Well, yes, I believe they would be unusual. Power has to be transmitted to the dam. Water has to be pumped. Some of the water is lost to leaks and evaporation. Then the water has to be used to generate electricity. I think 90% refers only to the pumping stage. My understanding is that actual end-to-end efficiency is 70%-85% with numbers near 70% being more likely.
***and if so why don't other states suffer the problem?***
Why do you think they don't? The two most densely populated parts of the US are coastal California and the East Coast. The East Coast has much less, and much less concentrated, wind power generation than does the West Coast where the wind generation tends to be concentrated in a few passes and gorges. In the West, power can't get from the sources to the consumers. In the East, the grid problems manifest themselves as catastrophic, cascading regional power failures that leave tens of millions of people without power. This happened in 1965 and again in 2003. In 2003, a former head of the DOE described the US as "a superpower with a third-world electricity grid."
One should also point out that it is about 1000km (roughly half the width of Europe) from the Columbia River gorge to the nearest major cities in California. Much of the intervening country is very rugged, thickly forested, (very beautiful) and very thinly populated. It's not surprising that a power grid that evolved to service California from huge hydro dams (At Shasta Dam, Oroville, and on the Colorado at Boulder Canyon) should not have a particularly capable connection to Northern Oregon.
We actually have a one lane freeway -- VT289 -- over the hill from me. It's a long story, but the upshot is that there wasn't quite enough money for a two lane freeway, so they did the excavations and bridges for a two lane freeway, but only prepped and paved one lane each way assuming that when VT289 was eventually connected to I-89, the money would be found to build another lane. But the connectors between I-89 and VT289 have been stalled in the permit process for a decade, and times have changed, and VT289 may well remain a one lane freeway forever.
It works just fine and achieves its goal -- providing a bypass for a wretched five cornered intersection where three state highways and two railroad lines come together in a state of quasi-permanent gridlock..
***Clearly the president has to go over there and kick some governor butts. Just have the two states make a joint operation and fund the upgrade. It's THAT simple.***
You clearly are not familiar with what passes for governance in California -- a somewhat left of center state where right wing crazies have sufficient legislative power to block any serious attempt to fix anything. On top of which, the place has been run for half a century by a string of utterly incompetent governors from both parties. The current governor is an exception. But he will be term limited out in November and replaced by one of two candidates for whom the only reasonable vote appears to be "none of the above".
It's not THAT bad. A 32MwH (?) Sodium-Sulfer battery -- the largest in the US -- capable of supplying Presidio, Texas (pop 4500) for up to eight hours was recently brought on line. Cost = 15M. Presumably, as more of these are built, the costs will drop.
That said, Presidio is a sort of worst case since its normal power source is a single elderly, very long, and apparently very fragile, transmission line. But it does demonstrate that there are cases where big batteries look plausible as the best engineering solution to some "How do we keep the lights on in this earthly paradise?" situations.
***Why not use the energy during these peaks to pump water up to the top of a tower, then gradually release it as required***
That's called 'pumped storage' and the US has some capability including -- if I recall correctly -- at Grand Coulee Dam which would be near the windmills in question. However, it's not terribly efficient and requires a lot of rather expensive hardware that won't be used very often.
The power system engineers are well aware of pumped storage and if they aren't using it, there is probably a reason. I'd guess that it takes time to turn a facility like Grand Coulee around and go from generating electricity to storing water. Presumably, the power has to travel to the dam over the same power lines that are used to take power away. Perhaps it takes time to turn them around.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, wouldn't it be cheaper and safer to live underground in (for example) New Jersey than on the moon or Mars? AFAICS, there is near infinite storage for dingbats who want to live and work in a hole in the ground in wastelands like the Sahara, Afghanistan, or Kansas. (In the latter two cases, it would probably be best not to let the religious fanatics on the surface know they have been colonized.)
***The company states that rising sea-levels will create a demand for halophile crops.***
I hope they are better at plant breeding than at marketing. Unless they are planning to grow the potatoes under water, there isn't going to be any more market for salt tolerant potatoes than there is now, no matter how high the seas rise. Now if the seas dropped... the exposed land might need salt tolerant crops for many decades.
But yes, there will be a market for these in water deficient areas like the Middle East and the US Southwest where contamination of agricultural land from the salts in irrigation water is a problem.
***Does the public really expect their cell phones to flawlessly or have I been using smartphones so long that I just accept wireless devices suck still?***
I don't suppose that the fact the phone doesn't work for non-emergency calls either would have any affect on your opinion? I submit that just maybe, possibly, at times, this particular phone model actually does suck a bit.
