Live openly, with integrity. Be interesting. Post under your real name. The rest will take care of itself.
If you're a dick in real life, people won't need to look on the internet for confirmation, they'll know already.
Not necessarily.
For an alternative viewpoint, look at the popularity of homeowners associations. Personally, I hate them because if my neighbor is a lunatic whom won't minimally maintain his property, maybe because he drinks all day (true story!), I really don't care about how his property looks, I want to know if he's a lunatic (so as to avoid him, tell the kids to look out for him, avoid being on the roads at the same time as him, etc). Its a signal. Covering it up with a HOA works in direct opposition to my interests.
Remember the outcry about GTA and weirdos whom "played the game" by knifing women in the back all day, despite that having nothing to do with progressing in the game and actually works against you? I really want to know whom is a lunatic, so as to avoid them, and keep my women away from him. However, all the Oprah viewers were horrified to find out they have relatives or neighbors or coworkers who were nuts, so their solution is to try to ban the game, so they won't know, therefore, at least from a moron's point of view, its all good.
Using similar logic, the vast steaming masses don't want to know what can hurt them, w/ regards to others on facebook or whatever, so they would rather cover it all up so we can't see it. I want to know if people around me are nuts, its just that 99% of the population disagrees with me in that regard.
The vast majority really don't want to know if their kids school bus driver is a smoking member of norml via facebook or tee shirts or whatever. They know they are supposed to say they want to know, but they really don't want to know. And that internal tension in themselves is why they get all uncomfortable about this topic.
I'm sure his name (John Locke) helped sales a bit. I wonder if the t.v. show producers get a cut.
I don't think TV viewers, in general, read. Reading is not part of the "sports bar" and "reality tv" mindset.
A philosophy student whom downloads his little crime drama thinking its a study guide or cliffs notes for "Treatise on Civil Government" is going to be mighty confused at test taking time.
make it something cheap that noone will hesitate to pay for, and A LOT of people will buy it
Would I steal something that "costs" $100? How about $1? Thats pretty much free. Less that two vending machine soda cans. I'm guessing the dollar store has a lot less shoplifting than "upscale" Target or Kohls.
I think intellectually the marketing people don't understand that when I pay $10 or more I'm thinking "own a book". Even if its digital thus I do not own it. But at $1 I'm thinking thats like a delivery charge or a tax to make it magically download itself into my kindle ipad app and its the fee for this nifty searchable website I found the book on.
Another think the marketing team (other than amazon) does not understand is I'm willing to "tip" an author thirty cents for his performance, but maybe not tip a paper publisher ten bucks. Would I give a street musician a buck if he was any good? Sure, have many times. Would I give $100 for a hardbound textbook err I mean a street performer? Heck no.
>>> has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year, which, with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k
Erm.... That doesn't seem right
Part of that is the old printed way of selling books would mean:
99 cents retail 33 cents to retailer 33 cents (roughly half of wholesale price) cost of printing 33 cents to publisher
Of the 33 cents to the publisher, on a good day an exceptional author might get a bit over 10% royalties. More likely we'll round down to 3 cents per copy.
So at 35% royalty at Amazon to make 1/2 mil he had to sell about 1.4 million copies total.
Given that he made about half a mill selling at Amazon, how much would he have made from a conventional publisher? Well. 1.4 million times 3 cents each, eh about 43 grand.
Hmm 500 grand at amazon vs 43 grand at a conventional publisher (if paperback books could somehow be sold in that business model at 99 cents a piece) Thats the part that probably doesn't seem right to you.
No, that is what the small subset of griefers whom are in control wanted, so that they can cause others to suffer. Everyone else is horrified by their behavior.
Read all the monthly magazines you want, for free, in comfy chairs. The problem is most monthly magazines are not worth reading. They used to be, when I was a kid, or so it seemed. Remember the glory days of Scientific American?
Even the smallest most pitiful library has better genealogical resources than the best free online sites. Now if you're willing to cough up $150/yr you can get better access at home, but you may as well exhaust your free local library first.
Local collections. All my hometown newspaper editions on microfilm and several bookcases of local history. Even after decades of digitization, theres still more at the library than online.
You'd be surprised how many more young professionals would spend hours in a library if they can get their caffeine addiction served.
