or hot oil) is easier and less expensive than batteries to store electricity.
That said, this seems like an awfully inefficient way to go about it and there are already solar thermal plants of different varieties that are commercial-scale, more efficient and less Rube Goldberg-y. I can't see any sensible way to get the oil out of the cylinder without high pressure purge, and if there's that much pressure left it the cylinder then you're just wasting power. What's wrong with flash-steaming the water OUTSIDE the cylinder? =Smidge=
The spirit of your analogy is appreciated, automated milking machines are becoming popular that the cows are free to use all by themselves any time they want.
I never assert anything about individual circuits. I said "finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when."
The Kill-A-Watt is not a single circuit device. At best it's a single OUTLET device. There can be any number of things connected into the same circuit through different outlets that the Kill-A-Watt will not measure. It's ideal for examining individual small appliances but that's about it.
The TED device installs on the main feed to the panel and measures power usage. You then turn on and off individual devices and the system records second-by-second power usage and other information. This enables you to do the same thing as running around the house with a Kill-A-Watt - providing what is effectively device-level monitoring - except you don't have to unplug anything and it works for any load rather than just 120V at 15A. =Smidge=
Okay, well... most people in the US have 240V split phase service, so you'll need a clamp-on meter for each leg. Of course you'll have no way of knowing if the peak current measured by each meter occurred at the same time, since you won't know when it happened. You'll also only have peak data which could easily be 10 or 15 times your typical load. Basically you learn a whole lot of nothing, assuming you can get the meters to stay on long enough since they usually turn off after a few minutes or so.
The only way to collect useful data is on a per-circuit basis, which is marginally better than a Kill-A-Watt since at least you can get 240V loads and things over 15A. The tradeoff is a lot more rooting around in the power panel and a lot more manual mathematics and guesswork. =Smidge=
A kill-a-watt is nice (I got myself one) but it's only good for things you can plug in through it that draw 15A or less.
If you're really serious about finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when, I can suggest a somewhat more expensive Energy Detective system that installs in your main electric panel. =Smidge=
This is for grid-level storage, not in-your-home backup. Space and weight are a distant concern compared to cost.
There is an important concept called demand (or load) leveling. How much electricity the grid demands changes significantly over the course of the day, so you much design your power plants and infrastructure to handle the peak load. However the peak load is only experienced a small fraction of the time, meaning you are considerably overbuilt for maybe 16 to 18 hours of the day - especially late at night when most people sleep. The problem is so severe that many utility providers offer Time-Of-Use rates where electricity during off-peak hours is considerably cheaper (and on-peak considerably more expensive) to encourage people and businesses to use less during the day and more at night.
Batteries connect to the grid though a charge controlling inverter - a single piece of equipment. During the off-peak hours they absorb excess energy by charging, meaning the generation equipment runs more efficiently and more economically. During peak hours they release the energy decreasing the demand on the system so it doesn't have to be so overbuilt and therefore less expensive to maintain and operate.
The process of shifting load from peak to off-peak is sometimes referred to "filling the bathtub" and utility providers love it since it makes their lives much easier. Battery storage is a great way to achieve this at the grid level and anyone who manages to develop a cost effective solution stands to make a LOT of money selling and installing such systems. =Smidge=
I'm sure all those houses that burned down in Queens had piles of batteries laying around, that's what caused the fire. I'm also sure it's impossible for a normal car without a HV battery pack to catch fire for any reason, including flooding.
Slashdot Mirror
Recycling is great, but that doesn't help if the amount of copper/aluminum in use is ever increasing, since you're still liable to run out regardless of how much unused material is recycled.
=Smidge=
http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/study-on-turbine-lifespan-just-more-anti-wind-propaganda/
The report (link to report proper is in the page linked above) was put together by "The Global Warming Policy Foundation" - a known organization of AGW denialists. It speaks volumes that the only sites that reference the report as an authoritative source are other AGW-denying blogs and websites. Combined with the fact that the report you cite flies contrary to dozens of other reports and technical analyses, you should be really quite suspicious about an ulterior agenda.
=Smidge=
And also in my defense, the original post was asking "in the foreseeable future" ... 200+ million years is not what any normal person would consider "the foreseeable future." :P
=Smidge=
The sun isn't getting hotter. Water vapor isn't light enough to escape Earth's gravity well in any appreciable quantity. Plate tectonics are driven by convection currents in the Earth's mantel, not the oceans, and if anything the (extremely unlikely) ceasing of tectonic activity would decrease CO2 emissions.