In your dreams... Maybe in parts of Concord and the Southern tier cities that are part of the Boston metro area. In rural New Hampshire? Not a chance. US broadband figures remain -- as they have been for two decades, a work of fiction. Even the FCC admits in its better moments that their broadband penetration data has essentially no connection with reality. "Stunningly meaningless" is the term they used a couple of years ago.
***The power requirements alone are horrendous.***
Not really. The NorthEastern US North of Albany-Springfield-Manchester-Boston is fairly mountainous and quite thinly populated. When public broadcasters decided to try to set up NPR networks in the region despite having -- by conventional standards -- too small a population base. The two primary networks in the western part of the region -- Vermont Public Radio and North Country Public Radio in New York adopted quite different approaches. VPR stuck high powered transmitters on top of the biggest hills they could find. NCPR on the other hand decided to use low powered transmitters and repeaters in the small towns of the region.
Surprisingly perhaps, both systems work pretty well.
Most of the NCPR transmitters are a few hundred watts to a kilowatt. I'm currently listening to a perfectly OK signal from the 1kw transmitter 20 miles west of here in Peru, NY. The main transmitter at St Lawrence University is 40KW. I suspect the higher power is mostly to provide coverage to anglophones in the Montreal, QC area.
Use of high power for FM is by choice, not necessity. And in any case, getting the same coverage for a digital signal is not going to have much in any power superiority -- at least not the way it is currently being approached. Maybe DAB version 5.7a.02 in 2026 will allocate individual channels efficiently and will include receivers that are capable of improving the s/n ratio by narrowing the receiver bandwidth -- which might allow lower transmitter powers. Of course that'll mean yet another iteration of new transmitters and receivers. But what the hell, we're human so continually breaking stuff that is working fine is what we do.
FWIW, here's the wikipedia on DAB Power "DAB is not a power efficiency transmitting system. Typically an 2500 W DAB transmitter requires 14 000 W of electric power. If two or more transmitter stations are required, the power including cooling will pass 40 000 W. The power efficiency on DAB is therefor around 25-35%, while FM can be as high as up to 90%." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#DAB_and_FM.2FAM_compared )
***I don't disagree, but don't make it worse than it actually is. FM is obsolete***
Y'know, many of the tools I use around the house were inherited from my dad who bought them used in the 1920s. You might assert that the 80 or 90 year old hammer I use to pound nails is obsolete compared to modern powered tools for inserting fasteners. But y'know what, the newer tools require power, special fasteners, and are more expensive, more complex and more likely to break. If I were a building contractor, I'd probably use the newer tools (but I'll bet I'd still have and use a hammer). For me that antique hammer is by no means obsolete.
The only things that would make FM obsolete would be if DAB had better range, lower costs, significantly better audio quality, or some other positive quality. So far as I can tell, it has only one such quality -- less bandwidth. Problem is that most places, there isn't enough programming available to use the additional bandwidth productively and if there were, sub-carrier audio -- which is compatible with analog FM -- could very likely be used instead of DAB. In point of fact, HD-Radio which is the US digital broadcast technology uses digital signals in the sub carrier spectrum while retaining the analog FM signal. (BTW, I don't know anyone who has a HD Radio receiver).
In summary. Newer isn't necessarily better. And complicated is better only if it works.
Having just returned from the ten acres of woods across the street, let me assure everyone that "forest bathing" when the temperature is in the mid 90s (35C) sucks. The bugs seem to like it though. Anyway, I don't care what the dog's contract says, this two walks a day thing is hereby suspended until the weather returns to normal.
If you just need to tune to a local news channel for weather alerts and to a few public service channels, Channel Plus makes a nice looking (on paper anyway) four channel modulator for about $150.
In any case, it doesn't sound to me like Comcast is acting in good faith (like any sane person would expect them to). Probably your best bet is to get your data together. Write up the information in a form that will make sense to an intelligent adult. No easy job. Some of the posts in this thread will give you an idea of the amount of stupidity you will encounter. Estimate current and ongoing costs to maintain your current level of service.
Armed with your whitepaper, your boss or your boss'es boss should sit down with the town attorney and decide whether to escalate to the state government and/or the Public Utility Commission. Assuming that the franchise agreement supports it, I'd have the suits argue to higher authority that Comcast is obligated to deliver you expanded basic service in analog (or replace your TVs) and how they do it should not be your problem. Comcast should be responsible for the engineering, installation, and maintenance of their solution whatever it is. Who knows, Comcast being possibly the second most despised company (after BP) in many parts of America. The PUC or whoever may see things your way.