They tried that at my local library. Mostly attracted homeless, drunks, and teenagers, whom repelled more young professionals than the coffee attracted.
Do they just close? Do they have a UPS/generator system that will carry them over? Is there a manual system for those who simply want to check out an old-school dead-tree book?
Businesses lose money during power outages hence exotic UPS and generator schemes.
Libraries save money during power outages... Especially if they "close for remainder of day" if there is a 15 minute outage at 2pm.
As far as the manual system goes, I recall several libraries that have no windows... So hand write a checkout slip if you must, but you'll be doing it by flashlight.
The funny part is my city library has all those amenities, is in a building far older than "antiquated 1975" and cost a heck of a lot less than $40M to add those amenities.
It really is kind of shocking to add up the costs of those exotic amenities, subtract from $40M, and see whats left. Probably about $39.5M
Pardon my lack of understanding, but if this software is free, why do I have to tell you when I'm using it? Why do you care if I tell you vs not?
None of the big licenses that I'm aware of require "tell you when I'm using it". I would go as far as claiming 99.99% of the FOSS out there does not require it. There is probably some lunatics license out there for some psuedo-shareware c++ music player last updated and last used in '94 that requires some hoop jumping.
On the other hand most of the licenses have some requirements about exactly how you redistribute the code. Mostly revolving around not claiming your own copyright on software they've already copyrighted to themselves.
And the GPL really does not want you closing the source and simultaneously reselling it for cash, which is why I exclusively use GPL instead of BSD.
You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
One guy in the world whom speaks your native language has to do that one time for each version of each license, pretty much.
You can't seriously claim that every time you use a line of BSD'd or GPL'd code, you reread and reanalyze the entire license, even if it hasn't changed?
Also legal jargon is not a strictly interpreted sourcecode. But, none the less, its semi-logical and fairly straightforward. If the GPL mystifies you for a "huge amount of time" then I shiver to imagine how long it takes to figure out a "hello world" (unless you're doing it in intercal or whitespace, etc)
Code that is written under "some random loons license" is probably either very special in which case you don't care how long it takes, or there is a (probably better) BSD and/or GPL version out there to be used.
Wikipedia appears to be the Web 2.0 equivalent of urban flight and blight: anyone with a clue is ditching fast, and pretty soon, the only ones left in the "inner city" will be criminals and psychos
And the politicians and paid corporate astroturfers. Oh wait, redundant.
Why doesn't someone just mirror Wikipedia in real time and ignore all the deletion changesets?
Although I will say that Wikipedia is a good example of how 'open source' democracy is doomed to fail in short order. Ideals always take a back seat to reality.
Try something like that with git and some plain ole source code, and you'll rapidly learn the pain of merges.
Now you could mirror wikipedia but refuse to completely delete pages, or refuse to remove more than 50% of the text at a time or whatever. At which point the deletionist griefers will find a way around your protection, so as to destroy. Such as commit ten reverts each of which deletes 10% of the text, or let the file name stay the same but change the contents to some hash functions, etc.
The deletionist griefers at wikipedia enjoy filling their empty lives by destroying others work. Thats why its gone, because you cared, and they wanted the rush of destroying something you wanted. If you expressed deep desire for a table of American Morse Code letters or perhaps semaphone signals, they would delete them. Everything else is rationalization and story telling. On both sides.
No, this is Wikipedia process-wankery and why they're losing editors in droves.
It would be interesting to survey those whom leave. In comparison, most of the people I know whom left, hated the deletionist griefers. They are why I refuse to participate.
But I can buy a whole French Nuke plant, delivered, the whole thing, not just a reactor, for $1.50/watt. Or maybe that was the Russian plant. And it runs 24/7 for years at a time... You're just talking about panels. Not mounting systems. Not active trackers, nor wiring, nor a control building.
I bet I could build a PV ish plant using these $1/watt modules for maybe $1.50/watt. But that only outputs "nameplate power" half the time over the course of a year... Hmmm. Just nuke it.
Scammers is a bit harsh...If they were asking for "investment funds" then I'd get worried. But... Theres something a little off about claiming they made it to $1/watt so its all good. It isn't.
I agree with you completely in that thermal is a better solution in almost all cases at "power plant size" levels.
