It sounds like they don't have a fat enough capacity external grid connection to export all the power they could generate nor any local dump loads to utilitise spare capacity (eg. aluminium or chloralkali).
I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss that risk. One of my friends in Motorola telecoms who admittedly worked on rather more powerful base stations and at close range died very young of a brain tumour that was suspected to be due to his work exposure. The official view has always been that non-ionising radiation cannot do any damage. I am not so sure.
I do think it is rare and you have to be unlucky and/or genetically susceptable but the correlation between excessive mobile phone use (which is easily metered) and brain tumours looks real.
There is also one with pedestrians stepping out into traffic whilst texting or phoning and crashing cars which are *far* greater risks to health.
Yes, that's the irony of the situation in a nutshell.
Yup.
Bingo. That's the bedrock that underlies it all! We live in a petri dish. The question is, are we ultimately smart enough not to suffer the same fate as the bacteria similarly trapped.
That's about how I see it, as well.
The power elite are also now fully engaged in their maneuvers to get out ahead of it. Not to the rest of our benefit, I'd add.
It's fraught with problems, of course. Never thought different. But you should have heard his excitement about these ideas. It's clear his employer was focused like a laser on this hope.
I'll put in a call when I next see the guy's card laying about here. Hopefully, sooner than later.
formatting link
Some did -- aluminum, for example. Alcoa is located on the Columbia River.
Alcoa (is it now Alcan??) scaled down their operations quite a few years ago. There is still some sapphire and TI sapphire manufacturing here (iridium crucibles and, I think, also some accoustic types that I don't fully understand yet.)
Los Angeles is like that. LA is essentially sucking the water out of everywhere for 1000 miles around it. Yet they possess quite a coast line and could desalinate. The millionaires who own the coastal land wouldn't allow anything like that, though.
Similarly with "flood plain" land. The hoi polloi live on the flood plains. The wealthy in plateaus or hills above. When a 100-year flood happens (which is every 20 years now), it's the poorer who are mostly affected. Though to be honest, Oregon never has been part of the "money system" is more of a capillary than an artery. So unlike LA, you don't find a lot of really rich folks here. The venture community here can be counted on the fingers of maybe two hands?
Shocked? ;)
I think I read you writing about his before, here? Or maybe it was in some BBC news thing I watched. I can't recall. Anyway, I'd heard that during this last year or less.
Yes, that's why I wrote about "drooling" over the idea of a million cars like this in larger metro areas.
Oh, yeah. The term is used here, though it is considered a little "dated" now. Kind of like being named Gertrude or Hilda (though I can't speak for those names in northern Europe.)
Anyway, there it is. Now you can see that it happens here.
And in my area we just poured renewable energy down the drain because we didn't know what to do with what we had. At least you are getting something for the money.
It has been proven at least to the satisfaction of most scientists. The ones that disagree tend to be at the extremes of the political spectrum and have been sponsored by ultra free market think tanks to peddle lies. Their sponsors they did the same for smoking tobacco and against wearing seatbelts too. Sometimes even using the same practitioners.
I remember having something similar in Japan. Dimmed the lights when the compressor cut in at startup. When you have outside 35C nominal 90% humidity you need something like that to make life bareable.
You may be surprised to learn that I agree with you entirely on this point. Do you have to be a bit careful about Legionaires disease with a swamp cooler (which I presume is a water evaporative fan thing)?
My house walls are so thick and the UK climate so mild for most of the time that the interior never catches up with the outside temperature (which seldom exceeds 25C anyway). I can run from April through to almost November with nothing much more than passive heating from the computers waste heat. Certainly no aircon needed domestically.
Again I agree with you entirely.
Me neither. Though I might be prepared to try an electric car. The one or two I have seen were amusing to play with. What really annoyed me about the last big green event I went to was that the exhibition site (Trafalgar Square, London) was powered by noisy smelly diesel electric sets whilst several tens of kilowatts of fuel cell kit were there on display and the only ones actually running were educational toys!
It almost NEVER happens that way. But as it turns out, yes. The bridge from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington is part of the I5 system. A new bridge was installed when I was pretty young. There was a lot of disgruntledness going on, as I recall, but the upshot was the toll that was to be used to pay for the bridge. The promise was to take out the toll when the bridge was paid off.
