When a nation's currency basically falls apart, they are forced to turn to another country's currency to get their economy to function.
A lot of people expected Zimbabwe to implode when their currency became worthless but the switched to the US dollar with little fuss. Funny how we were making such a big deal about how evil Zimbabwe was while Syria was ignored.
Not to the consumer in some places. I'm very much aware that it's cheaper to generate (I was in the power industry for a few years before moving to the resources sector), but by the time the consumer gets the greatly inflated bill it can make more financial sense to put solar panels on their roof. If cheap and effective batteries are available it can then make more financial sense to go offgrid entirely. It used to be that such a choice only made sense in areas where it would cost a lot to get connected to the grid due to distance etc. Many utilities have been exploiting their monopoly status so much that they are have priced electricity high enough that consumers are willing to wear the large capital cost of panels, since it's cheaper than the alternative after only a few years.
Yes. I was merely giving a couple of more mainstream examples to show that the "100 years no change" thing is utter bullshit - which it is even if you consider the transmission lines alone.
If that company provides good enough and cheap enough batteries for a lot of people to use nothing but rooftop solar all day and night - yes it's certainly going to deliver a shock to the worst run power companies that only survive due to a local monopoly. There's still plenty of little Enrons in the mix. It's got to the point where price gouging in some places is enough to drive people to spend the large capital cost for solar panels plus storage and go mostly or completely offgrid, which then makes the utilities scream because they are being exposed to the cold winds of capitalism and making less monopoly profit! Poor babies!
The technology of power transmission hasn't fundamentally changed in 100 years
HVDC is the biggest and most fundamental change but it's still rare. However substations are also full of plenty of things granddad would not recognise.
Of course, you could believe that Adam Smith missed something there
Adam Smith spoke of "goods" and "bads" but only one gets mentioned. There is supposed to be no downside to unfettered capitalism so long as it's not getting inflicted on you by a competitor - if it is then you get the government to step in and block those evil people that didn't go to school with Washington insiders.
Rants aside there seems to be at least three promising post-infection Ebola treatments that researchers have been testing on animals or are about to test. One is similar to the post-infection rabies vaccine in some way. If one of the works out well I'm sure "big pharma" will pick up the work from that publicly funded project and spend the money to develop it into a product. That's still a considerable sum even though their role these days is mostly product development while the public is footing the research bills.
Turns out you need some decent CPU power for that sort of stuff so ereaders that can handle complex PDFs have only been coming out for the last couple of years - and they are still slow for some PDF files. They don't have the processing power of an iPad or the top end android tablets.
The "no wind" on an entire grid shit and the assumption that if stuff is offline it has to be because the energy source is unavailable for a start. A fairly dim first year student wouldn't be going on like that.
Slashdot, where some fucking idiot accountant with a fixation on a topic decides to try to play one-up on engineers by regurgitating what they can find with google but not understand. Here's a hint kid. I knew most of this stuff before Google existed.
Ever thought about wind turbines are easy to take offline and thermal is not? You are still not answering about that 60GW but instead attempted to distract with graphs showing far less than that and rubbery figures projecting into the future, some childish attempt to "blind with science" since it still doesn't indicate what you pretend it does. I'd rather read an interesting discussion instead of lies from "no wind" little shits like you who forget that this is a technical audience. Why not tell us about the band you are listening to or some other thing you actually know about?
WTF? I'm the one calling you out on your bullshit "there is no wind anywhere" rubbish and your "60GW of interconnect" lie. I've been too busy rubbing your face in your own filth and asking you to put up or stop lying to make any claims of my own.
Or in the case where a fool is being called out and properly labelled before he is taken seriously. One guess which case this is Mr "no wind anywhere". We both know what you are and nobody else is paying attention by this point.
Nice little attempt at bullying a kiddie but sorry - not going to work, picked all that up most likely thirty years before you were born from your childish attitude. You can't use that to wriggle out of putting up "60" on at least a couple of occasions.
I kinda doubt that
I don't care if you are calling me a liar on my experience, I already have zero respect for your childishness and pretended stupidity to set me up as a strawman - it was me informing you that your bluff was not going to work.
For the record I don't think much of wind as an energy source since there's so much maintainance but it does fill a niche. What I don't like is armchair zealots ignoring reality when it's convenient to push a point. No wind anywhere? What crap! Why should I remain silent when someone is pushing that line to try to bully someone else?
If you are not being serious then you are either far more stupid than is likely or dishonest. I hate how this place is now infested with "end justifies the means" little shits like you.
Throughout the rest of my posts my tone was always reserved and measured
I came in after the "wind is not blowing anywhere" game so I obviously missed all of that. Try playing the "this is not the real me" trick on somebody who was born yesterday and it may just work.