=Smidge=
Those paid higher than the minimum wage simply take advantage of the labor of those paid less and get more 'stuff' in life.
Like quality food, and education for their children, and medical care...
=Smidge=
SolarCity is under investigation for pricing shenanigans. Basically they overstate the installed cost of the system in order to cash in on larger direct subsidies and tax incentives. They all do it to some degree, because all that paperwork has to be filed WAY ahead of time and only an estimated job cost is available, but some do it worse than others...
Now overall they probably do good work... just a bit sleazy on the finances when it comes to public funds.
=Smidge=
It's called surge. Even your 150W fridge can draw quite a lot of juice when it first starts up. If you don't have the power to handle it, something is not going to be happy. I have a small 750W generator that can't run my 200W fridge because the fridge draws nearly 1500W to get going. It's only for less than a second but the little genny just can't handle it.
Another real-life example: Compressed natural gas fueling site. Two compressors, each with a 250HP electric motor (translates to 300A at 480V 3-phase, plus incidental loads like cooling fans for roughly 350A). Designing engineer calculated a 1200A generator would be enough, based only on the continuous run load and neglecting the 1400A surge these fuckers draw at startup. Needless to say the town - which has a fleet of roughly 40 CNG garbage trucks that were working triple-shifts in the wake of Sandy - was not terribly happy that they could only just barely run one of their compressors for the week they were without power...
=Smidge=
Any grid-tie inverter system is required by the National Electric Code to disconnect the PV system in the event of utility power loss. You can not legally install a system that doesn't in any location that uses the NEC (which would be essentially the entire United States...)
What you CAN do, however, is install an AC coupling inverter. These devices are AC-DC-AC converters, so grid power gets converted to DC before being inverted back into AC for final usage. These boxes are essentially magic in their ability to seamlessly integrate utility, generator, battery and PV power. Power goes out? You can safely use a battery system or portable generator to get your PV array back into production. They are a bit pricey but if you're serious about having both grid-tie and island operation then they are well worth looking into.
=Smidge=
Not to mention the fact that any disaster which would take out the local power lines will most likely destroy your fancy solar panels at the same time.
Why do people keep saying this? Tree down the road falls over, takes out the feed for the block. How will that damage panels on my roof?
Meanwhile, I was without power for two weeks following Sandy, and gasoline was scarce immediately after (most gas stations that had power, or had the foresight to rent a generator, were out of fuel within a day) and almost impossible to find within a few days.
=Smidge=
So you need gas for your car. You get yourself a one-gallon graduated container and visit every gas station within a 2-mile radius, testing their pumps and calculating the true $/gallon at each one.
The problem with this (besides the obvious huge waste of fuel, time wasted, and your vehicle basically being full by the time you've found the best deal) is there is no guarantee all pumps at a particular station are tampered with or that the degree of tampering is constant from day to day. In this hypothetical world where you cannot be sure is a gas pump is dispensing correctly it would be neigh impossible to determine.
For example, if I was an asshole gas station operator in this situation, I'd make try to set it up such that the first one or two gallons are spot-on, perhaps even slightly generous, then the count slowly drifts after that. So the first gallon and the second gallons is 1.00 gallons, but from the third gallon on you're only getting 0.90 or whatever. This would be totally impractical to detect and if I do it carefully it'll be very difficult to catch.
=Smidge=
"Wanted: Somebody to go to Mars with me. This is not a joke. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed."
=Smidge=
The funds "go into the general fund" by way of the Treasury Bonds. congress has no control over how much money is involved in this transaction since they have no control over the SS surplus. Also, Clinton's surpluses could not have included SSA bond buying since this shows up as a DEBT in the records, due to the treasury bond proxy required to get the funds out. Roughly $2.7 trillion of our national debt (over 16%!) is owed to the SSA.
Nothing I said was untrue. You, however, are insinuating that congress can just stick their hands into the trust fund's coffers any time they wish. THAT is a lie.
=Smidge=
I should be more specific;
Like any other trust fund, Social Security is able to invest portions of the fund to increase its value. The SSA buys special, non-public treasury bonds as a means of investment. This has the net effect of loaning money to the federal government, but it is a loan that, believe it or not, the government is obligated to pay back when the bonds mature.
Congress is not forcing the SSA to buy those bills, so it has no control over how much in bonds are purchased and therefore no control over how much money they can borrow. So this is entirely unlike congress spending or putting money into the SSTF.
=Smidge=
Those are not ordinary T-Bills, so no it's not illegal.