The toll went in around 1960. I remember tossing money into the bins. Pair of dimes at first, but I think it went to a quarter at some point. Anyway, the tolls were removed about
6 or 7 years later, when it was all paid for. Just as promised.
It doesn't work like that around Chicago, that's for sure. But it does in some places.
But of course I take your point. It's as much my own concern too as it is yours. I don't think those in power would be sincere, at all, about this. If nothing else, there would be a "midnight raid" on the proposed bill to be passed the following day and it would all be said and done before the papers could tell the rest of us how we got screwed again.
Which is why we need to be active and involved. To make sure it happens fairly. If it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Without support, it won't happen or if it happens no one will trust it or care if it gets gutted and tossed onto the roadside in the next year's congress.
As I said, we all have a very heightened sense for fairness
-- or the lack of it, I mean.
Yes. But you are dwelling on minutia. I'm talking about on a large scale here.
I have the luxury. I've been lucky. Others haven't been. I have property and sufficient resources to tell myself that I do a lot to "pay my way." But it is because I also have been lucky enough to acquire the resources to make it happen. But it is like a multi-millionaire saying that they don't own a car (they use a taxi for everything, let's say) and trying to seem like they might be better than someone else who not only owns two cars, but can't afford to buy a Toyota Prius or a Tesla, and drives something that gets 15 mpg, instead, because that is all the capital equipment they can afford at the time.
I don't sit like Antoinette and ask why the starving peasants don't eat the cake instead, if they can't find enough bread to eat. I know I've been lucky. Yes, I earned every single thing and fought my way from living exposed to the weather as a kid to what I have now. But I still did it on the backs of so many before me. No matter how "neutal" I am now, it will never make up for all the energy that went into the atmosphere in order to make and build all that I use now to be "energy neutral," so to speak. Lives, resources, etc. I've been damned lucky. I remind myself with than mantra every day I wake up and take a breath from my forest land.
You can't expect someone who is trying to reach political leaders to tie up both hands and feet at the same time. It's a "heads you win, tails I lose" proposal, Jörg. If he caves into your dour judgment of him and doesn't fly, then he loses all effectiveness in personally meeting "movers and shakers" to get the story out. If he doesn't cave it and is instead more effective than otherwise, he's damned by you.
In any case, it's a strawman. He's just some guy. What he does or doesn't do means nothing about the science, anyway. Just like nothing I do, does. It stands on its own.
That's my reaction as well. But then, I'm not the PGE engineer working on these things. But ignorant of the details, I agree with you. I suspect they are laying plans, all the same, given the way he spoke. I know they are, in fact. He said so. Probably in quarterly meetings with car companies and with investors who own gas stations, as well. All ends need to be worked out.
By the way, a personal friend of mine did the Shorepower Charger:
formatting link
Yup. Or in my case, daughter has siezure and breaks something and is bleeding and with 3rd degree burns.
No idea how many disaster it would take for them to work out the kinks in that!
formatting link
The article says no. I don't know any better.
I'd imagine they could have just told everyone "free power for a week" and would have upped the local demand just fine. I'd give my chickens a warm barn for a week!! Or maybe do a lot of pottery that week in the kiln! Oh, well. It's water over the bridge, now. Literally.
That's the classical argumentation, "the others are bribed by Exxon". This stuff discredits AGW proponents even more in the eye of the public. Or rather has, the damage is already done. Ask pretty much anyone in our neighborhood and they'll tell you the same. Those folks are voters, by the way. Same with the other argument, "we know and you do not know". Unfortunately even Jon has now used it, which was a bit disappointing to me.
That begs the question: Should people settle in places where they can only live using up an enormous amount of resources? And I am not only looking at nations far away. Here in California there are millions of people living in the South where only massive amounts of irrigation turned a piece of desert into liveable land. That is not good stewardship.
You do have to clean it regularly, it is not "press a button" easy to operate. However, since many folks have those things on the roof or under the eaves and don't get sick there seems to be quite a margin of safety. I am probably one of very few people who clean it evey 2-3 weeks. I installed a quick shut-off valve and also a waste discharge pipe just for that.
But I agree with Jon that wealth redistribution isn't such a good thing and ideally there should be no tax or utility incentives. However, if they have to do it they should at least pick the right ones and that's clearly not being done. Also, for many people education can unfortunately only happen via their wallets.