WTF is it with you armchair "one true energy" zealots? You seem to have got a lot worse in the decade since I was working in the electricity generating industry. Why is any lie justified as long as it pushes "the message"? Get back to fucking marketing or whatever you get up to and leave the solution of not having all your energy eggs in one basket to the engineers who have to deal with reality instead of making shit up.
one of the largest countries in Europe = "little patch of Germany"
Obviously I meant the small coastal area where the windmills are sited. You cannot possibly be as stupid as you pretend so why try that tactic? Pretended stupidity may work in comedy but it's very annoying elsewhere.
Do you really think Germany was down 60GW of wind power at any one instant? Is there even that much wind capacity available at any time? That much of the German total generating capacity available of around 170GW is wind? I find it very difficult to believe so you'll need more than a postage stamp sized cherry picked graph to be convincing, especially after your "get wind from another continent" and similar bleatings of idiocy. Just give up on this fantasy and use something real to push your point - it may not be as dramatic but you won't be making enemies of everyone that is not a full on nuclear zealot.
You may be more than 1/3 wind but that's the only thing here that is.
Line losses would be very low from nearby countries such as Denmark and Poland so if it's not windy in the little patch of Germany that has windmills how does that prove your point? Somewhere that's electrically almost in the same place is going to have some wind. Germany already trades electricity with France so why isn't French wind power on your little cherry picked graph if you want to prove your point?
A continent is big and if it is calm in one place that does not mean it is calm everywhere. It is also colder in Alaska than Mexico. Different temperatures in different places result in different air pressures and air flows from high pressure to low - wind! Inconvenient to your premise, but I had to point it out even though I don't give a shit about wind energy and am aware of it's many drawbacks. Making up drawbacks from nowhere however is a different story - I'd rather not have this place seen as a gathering of idiots due to people quoting stuff like your post and assuming we are all like that.
It's best to come in with at least the understanding that national electricity grids are large before coming into such a discussion and wasting so much time typing text based on a faulty premise.
but there is also some nasty chemical processes used in manufacture
Funny how this always comes up with solar but everyone keeps quiet about stuff like Uranium Hexaflouride which makes that "nasty stuff" look like Coca-Cola:) Face it, "nasty stuff" is used in a lot of things.
I see this a lot. The propaganda clearly worked. I suggest you find out a bit about nuclear waste and why there is so much of it. The majority is low level waste and that's not stuff that's of any use in a reactor. What you are describing is a fuel recycling solution and not a waste management solution - whoever sold it to you as the latter is deliberately misleading you. It would be nice to have both LFTR and sensible waste management (eg. from Synrok down) but don't fall into the trap of thinking that it's a magic solution for everything.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people expected Zimbabwe to implode when their currency became worthless but the switched to the US dollar with little fuss. Funny how we were making such a big deal about how evil Zimbabwe was while Syria was ignored.
Not to the consumer in some places. I'm very much aware that it's cheaper to generate (I was in the power industry for a few years before moving to the resources sector), but by the time the consumer gets the greatly inflated bill it can make more financial sense to put solar panels on their roof. If cheap and effective batteries are available it can then make more financial sense to go offgrid entirely.
It used to be that such a choice only made sense in areas where it would cost a lot to get connected to the grid due to distance etc. Many utilities have been exploiting their monopoly status so much that they are have priced electricity high enough that consumers are willing to wear the large capital cost of panels, since it's cheaper than the alternative after only a few years.
Yes. I was merely giving a couple of more mainstream examples to show that the "100 years no change" thing is utter bullshit - which it is even if you consider the transmission lines alone.
If that company provides good enough and cheap enough batteries for a lot of people to use nothing but rooftop solar all day and night - yes it's certainly going to deliver a shock to the worst run power companies that only survive due to a local monopoly. There's still plenty of little Enrons in the mix.
It's got to the point where price gouging in some places is enough to drive people to spend the large capital cost for solar panels plus storage and go mostly or completely offgrid, which then makes the utilities scream because they are being exposed to the cold winds of capitalism and making less monopoly profit! Poor babies!
HVDC is the biggest and most fundamental change but it's still rare. However substations are also full of plenty of things granddad would not recognise.
Adam Smith spoke of "goods" and "bads" but only one gets mentioned. There is supposed to be no downside to unfettered capitalism so long as it's not getting inflicted on you by a competitor - if it is then you get the government to step in and block those evil people that didn't go to school with Washington insiders.
Rants aside there seems to be at least three promising post-infection Ebola treatments that researchers have been testing on animals or are about to test. One is similar to the post-infection rabies vaccine in some way. If one of the works out well I'm sure "big pharma" will pick up the work from that publicly funded project and spend the money to develop it into a product. That's still a considerable sum even though their role these days is mostly product development while the public is footing the research bills.
Turns out you need some decent CPU power for that sort of stuff so ereaders that can handle complex PDFs have only been coming out for the last couple of years - and they are still slow for some PDF files. They don't have the processing power of an iPad or the top end android tablets.