Well, it could turn out that some portable radio maker in Dubuque actually did this in 1947 before the bookkeeper and the receptionist ran off with all the cash and put the company into receivership, but if it's mechanical and there is no prior art, I agree. I'm not generally a fan of patents as they seem usually to be privatization of the obvious, theft of the work of others, or attempts to monopolize natural phenomena. But in this case, it certainly is not obvious how to mechanically reverse polarity of batteries. If it were, everyone would be doing it.
***No, seriously - I've been working as a software engineer doing R&D work on complicated real time systems for years, and I'd never heard of his name***
It has always seemed ironic to me that no one in the business seems to have actually read Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers and that The Art of Computer Programming is only half finished. It's no damn wonder that nothing related to software works quite right.
Not that I actually know much about this other than that tracking down interference sources is a black art. But I would point out that the interference could be knocking out the signal at either the router or the computer, and I wouldn't overlook moving the router to a different location as a possible solution.
I think what I'd probably try is:
Try running the computer next to the router. If the connection stays up, move away until it doesn't. Then try different channels and find which works best. If there is still a problem try reorienting the router. It's reception pattern is almost certainly directional. If the problem is interference at the router, maybe the interference source can be put into a null in the reception pattern. Finally, try moving the router as far as is feasible.
Other than those things, it may be necessary to spend some money. And spending money, even switching to a different band entirely, won't guarantee a solution.
I'm supposed to believe that Comcast, Verison, et. al. can accurately identify machines that are infected by malware then wall them off? And somehow inform their owners? Then unwall them when the infection is cleared? And that there will be no or very few false determinations of infection? On what planet is this going to occur?
Comcast on my planet -- it's called Earth -- can't even manage to set the audio on all it's cable broadcasts to the same level. To say that it lacks the technical skills to detect and quarantine user malware infections and the administrative skills to manage a quarantine effort seems to understate the situation.
I do not think it is unusual and that other ISPs will do better.
***This guy will be lucky if his neighbors don't lynch him***
People who live in NYC don't generally care enough about their neighbors to lynch them. Now Texas or Oklahoma, There any half way decent rabble rouser can get a lynch mob together with just a megaphone and few cases of beer.
The SCOTUS did nothing of the damn sort. They ruled that municipal eminent domain takings are a matter of state, not federal, law and that states are entitled to make dumb laws as long as they don't violate the US constitution. That's original intent if I ever saw it. The four "conservative" bozos of course saw a federal interest because they are totally lacking in principles and actually think judicial activism is fine as long as it is in the interest of conservative causes.
Come to that, the takings clause in the fifth amendment only requires "just compensation". It does not forbid taking of property.
As to whether the citizens of Connecticut have/had a problem with their state and local governments that they need/needed to correct, that's an entirely different issue.
Tain't all sand. A lot of it is rock. And the normal way to move electricity is with transmission lines. Solved that problem about 8 decades ago.
What does give pause is that the Southwestern deserts of the US are about as well situated to deliver solar power as the Northern Sahara is. And it can be gotten out -- at least to Coastal California -- without crossing any really difficult barriers like the Mediterranean. At least one of everything solar has been built out around Barstow. But as far as I can tell very little of that generation capacity is actually in daily use.
The other problem is that hydro is the only renewable that can be used to trim baseline load and can be brought on line quickly when the wind stops blowing in Europe and/or starts blowing dust in North Africa. It's far from clear to me that Europe has really thought through all the problems associated with a large amount of solar/wind power generation and the difficulties of building reliable power distribution systems dependant on renewables.
I'm not against it, and I wish them luck. But Saharan solar may not be as easy as it looks.
Slashdot Mirror
***90% efficiencies would not be unusual.***
Well, yes, I believe they would be unusual. Power has to be transmitted to the dam. Water has to be pumped. Some of the water is lost to leaks and evaporation. Then the water has to be used to generate electricity. I think 90% refers only to the pumping stage. My understanding is that actual end-to-end efficiency is 70%-85% with numbers near 70% being more likely.