Problems:
1) Scalability. You can demo and test and experiment with "one" off the shelf cell if you really want. Even if the plan is to later deploy one million cells at the site all wired in parallel. If you try to run a GW class steam turbine on 100 watts, you're not even going to make it physically warm, much less run. Proof of concept is a bit tough. Also its easy to install 50% more PV units, assuming physical space. But its really hard to "upgrade" a turbine by 50%.
2) Moving parts. Nothing ever really breaks on a PV system. Maybe the filters and cooling fans on the inverters need the occasional dusting / replacement. Cells have to be washed / dusted about as often as my home's windows (somewhere between every couple years and once per generation).
3) Shutdowns. You never really shut down a PV unit for maintenance. Ever. There are no tasks I'm even remotely aware of that must take more overnight, worst case overnight during winter. On the other hand, as per #2 above, you're going to have to shut down for a week to replace the turbine, someday, if absolutely nothing else. And valves leak, and pumps wear out., either while under power, or scheduled maintenance.
Basically a thermal salt system is very much like running a factory, while a PV system is very much like running a telco central office or a big repeater site or maybe a small data center. With all that implies in number of employees, skill level of employees, maintenance required, etc.
The problem is the Carnot eff at a relatively cool nuke plant is still around/over 33%. Good luck finding a production off the shelf solar cell with decades of operating experience that can dream of reaching 33% efficiency.
If you're willing to try "exotic" PV units, I want to try "exotic" carnot units, like maybe a century old binary fluid system like the old fashioned two stage mercury and water system. Maybe something a little less toxic that vaporized mercury. A century or so ago those ran around 50% carnot eff. They were also horrific toxic beasts, but maybe with some more advanced materials... Maybe a modified cycle with yellow hot helium thru an exotic turbine, then its waste heat thru a sodium vapor turbine, then an "old fashioned" water cycle...
There is also the engineering problem.... Thermal means a very traditional water boiler design, no question marks at all except for the weird source of heat. PV means multiple areas of engineering experiment, the concentrators, the PV units, the cooling system for the PVs, etc.
Ahh but to calculate your NPV or whatever you have to know how much it costs up front. I think their estimate is ridiculously low compared to some proven technologies that handle/dissipate similar quantities of heat.
So long before you make the interest rate, maintenance cost, and operations cost calcs you mention, my point is their capital estimate is way low, even if their magic electricity and heat generating box were completely free (unlikely) the rest of the plant that keeps the magic box cool is going to cost alot.
the pipes from the magic heat source to the turbines costs $ per watt, the turbine itself costs $ per watt, the water pumps and filters cost $ per watt...
RTA, there are no pipes, turbine, pumps, nor filter. It's photovoltaic. I don't know whether they can beat a nuke plant in the real world, but the relative simplicity of this system compared to a nuclear power plant is certainly striking.
I did read the article, I did not believe at concentration factors over 1000 the cells would survive very long without active cooling.
Although its handling about the same heat flux as any other thermal plant, you can run colder, so the pipes and pumps can be cheapo low pressure low temp units... but that implies higher flow rates, and pumps unfortunately scale much worse than linear WRT flow rates. So the total plumbing cost is probably going to be "about the same".
If they're doing this with passive cooling, all I can say is "wow". They are concentrating sunlight at a ratio that liquefies asphalt.
Direct current is almost impossible to transmit across any meaningful length of electric cable.
Humorously, you have it exactly wrong. The longer the cable, the (relatively) cheaper the cost of HVDC conversion gear vs the rest of the project.
The power delivered by a AC line is based on the RMS voltage. However you have to insulate to peak, which is somewhat more. Insulation is a pretty major design constraint, as arcs to the ground or towers is kind of a waste of power...
As a very rough guess on a medium length line you can push about 1/4 to 1/3 more power for the same cost if you switch to DC.
The power levels I'm talking about are a couple GWs, distances of dozens of miles, costs vaguely around gigadollars. Capital costs of about a buck a watt per 50 miles, lets say. You can see the motivation of placing plants nearby cities, rather than in the middle of nowhere.
You can do long distance AC, and they used to, it just costs a heck of a lot more.