The Boox is very good with PDFs and can even do CBR format.
The "no wind" on an entire grid shit and the assumption that if stuff is offline it has to be because the energy source is unavailable for a start. A fairly dim first year student wouldn't be going on like that.
Slashdot, where some fucking idiot accountant with a fixation on a topic decides to try to play one-up on engineers by regurgitating what they can find with google but not understand. Here's a hint kid. I knew most of this stuff before Google existed.
Ever thought about wind turbines are easy to take offline and thermal is not?
You are still not answering about that 60GW but instead attempted to distract with graphs showing far less than that and rubbery figures projecting into the future, some childish attempt to "blind with science" since it still doesn't indicate what you pretend it does. I'd rather read an interesting discussion instead of lies from "no wind" little shits like you who forget that this is a technical audience. Why not tell us about the band you are listening to or some other thing you actually know about?
WTF?
I'm the one calling you out on your bullshit "there is no wind anywhere" rubbish and your "60GW of interconnect" lie. I've been too busy rubbing your face in your own filth and asking you to put up or stop lying to make any claims of my own.
Or in the case where a fool is being called out and properly labelled before he is taken seriously. One guess which case this is Mr "no wind anywhere". We both know what you are and nobody else is paying attention by this point.
Nice little attempt at bullying a kiddie but sorry - not going to work, picked all that up most likely thirty years before you were born from your childish attitude. You can't use that to wriggle out of putting up "60" on at least a couple of occasions.
I don't care if you are calling me a liar on my experience, I already have zero respect for your childishness and pretended stupidity to set me up as a strawman - it was me informing you that your bluff was not going to work.
For the record I don't think much of wind as an energy source since there's so much maintainance but it does fill a niche. What I don't like is armchair zealots ignoring reality when it's convenient to push a point. No wind anywhere? What crap! Why should I remain silent when someone is pushing that line to try to bully someone else?
I came in after the "wind is not blowing anywhere" game so I obviously missed all of that. Try playing the "this is not the real me" trick on somebody who was born yesterday and it may just work.
I replied to one of your posts where you were calling others liars while dispensing fantasy yourself. What did you expect?
How is that sixty?
Clearly not.
WTF is it with you armchair "one true energy" zealots? You seem to have got a lot worse in the decade since I was working in the electricity generating industry. Why is any lie justified as long as it pushes "the message"? Get back to fucking marketing or whatever you get up to and leave the solution of not having all your energy eggs in one basket to the engineers who have to deal with reality instead of making shit up.
Obviously I meant the small coastal area where the windmills are sited. You cannot possibly be as stupid as you pretend so why try that tactic? Pretended stupidity may work in comedy but it's very annoying elsewhere.
Do you really think Germany was down 60GW of wind power at any one instant? Is there even that much wind capacity available at any time? That much of the German total generating capacity available of around 170GW is wind? I find it very difficult to believe so you'll need more than a postage stamp sized cherry picked graph to be convincing, especially after your "get wind from another continent" and similar bleatings of idiocy.
Just give up on this fantasy and use something real to push your point - it may not be as dramatic but you won't be making enemies of everyone that is not a full on nuclear zealot.
You may be more than 1/3 wind but that's the only thing here that is.
Line losses would be very low from nearby countries such as Denmark and Poland so if it's not windy in the little patch of Germany that has windmills how does that prove your point? Somewhere that's electrically almost in the same place is going to have some wind. Germany already trades electricity with France so why isn't French wind power on your little cherry picked graph if you want to prove your point?
A continent is big and if it is calm in one place that does not mean it is calm everywhere. It is also colder in Alaska than Mexico. Different temperatures in different places result in different air pressures and air flows from high pressure to low - wind!
Inconvenient to your premise, but I had to point it out even though I don't give a shit about wind energy and am aware of it's many drawbacks. Making up drawbacks from nowhere however is a different story - I'd rather not have this place seen as a gathering of idiots due to people quoting stuff like your post and assuming we are all like that.
It's best to come in with at least the understanding that national electricity grids are large before coming into such a discussion and wasting so much time typing text based on a faulty premise.
There was a bit of a scam going on at the time and that's how it was stopped.
Funny how this always comes up with solar but everyone keeps quiet about stuff like Uranium Hexaflouride which makes that "nasty stuff" look like Coca-Cola :)
Face it, "nasty stuff" is used in a lot of things.
I see this a lot. The propaganda clearly worked. I suggest you find out a bit about nuclear waste and why there is so much of it. The majority is low level waste and that's not stuff that's of any use in a reactor. What you are describing is a fuel recycling solution and not a waste management solution - whoever sold it to you as the latter is deliberately misleading you.
It would be nice to have both LFTR and sensible waste management (eg. from Synrok down) but don't fall into the trap of thinking that it's a magic solution for everything.