***and if so why don't other states suffer the problem?***
Why do you think they don't? The two most densely populated parts of the US are coastal California and the East Coast. The East Coast has much less, and much less concentrated, wind power generation than does the West Coast where the wind generation tends to be concentrated in a few passes and gorges. In the West, power can't get from the sources to the consumers. In the East, the grid problems manifest themselves as catastrophic, cascading regional power failures that leave tens of millions of people without power. This happened in 1965 and again in 2003. In 2003, a former head of the DOE described the US as "a superpower with a third-world electricity grid."
One should also point out that it is about 1000km (roughly half the width of Europe) from the Columbia River gorge to the nearest major cities in California. Much of the intervening country is very rugged, thickly forested, (very beautiful) and very thinly populated. It's not surprising that a power grid that evolved to service California from huge hydro dams (At Shasta Dam, Oroville, and on the Colorado at Boulder Canyon) should not have a particularly capable connection to Northern Oregon.
***That'd be like building a 1 lane freeway***
We actually have a one lane freeway -- VT289 -- over the hill from me. It's a long story, but the upshot is that there wasn't quite enough money for a two lane freeway, so they did the excavations and bridges for a two lane freeway, but only prepped and paved one lane each way assuming that when VT289 was eventually connected to I-89, the money would be found to build another lane. But the connectors between I-89 and VT289 have been stalled in the permit process for a decade, and times have changed, and VT289 may well remain a one lane freeway forever.
It works just fine and achieves its goal -- providing a bypass for a wretched five cornered intersection where three state highways and two railroad lines come together in a state of quasi-permanent gridlock..
***Clearly the president has to go over there and kick some governor butts. Just have the two states make a joint operation and fund the upgrade. It's THAT simple.***
You clearly are not familiar with what passes for governance in California -- a somewhat left of center state where right wing crazies have sufficient legislative power to block any serious attempt to fix anything. On top of which, the place has been run for half a century by a string of utterly incompetent governors from both parties. The current governor is an exception. But he will be term limited out in November and replaced by one of two candidates for whom the only reasonable vote appears to be "none of the above".
It's not THAT bad. A 32MwH (?) Sodium-Sulfer battery -- the largest in the US -- capable of supplying Presidio, Texas (pop 4500) for up to eight hours was recently brought on line. Cost = 15M. Presumably, as more of these are built, the costs will drop.
That said, Presidio is a sort of worst case since its normal power source is a single elderly, very long, and apparently very fragile, transmission line. But it does demonstrate that there are cases where big batteries look plausible as the best engineering solution to some "How do we keep the lights on in this earthly paradise?" situations.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100325-presidio-texas-battery/
***Why not use the energy during these peaks to pump water up to the top of a tower, then gradually release it as required***
That's called 'pumped storage' and the US has some capability including -- if I recall correctly -- at Grand Coulee Dam which would be near the windmills in question. However, it's not terribly efficient and requires a lot of rather expensive hardware that won't be used very often.
The power system engineers are well aware of pumped storage and if they aren't using it, there is probably a reason. I'd guess that it takes time to turn a facility like Grand Coulee around and go from generating electricity to storing water. Presumably, the power has to travel to the dam over the same power lines that are used to take power away. Perhaps it takes time to turn them around.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, wouldn't it be cheaper and safer to live underground in (for example) New Jersey than on the moon or Mars? AFAICS, there is near infinite storage for dingbats who want to live and work in a hole in the ground in wastelands like the Sahara, Afghanistan, or Kansas. (In the latter two cases, it would probably be best not to let the religious fanatics on the surface know they have been colonized.)
***The company states that rising sea-levels will create a demand for halophile crops.***
I hope they are better at plant breeding than at marketing. Unless they are planning to grow the potatoes under water, there isn't going to be any more market for salt tolerant potatoes than there is now, no matter how high the seas rise. Now if the seas dropped ... the exposed land might need salt tolerant crops for many decades.
But yes, there will be a market for these in water deficient areas like the Middle East and the US Southwest where contamination of agricultural land from the salts in irrigation water is a problem.
***Does the public really expect their cell phones to flawlessly or have I been using smartphones so long that I just accept wireless devices suck still?***
I don't suppose that the fact the phone doesn't work for non-emergency calls either would have any affect on your opinion? I submit that just maybe, possibly, at times, this particular phone model actually does suck a bit.