What it probably means is they're scammers. Capital costs for coal and nuke run from $1.50 to $3.00 per watt installed. They're claiming $1 per watt. The problem is no matter how unconventional the heat source, no matter how magically free, the employee lunchroom costs $ per plant, the parking lot paving costs $ per plant, the pipes from the magic heat source to the turbines costs $ per watt, the turbine itself costs $ per watt, the water pumps and filters cost $ per watt...
PERHAPS they mean the capital cost of their magic heat source alone costs about $1 per watt. The problem is some recent historical nukes (not in the backwards USA, but civilized countries like France, etc) have come in at $1.50 per watt total plant cost delivered. So, on one side, their costs probably will decline as they are new vs the very mature nuke industry. On the other hand, can you build an entire thermal electric plant for well under 50 cents per watt? Then again, can a new tech be nearly as reliable as ancient technology nuke plant?
Problem with the PC/104 type boards is that they'll have a limited amount of I/O that can be accessed by Linux or your RTOS, if you want more you end up buying more I/O cards to stack up and hoping you don't get driver issues, or you end up designing an I/O card using the trusty ISA bus.
Google for I2C port expander and phrases like that. Assuming you've got a user accessible I2C on your PC/104 (quite likely on a modern one). You'll pay about 10 cents per I/O bit rather than $10 per I/O bit on a "PC/104 expansion board". Or for that matter go (nearly) pure I2C if you can. Its kinda like USB in that everything you can imagine, (from an EE perspective) is available in I2C. The key, if I haven't mentioned it enough, is I2C all the way.
There are of course other solutions.
My favorite design at this time is FPGA with a soft-CPU core inside. You need exactly five I2C and two RS-232? OK fine synthesize them in, right at the address and package pins you want. Or you want two USB instead? OK put those dudes in. You want a hardware multiplier? OK synthesize that into the FPGA, map it into memory, and write your software to use it. I like the xylinx -blaze family of cores. Like a virtual lego set. Big fun. I wish you could buy a spartan 3 in a DIP package. Boot time and power consumption are not exactly ideal.
Slashdot Mirror
Live openly, with integrity. Be interesting. Post under your real name. The rest will take care of itself.
If you're a dick in real life, people won't need to look on the internet for confirmation, they'll know already.
Not necessarily.
For an alternative viewpoint, look at the popularity of homeowners associations. Personally, I hate them because if my neighbor is a lunatic whom won't minimally maintain his property, maybe because he drinks all day (true story!), I really don't care about how his property looks, I want to know if he's a lunatic (so as to avoid him, tell the kids to look out for him, avoid being on the roads at the same time as him, etc). Its a signal. Covering it up with a HOA works in direct opposition to my interests.
Remember the outcry about GTA and weirdos whom "played the game" by knifing women in the back all day, despite that having nothing to do with progressing in the game and actually works against you? I really want to know whom is a lunatic, so as to avoid them, and keep my women away from him. However, all the Oprah viewers were horrified to find out they have relatives or neighbors or coworkers who were nuts, so their solution is to try to ban the game, so they won't know, therefore, at least from a moron's point of view, its all good.
Using similar logic, the vast steaming masses don't want to know what can hurt them, w/ regards to others on facebook or whatever, so they would rather cover it all up so we can't see it. I want to know if people around me are nuts, its just that 99% of the population disagrees with me in that regard.
The vast majority really don't want to know if their kids school bus driver is a smoking member of norml via facebook or tee shirts or whatever. They know they are supposed to say they want to know, but they really don't want to know. And that internal tension in themselves is why they get all uncomfortable about this topic.
I'm sure his name (John Locke) helped sales a bit. I wonder if the t.v. show producers get a cut.
I don't think TV viewers, in general, read. Reading is not part of the "sports bar" and "reality tv" mindset.
A philosophy student whom downloads his little crime drama thinking its a study guide or cliffs notes for "Treatise on Civil Government" is going to be mighty confused at test taking time.
make it something cheap that noone will hesitate to pay for, and A LOT of people will buy it
Would I steal something that "costs" $100? How about $1? Thats pretty much free. Less that two vending machine soda cans. I'm guessing the dollar store has a lot less shoplifting than "upscale" Target or Kohls.
I think intellectually the marketing people don't understand that when I pay $10 or more I'm thinking "own a book". Even if its digital thus I do not own it. But at $1 I'm thinking thats like a delivery charge or a tax to make it magically download itself into my kindle ipad app and its the fee for this nifty searchable website I found the book on.