No, most of Northern Europe won't need that.
One of the engineers we snatched from you guy is Irish by birth. His parents lived near a creek or little river somewhere in Western Ireland. So his dad took a regular and fairly old car (I think it was a DAF), removed the engine and made an electric car out of it. Then he built himself a generator and a paddle wheel that was driven by the creek. This charged the car. That was a truly green solution that didn't rely on some coal station in the distance to supply the electricity.
Sometimes it is necessary to inject a dose of reality into such discussions :-)
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
No pun intended but a lot of folks find statements such as "I know and you don't" a bit arrogant. Even more so when it comes to this topic. But let's leave it at that.
Now I got a chuckle out of that one. Come to California and I'll show you :-)
Never around here. In fact, tolls went up in such an inflationary way that there are people in lower-paying jobs who had to consider giving up those jobs because the toll took too large a percentage out of their net pay.
Remember the telephone tax to finance the Spanish-American war? Now how long did we pay that?
It's called gut and amend. Sometimes I have the feeling the folks voting on it haven't always read the respective bills thoroughly.
A large amount of minutia makes a large scale. If we as a nation could curb our use of electrity by just 2% then almost ten million (!) tons of CO2 can be curbed. I think that's feasible. Minutia?
There I don't quite agree. For example, we do not have any trees on our property and it would be too small anyhow. So we buy the wood, or get unwanted rounds from people who had a tree felled. But ok, like you I was also lucky to earn the means to buy the wood. What irks me is when others who also did give it up just for creature comfort. Like a family out here who just had propane heating installed. "Oh, it's so much better to just flick that little switch in the morning". Sure, wood heating is messy and it's work. And yeah, we could also just flick the switch because we have that and we'd be able to pay 2x to 3x the cost of fuel versus wood. But I feel we have to do our thing for the environment.
Same with cars. You do not need a Prius. I had a car in the 70's/80's that netted 50mpg, something even a Prius can barely touch. It cost me next to nothing but lots of sweat. Rebuilding an engine without much of a clue how that particular car engine works. That was when I learned how an engine really works in detail. And the car was not luxurious, you had to wear a thick army parka in winter.
So do I, but probably in a different way (giving thanks in prayer instead of bringing requests all the time). We should also give back, monetarily as well as knowledge.
If there just weren't so many of him. I totally do not agree that these folks have to fly in private jets just because they feel oh so important. Is it beneath them to sit on a regular commercial flight? How exactly would they not be able to meat with "movers and shakers" after such a flight?
What really irked people was when private jets had to be ferried to Sweden for parking because there wasn't enough tie-down space. That took the cake and has cost tons of credibility. All I am telling is how it went down with the people, and those are voters. So this was not my judgment but that of many folks around here, and it is IMHO deserved.
This is one of the things that angers people, and rightfully so: There is barely any discussion or discussions are ignored and they do it all anyways. Like with smart meters. Had they talked to customers and actually listened then all that flak would have been so much less. Listening ... what a concept ...
formatting link
Nice. Now we need to build power stations to feed those :-)
The reason why utilities are in this is fairly clear and understandable: That way they can gradually eat into the sales of oil companies, take some of the market away from them.
[...]
If the article says no that doesn't mean it was impossible. I have designed several "impossible" pieces of electronics :-)
Out here folks know pretty well what's coming. Except for the little tornadoes and the deluge of hail yesterday afternoon.
[...]
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Naaaah! All we'll get "for the money" is empty pockets.
Renewable energy is a farce You can never get something for nothing. Fortunately the Germans are shutting down nuclear, so the Europeons will ultimately be less competitive. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
One has to wonder, though -- what's the environmental impact of propane vs. wood? Just because propane costs 2-3x as much doesn't imply it's 2-3x worse for the environment; historically wood burning has been quite dirty, and while technology has greatly improved that, there are certainly some cities where wood-burning stoves aren't allowed or only allowed at certain times. In Oregon here, if your home has an older non-EPA-certified woodstove, you can't even sell the place without first removing the woodstove.