***...New Hampshire... 9 Mbit/s***
In your dreams ... Maybe in parts of Concord and the Southern tier cities that are part of the Boston metro area. In rural New Hampshire? Not a chance. US broadband figures remain -- as they have been for two decades, a work of fiction. Even the FCC admits in its better moments that their broadband penetration data has essentially no connection with reality. "Stunningly meaningless" is the term they used a couple of years ago.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080319/164249588.shtml
***The power requirements alone are horrendous.***
Not really. The NorthEastern US North of Albany-Springfield-Manchester-Boston is fairly mountainous and quite thinly populated. When public broadcasters decided to try to set up NPR networks in the region despite having -- by conventional standards -- too small a population base. The two primary networks in the western part of the region -- Vermont Public Radio and North Country Public Radio in New York adopted quite different approaches. VPR stuck high powered transmitters on top of the biggest hills they could find. NCPR on the other hand decided to use low powered transmitters and repeaters in the small towns of the region.
Surprisingly perhaps, both systems work pretty well.
Here's a link to NCPRs coverage map http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/about/images/cov_map1.jpg and it's transmitter locations. http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/about/coverage.html
Most of the NCPR transmitters are a few hundred watts to a kilowatt. I'm currently listening to a perfectly OK signal from the 1kw transmitter 20 miles west of here in Peru, NY. The main transmitter at St Lawrence University is 40KW. I suspect the higher power is mostly to provide coverage to anglophones in the Montreal, QC area.
Use of high power for FM is by choice, not necessity. And in any case, getting the same coverage for a digital signal is not going to have much in any power superiority -- at least not the way it is currently being approached. Maybe DAB version 5.7a.02 in 2026 will allocate individual channels efficiently and will include receivers that are capable of improving the s/n ratio by narrowing the receiver bandwidth -- which might allow lower transmitter powers. Of course that'll mean yet another iteration of new transmitters and receivers. But what the hell, we're human so continually breaking stuff that is working fine is what we do.
FWIW, here's the wikipedia on DAB Power "DAB is not a power efficiency transmitting system. Typically an 2500 W DAB transmitter requires 14 000 W of electric power. If two or more transmitter stations are required, the power including cooling will pass 40 000 W. The power efficiency on DAB is therefor around 25-35%, while FM can be as high as up to 90%." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#DAB_and_FM.2FAM_compared )
***I don't disagree, but don't make it worse than it actually is. FM is obsolete***
Y'know, many of the tools I use around the house were inherited from my dad who bought them used in the 1920s. You might assert that the 80 or 90 year old hammer I use to pound nails is obsolete compared to modern powered tools for inserting fasteners. But y'know what, the newer tools require power, special fasteners, and are more expensive, more complex and more likely to break. If I were a building contractor, I'd probably use the newer tools (but I'll bet I'd still have and use a hammer). For me that antique hammer is by no means obsolete.
The only things that would make FM obsolete would be if DAB had better range, lower costs, significantly better audio quality, or some other positive quality. So far as I can tell, it has only one such quality -- less bandwidth. Problem is that most places, there isn't enough programming available to use the additional bandwidth productively and if there were, sub-carrier audio -- which is compatible with analog FM -- could very likely be used instead of DAB. In point of fact, HD-Radio which is the US digital broadcast technology uses digital signals in the sub carrier spectrum while retaining the analog FM signal. (BTW, I don't know anyone who has a HD Radio receiver).
In summary. Newer isn't necessarily better. And complicated is better only if it works.
Having just returned from the ten acres of woods across the street, let me assure everyone that "forest bathing" when the temperature is in the mid 90s (35C) sucks. The bugs seem to like it though. Anyway, I don't care what the dog's contract says, this two walks a day thing is hereby suspended until the weather returns to normal.
If you just need to tune to a local news channel for weather alerts and to a few public service channels, Channel Plus makes a nice looking (on paper anyway) four channel modulator for about $150.
In any case, it doesn't sound to me like Comcast is acting in good faith (like any sane person would expect them to). Probably your best bet is to get your data together. Write up the information in a form that will make sense to an intelligent adult. No easy job. Some of the posts in this thread will give you an idea of the amount of stupidity you will encounter. Estimate current and ongoing costs to maintain your current level of service.
Armed with your whitepaper, your boss or your boss'es boss should sit down with the town attorney and decide whether to escalate to the state government and/or the Public Utility Commission. Assuming that the franchise agreement supports it, I'd have the suits argue to higher authority that Comcast is obligated to deliver you expanded basic service in analog (or replace your TVs) and how they do it should not be your problem. Comcast should be responsible for the engineering, installation, and maintenance of their solution whatever it is. Who knows, Comcast being possibly the second most despised company (after BP) in many parts of America. The PUC or whoever may see things your way.