Another think the marketing team (other than amazon) does not understand is I'm willing to "tip" an author thirty cents for his performance, but maybe not tip a paper publisher ten bucks. Would I give a street musician a buck if he was any good? Sure, have many times. Would I give $100 for a hardbound textbook err I mean a street performer? Heck no.
>>> has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year, which, with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k
Erm.... That doesn't seem right
Part of that is the old printed way of selling books would mean:
99 cents retail
33 cents to retailer
33 cents (roughly half of wholesale price) cost of printing
33 cents to publisher
Of the 33 cents to the publisher, on a good day an exceptional author might get a bit over 10% royalties. More likely we'll round down to 3 cents per copy.
So at 35% royalty at Amazon to make 1/2 mil he had to sell about 1.4 million copies total.
Given that he made about half a mill selling at Amazon, how much would he have made from a conventional publisher? Well. 1.4 million times 3 cents each, eh about 43 grand.
Hmm 500 grand at amazon vs 43 grand at a conventional publisher (if paperback books could somehow be sold in that business model at 99 cents a piece) Thats the part that probably doesn't seem right to you.
because that is what wikipedia decided it wanted.
No, that is what the small subset of griefers whom are in control wanted, so that they can cause others to suffer. Everyone else is horrified by their behavior.
Someone needs to write a migration guide.
Starting at FF with adblock plus, firebug, flashblock, ghostery, noscript, RIP remove it permanently, view dependencies, and xmarks.
Ending at google chrome with ....
Read all the monthly magazines you want, for free, in comfy chairs. The problem is most monthly magazines are not worth reading. They used to be, when I was a kid, or so it seemed. Remember the glory days of Scientific American?
Even the smallest most pitiful library has better genealogical resources than the best free online sites. Now if you're willing to cough up $150/yr you can get better access at home, but you may as well exhaust your free local library first.
Local collections. All my hometown newspaper editions on microfilm and several bookcases of local history. Even after decades of digitization, theres still more at the library than online.
You'd be surprised how many more young professionals would spend hours in a library if they can get their caffeine addiction served.
They tried that at my local library. Mostly attracted homeless, drunks, and teenagers, whom repelled more young professionals than the coffee attracted.
I wonder how they handle extended power outages.
Do they just close? Do they have a UPS/generator system that will carry them over? Is there a manual system for those who simply want to check out an old-school dead-tree book?
Businesses lose money during power outages hence exotic UPS and generator schemes.
Libraries save money during power outages... Especially if they "close for remainder of day" if there is a 15 minute outage at 2pm.
As far as the manual system goes, I recall several libraries that have no windows... So hand write a checkout slip if you must, but you'll be doing it by flashlight.
The funny part is my city library has all those amenities, is in a building far older than "antiquated 1975" and cost a heck of a lot less than $40M to add those amenities.
It really is kind of shocking to add up the costs of those exotic amenities, subtract from $40M, and see whats left. Probably about $39.5M
Pardon my lack of understanding, but if this software is free, why do I have to tell you when I'm using it? Why do you care if I tell you vs not?
None of the big licenses that I'm aware of require "tell you when I'm using it". I would go as far as claiming 99.99% of the FOSS out there does not require it. There is probably some lunatics license out there for some psuedo-shareware c++ music player last updated and last used in '94 that requires some hoop jumping.
On the other hand most of the licenses have some requirements about exactly how you redistribute the code. Mostly revolving around not claiming your own copyright on software they've already copyrighted to themselves.
And the GPL really does not want you closing the source and simultaneously reselling it for cash, which is why I exclusively use GPL instead of BSD.
You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
One guy in the world whom speaks your native language has to do that one time for each version of each license, pretty much.
You can't seriously claim that every time you use a line of BSD'd or GPL'd code, you reread and reanalyze the entire license, even if it hasn't changed?
Also legal jargon is not a strictly interpreted sourcecode. But, none the less, its semi-logical and fairly straightforward. If the GPL mystifies you for a "huge amount of time" then I shiver to imagine how long it takes to figure out a "hello world" (unless you're doing it in intercal or whitespace, etc)
Code that is written under "some random loons license" is probably either very special in which case you don't care how long it takes, or there is a (probably better) BSD and/or GPL version out there to be used.