I am a big fan of zone-based heating systems -- it's silly to heat an entire house if you're only going to be using a few rooms. In a sense woodstoves make this happen automatically -- unless you start turning on fans or whatnot, the rooms furthest from the woodstove are inevitably a bit chilly! :-)
Are there features of the smart meters you don't like? Or just that's they don't seem to be reliable?
Virtually 100% of AGW _proponents_ profit from their position. I think the cure may be simply doing away with publicly-funded universities. Public-funding of ANY level of education results in propagandizing of students toward leftist points-of-view.
One of my religious camp followers pointed this out...
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (New International Version, 1984)
The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.
[snip]
That's why we should tax the poor ;-)
[snip] ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
It is a fossil fuel. For AGW proponents that should be a red flag because it adds a net CO2 load to the environment while wood barely does. Me, I mostly don't like the cost, plus the earth has a limited the supply of crude oil from which propane is derived as a byproduct.
That's one problem with wood-burning which can spoil the soup for all of us. I found that even oldtimers who claim they know everything there is about wood heating and to have done it their whole lives do not know how to burn properly. In the morning they simply chuck one lone big log in there, slam the door and head over to the breakfast place. Meantime the stove smolders on and on and stinky brown smoke crawls out the chimney. Once in a while ... *KAPOOF* ... chimney fire. Happened to friends and I predicted it yet they didn't change their ways of operating the stove. Luckily it didn't burn down their house but it did cost them their chimney.
Not to toot my own horn but we always get down on the knees, separate the ash from the remaining charcoal (it's an insert, no ash drawer), reshuffle the charcoal, fan them to a hot white glow, reload the stove, and after some initial faint white/gray puffs it burns without smoke or smell.
I do have my doubts about reliability. Ours sits smack dab in the hot sun and the first thing I noticed after installation was a black electrolytic cap in there ...
What I don't like is that they didn't explain this stuff well to consumers. Then they failed to provider HAN connections. Heck, they even can't provide immediate feedback via web, it's a whole day delayed. Good grief.
So we all end up paying extra for technology that was pushed onto us from above, with no tangible immediate benefits.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Nah, can't generalize that. My degree is from a European ivy league university and they are nearly all public over there, including my alma mater. The ME, EE, CE and similar stundet bodies were largely leaning to the right, the whole time I was there. Not all of them of course but the vast majority. I don't think any sort of propaganda could have ever changed that.
Shazam! A bible quote from a professed non-religious guy like you. Amazing. It has a different meaning than you may think but this sure sounds cool :-)
[...]
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
This puts you in the awkward position of having to decide just how educable people are -- and whether or not it's the governments job to be doing it -- vs. safety. Not enviable -- I can see why a politician would opt for, "umm... let's just promote electric or propane or natural gas..." :-)
Sounds like the idea originated with the prospect of benefitting PGE and the "consumer benefits" were then just kinda tacked on to achieve buy-in. You're absolutely right in that, if you're going to design a new smart meter anyway, even if only a small number of people will bother to use it, it costs essentially nothing to add a small header or just pads on the PCB so that the homeowner can extract the data directly from it. Heck, then sell the "Ethernet to proprietary header" interface box for $39 or whatever if manufacturing costs need to be as low as possible in the more common usage scenario.
How in the world can renewable energy, which must pay its entire burden in land and effort, ever be competitive with energy stored over millions of years and is by comparison always nearly free? No price could be cheap enough to compete with, for example, natural gas. It's not a farce, but it's not cheap, either.
I agree with you, broadly, about "less competitive." If others do not similarly constrain their use of nearly free energy (by comparison), then those who _do_ constrain themselves will also doom themselves because they will be out-competed for a time. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. The world dies and everyone loses. The question is whether or not we will be smarter than bacteria in a petri dish. I don't think so. But I'd like to be wrong.
The underlying problem is population growth. But no one knows how to deal with or even genuinely talk about it.
I know, just enjoying it while I can ;-) ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
When it comes to wood burning stoves most people aren't, IME :-(
Out here, they'd find out who dunnit, get their pitchforks and start marching ;-)
The really sad part: It's already in there. Next to the 900MHz radio those meters also have a 2.45GHz to communicate with gas meters and the like. It would have been so easy. But no ...
I am not a SW expert but HAN would probably just require software. The meter would become one of the devices on your LAN, like a drive or printer does if they have WLAN.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.