Well, it could turn out that some portable radio maker in Dubuque actually did this in 1947 before the bookkeeper and the receptionist ran off with all the cash and put the company into receivership, but if it's mechanical and there is no prior art, I agree. I'm not generally a fan of patents as they seem usually to be privatization of the obvious, theft of the work of others, or attempts to monopolize natural phenomena. But in this case, it certainly is not obvious how to mechanically reverse polarity of batteries. If it were, everyone would be doing it.
***No, seriously - I've been working as a software engineer doing R&D work on complicated real time systems for years, and I'd never heard of his name***
Sigh -- Let me guess. You've never heard of Richard Hamming either? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming
It has always seemed ironic to me that no one in the business seems to have actually read Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers and that The Art of Computer Programming is only half finished. It's no damn wonder that nothing related to software works quite right.
Not that I actually know much about this other than that tracking down interference sources is a black art. But I would point out that the interference could be knocking out the signal at either the router or the computer, and I wouldn't overlook moving the router to a different location as a possible solution.
I think what I'd probably try is:
Try running the computer next to the router. If the connection stays up, move away until it doesn't. Then try different channels and find which works best. If there is still a problem try reorienting the router. It's reception pattern is almost certainly directional. If the problem is interference at the router, maybe the interference source can be put into a null in the reception pattern. Finally, try moving the router as far as is feasible.
Other than those things, it may be necessary to spend some money. And spending money, even switching to a different band entirely, won't guarantee a solution.
I'm supposed to believe that Comcast, Verison, et. al. can accurately identify machines that are infected by malware then wall them off? And somehow inform their owners? Then unwall them when the infection is cleared? And that there will be no or very few false determinations of infection? On what planet is this going to occur?
Comcast on my planet -- it's called Earth -- can't even manage to set the audio on all it's cable broadcasts to the same level. To say that it lacks the technical skills to detect and quarantine user malware infections and the administrative skills to manage a quarantine effort seems to understate the situation.
I do not think it is unusual and that other ISPs will do better.
***This guy will be lucky if his neighbors don't lynch him***
People who live in NYC don't generally care enough about their neighbors to lynch them. Now Texas or Oklahoma, There any half way decent rabble rouser can get a lynch mob together with just a megaphone and few cases of beer.
Of course it will run Linux. But you will have to modify fstab, short pin 22 to ground when booting, and recompile the kernel.
***yeah, yeah, I know...never trust anything on Wikipedia
Do people really still say this?***
Of course they do. We are not close to Peak Tinfoil which remains much in demand for headgear amongst certain segments of the population.
***HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage***
Once or twice a decade I encounter a "They can't possibly be serious" moment. This is one of those occasions.
***Is this really likely to change?***
Of course not.
***HTML5 is rife with rich capabilities***
IT speak for "you'll be damn lucky if anything works on anything other than sometimes on the browsers that are tested to -- IE, Firefox and Chrome"
======
I don't see how technology on computers can inoculate Web Page designers with common sense.
The SCOTUS did nothing of the damn sort. They ruled that municipal eminent domain takings are a matter of state, not federal, law and that states are entitled to make dumb laws as long as they don't violate the US constitution. That's original intent if I ever saw it. The four "conservative" bozos of course saw a federal interest because they are totally lacking in principles and actually think judicial activism is fine as long as it is in the interest of conservative causes.
Come to that, the takings clause in the fifth amendment only requires "just compensation". It does not forbid taking of property.
As to whether the citizens of Connecticut have/had a problem with their state and local governments that they need/needed to correct, that's an entirely different issue.
Tain't all sand. A lot of it is rock. And the normal way to move electricity is with transmission lines. Solved that problem about 8 decades ago.
What does give pause is that the Southwestern deserts of the US are about as well situated to deliver solar power as the Northern Sahara is. And it can be gotten out -- at least to Coastal California -- without crossing any really difficult barriers like the Mediterranean. At least one of everything solar has been built out around Barstow. But as far as I can tell very little of that generation capacity is actually in daily use.
The other problem is that hydro is the only renewable that can be used to trim baseline load and can be brought on line quickly when the wind stops blowing in Europe and/or starts blowing dust in North Africa. It's far from clear to me that Europe has really thought through all the problems associated with a large amount of solar/wind power generation and the difficulties of building reliable power distribution systems dependant on renewables.
I'm not against it, and I wish them luck. But Saharan solar may not be as easy as it looks.