Wikipedia appears to be the Web 2.0 equivalent of urban flight and blight: anyone with a clue is ditching fast, and pretty soon, the only ones left in the "inner city" will be criminals and psychos
And the politicians and paid corporate astroturfers. Oh wait, redundant.
Why doesn't someone just mirror Wikipedia in real time and ignore all the deletion changesets?
Although I will say that Wikipedia is a good example of how 'open source' democracy is doomed to fail in short order. Ideals always take a back seat to reality.
Try something like that with git and some plain ole source code, and you'll rapidly learn the pain of merges.
Now you could mirror wikipedia but refuse to completely delete pages, or refuse to remove more than 50% of the text at a time or whatever. At which point the deletionist griefers will find a way around your protection, so as to destroy. Such as commit ten reverts each of which deletes 10% of the text, or let the file name stay the same but change the contents to some hash functions, etc.
The deletionist griefers at wikipedia enjoy filling their empty lives by destroying others work. Thats why its gone, because you cared, and they wanted the rush of destroying something you wanted. If you expressed deep desire for a table of American Morse Code letters or perhaps semaphone signals, they would delete them. Everything else is rationalization and story telling. On both sides.
No, this is Wikipedia process-wankery and why they're losing editors in droves.
It would be interesting to survey those whom leave. In comparison, most of the people I know whom left, hated the deletionist griefers. They are why I refuse to participate.
Why would ATMs need GPS for accurate timing?
They don't. Article is wrong.
There is a strong trend recently to install GPS-based trackers inside the unit, and if they start moving, call the cops on the included cellphone.
Assuming you're not using the jammer to steal the unit, the only other use for jamming the GPS, is as a denial of service.
But I can buy a whole French Nuke plant, delivered, the whole thing, not just a reactor, for $1.50/watt. Or maybe that was the Russian plant. And it runs 24/7 for years at a time... You're just talking about panels. Not mounting systems. Not active trackers, nor wiring, nor a control building.
I bet I could build a PV ish plant using these $1/watt modules for maybe $1.50/watt. But that only outputs "nameplate power" half the time over the course of a year... Hmmm. Just nuke it.
Scammers is a bit harsh.. .If they were asking for "investment funds" then I'd get worried. But... Theres something a little off about claiming they made it to $1/watt so its all good. It isn't.
So why so much focus on cells?
I agree with you completely in that thermal is a better solution in almost all cases at "power plant size" levels.
Problems:
1) Scalability. You can demo and test and experiment with "one" off the shelf cell if you really want. Even if the plan is to later deploy one million cells at the site all wired in parallel. If you try to run a GW class steam turbine on 100 watts, you're not even going to make it physically warm, much less run. Proof of concept is a bit tough. Also its easy to install 50% more PV units, assuming physical space. But its really hard to "upgrade" a turbine by 50%.
2) Moving parts. Nothing ever really breaks on a PV system. Maybe the filters and cooling fans on the inverters need the occasional dusting / replacement. Cells have to be washed / dusted about as often as my home's windows (somewhere between every couple years and once per generation).
3) Shutdowns. You never really shut down a PV unit for maintenance. Ever. There are no tasks I'm even remotely aware of that must take more overnight, worst case overnight during winter. On the other hand, as per #2 above, you're going to have to shut down for a week to replace the turbine, someday, if absolutely nothing else. And valves leak, and pumps wear out., either while under power, or scheduled maintenance.
Basically a thermal salt system is very much like running a factory, while a PV system is very much like running a telco central office or a big repeater site or maybe a small data center. With all that implies in number of employees, skill level of employees, maintenance required, etc.
The problem is the Carnot eff at a relatively cool nuke plant is still around/over 33%. Good luck finding a production off the shelf solar cell with decades of operating experience that can dream of reaching 33% efficiency.
If you're willing to try "exotic" PV units, I want to try "exotic" carnot units, like maybe a century old binary fluid system like the old fashioned two stage mercury and water system. Maybe something a little less toxic that vaporized mercury. A century or so ago those ran around 50% carnot eff. They were also horrific toxic beasts, but maybe with some more advanced materials... Maybe a modified cycle with yellow hot helium thru an exotic turbine, then its waste heat thru a sodium vapor turbine, then an "old fashioned" water cycle...