=Smidge=
Money collected from any means other than Social Security withholdings cannot be used fro Social Security payments, nor can money collected for Social Security be used for any other purpose.
=Smidge=
Unfortunately, 3D printer materials are generally not very strong, and have very poor dimensional stability at warmer temperatures.
This has not been my personal experience. 3D printed parts tend to have a "Grain" which might make them weaker than an injection molded plastic part of the same material, but that same grain makes them stronger in the other directions. This is simply something to consider when designing the part for printing.
And I suppose it really depends on what you mean by "warmer temperatures" if you want to talk about dimensional stability.
=Smidge=
The only reason this MIGHT compete with solar is the ability to store the thermal energy overnight. Storing heat (as molten salt or hot oil) is easier and less expensive than batteries to store electricity.
That said, this seems like an awfully inefficient way to go about it and there are already solar thermal plants of different varieties that are commercial-scale, more efficient and less Rube Goldberg-y. I can't see any sensible way to get the oil out of the cylinder without high pressure purge, and if there's that much pressure left it the cylinder then you're just wasting power. What's wrong with flash-steaming the water OUTSIDE the cylinder?
=Smidge=
The spirit of your analogy is appreciated, automated milking machines are becoming popular that the cows are free to use all by themselves any time they want.
=Smidge=
I never assert anything about individual circuits. I said "finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when."
The Kill-A-Watt is not a single circuit device. At best it's a single OUTLET device. There can be any number of things connected into the same circuit through different outlets that the Kill-A-Watt will not measure. It's ideal for examining individual small appliances but that's about it.
The TED device installs on the main feed to the panel and measures power usage. You then turn on and off individual devices and the system records second-by-second power usage and other information. This enables you to do the same thing as running around the house with a Kill-A-Watt - providing what is effectively device-level monitoring - except you don't have to unplug anything and it works for any load rather than just 120V at 15A.
=Smidge=
Who asked how to determine peak load on a single circuit? That question was never asked (nor even implied) in this branch.
=Smidge=
Okay, well... most people in the US have 240V split phase service, so you'll need a clamp-on meter for each leg. Of course you'll have no way of knowing if the peak current measured by each meter occurred at the same time, since you won't know when it happened. You'll also only have peak data which could easily be 10 or 15 times your typical load. Basically you learn a whole lot of nothing, assuming you can get the meters to stay on long enough since they usually turn off after a few minutes or so.
The only way to collect useful data is on a per-circuit basis, which is marginally better than a Kill-A-Watt since at least you can get 240V loads and things over 15A. The tradeoff is a lot more rooting around in the power panel and a lot more manual mathematics and guesswork.
=Smidge=
Yeah, so?
It's not like any of this is going in someone's house. That was never the point.
=Smidge=
A kill-a-watt is nice (I got myself one) but it's only good for things you can plug in through it that draw 15A or less.
If you're really serious about finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when, I can suggest a somewhat more expensive Energy Detective system that installs in your main electric panel.
=Smidge=
This is for grid-level storage, not in-your-home backup. Space and weight are a distant concern compared to cost.
There is an important concept called demand (or load) leveling. How much electricity the grid demands changes significantly over the course of the day, so you much design your power plants and infrastructure to handle the peak load. However the peak load is only experienced a small fraction of the time, meaning you are considerably overbuilt for maybe 16 to 18 hours of the day - especially late at night when most people sleep. The problem is so severe that many utility providers offer Time-Of-Use rates where electricity during off-peak hours is considerably cheaper (and on-peak considerably more expensive) to encourage people and businesses to use less during the day and more at night.
Batteries connect to the grid though a charge controlling inverter - a single piece of equipment. During the off-peak hours they absorb excess energy by charging, meaning the generation equipment runs more efficiently and more economically. During peak hours they release the energy decreasing the demand on the system so it doesn't have to be so overbuilt and therefore less expensive to maintain and operate.
The process of shifting load from peak to off-peak is sometimes referred to "filling the bathtub" and utility providers love it since it makes their lives much easier. Battery storage is a great way to achieve this at the grid level and anyone who manages to develop a cost effective solution stands to make a LOT of money selling and installing such systems.
=Smidge=
I'm sure all those houses that burned down in Queens had piles of batteries laying around, that's what caused the fire. I'm also sure it's impossible for a normal car without a HV battery pack to catch fire for any reason, including flooding.
Meanwhile, two dozen all-electric Nissan LEAFs failed to catch fire after the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan.
(Maybe the Fisker Karma is just a piece of shit. Don't blame the HV battery.)
=Smidge=