There is also the engineering problem.... Thermal means a very traditional water boiler design, no question marks at all except for the weird source of heat. PV means multiple areas of engineering experiment, the concentrators, the PV units, the cooling system for the PVs, etc.
Ahh but to calculate your NPV or whatever you have to know how much it costs up front. I think their estimate is ridiculously low compared to some proven technologies that handle/dissipate similar quantities of heat.
So long before you make the interest rate, maintenance cost, and operations cost calcs you mention, my point is their capital estimate is way low, even if their magic electricity and heat generating box were completely free (unlikely) the rest of the plant that keeps the magic box cool is going to cost alot.
RTA, there are no pipes, turbine, pumps, nor filter. It's photovoltaic. I don't know whether they can beat a nuke plant in the real world, but the relative simplicity of this system compared to a nuclear power plant is certainly striking.
I did read the article, I did not believe at concentration factors over 1000 the cells would survive very long without active cooling.
Although its handling about the same heat flux as any other thermal plant, you can run colder, so the pipes and pumps can be cheapo low pressure low temp units... but that implies higher flow rates, and pumps unfortunately scale much worse than linear WRT flow rates. So the total plumbing cost is probably going to be "about the same".
If they're doing this with passive cooling, all I can say is "wow". They are concentrating sunlight at a ratio that liquefies asphalt.
Direct current is almost impossible to transmit across any meaningful length of electric cable.
Humorously, you have it exactly wrong. The longer the cable, the (relatively) cheaper the cost of HVDC conversion gear vs the rest of the project.
The power delivered by a AC line is based on the RMS voltage. However you have to insulate to peak, which is somewhat more. Insulation is a pretty major design constraint, as arcs to the ground or towers is kind of a waste of power...
As a very rough guess on a medium length line you can push about 1/4 to 1/3 more power for the same cost if you switch to DC.
The power levels I'm talking about are a couple GWs, distances of dozens of miles, costs vaguely around gigadollars. Capital costs of about a buck a watt per 50 miles, lets say. You can see the motivation of placing plants nearby cities, rather than in the middle of nowhere.
You can do long distance AC, and they used to, it just costs a heck of a lot more.
I pay about $0.10/kWh. (1000 W per Hour)
What it probably means is they're scammers. Capital costs for coal and nuke run from $1.50 to $3.00 per watt installed. They're claiming $1 per watt. The problem is no matter how unconventional the heat source, no matter how magically free, the employee lunchroom costs $ per plant, the parking lot paving costs $ per plant, the pipes from the magic heat source to the turbines costs $ per watt, the turbine itself costs $ per watt, the water pumps and filters cost $ per watt...
PERHAPS they mean the capital cost of their magic heat source alone costs about $1 per watt. The problem is some recent historical nukes (not in the backwards USA, but civilized countries like France, etc) have come in at $1.50 per watt total plant cost delivered. So, on one side, their costs probably will decline as they are new vs the very mature nuke industry. On the other hand, can you build an entire thermal electric plant for well under 50 cents per watt? Then again, can a new tech be nearly as reliable as ancient technology nuke plant?
Problem with the PC/104 type boards is that they'll have a limited amount of I/O that can be accessed by Linux or your RTOS, if you want more you end up buying more I/O cards to stack up and hoping you don't get driver issues, or you end up designing an I/O card using the trusty ISA bus.
Google for I2C port expander and phrases like that. Assuming you've got a user accessible I2C on your PC/104 (quite likely on a modern one). You'll pay about 10 cents per I/O bit rather than $10 per I/O bit on a "PC/104 expansion board". Or for that matter go (nearly) pure I2C if you can. Its kinda like USB in that everything you can imagine, (from an EE perspective) is available in I2C. The key, if I haven't mentioned it enough, is I2C all the way.
There are of course other solutions.
My favorite design at this time is FPGA with a soft-CPU core inside. You need exactly five I2C and two RS-232? OK fine synthesize them in, right at the address and package pins you want. Or you want two USB instead? OK put those dudes in. You want a hardware multiplier? OK synthesize that into the FPGA, map it into memory, and write your software to use it. I like the xylinx -blaze family of cores. Like a virtual lego set. Big fun. I wish you could buy a spartan 3 in a DIP package. Boot time and power consumption are not exactly ideal.