|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 5, 2017 2:31:35 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Ratty on Jun 5, 2017 7:33:15 GMT
It's the same story here in Oz ...... until you read the comments under the news articles.
|
|
|
Post by nautonnier on Jun 5, 2017 8:47:58 GMT
It's the same story here in Oz ...... until you read the comments under the news articles. Yes there does seem to be a total disconnect between the media and their dwindling 'readership'.
|
|
|
Post by duwayne on Jun 5, 2017 17:47:01 GMT
I'm not sure where to post this since it's very much off-topic but knowing that this is a group with wide-ranging interests, I thought it might be worthy of note.
I went back to an upscale suburban city in Ohio on Saturday to attend a high school graduation ceremony and I was surprised at how the city has changed.
When the 270 graduates entered the auditorium, I counted only 1 African-American which was in line with what I remembered from years ago. Not much change there. But when the graduates were introduced one-by-one there was a difference. Here’s a list of all the graduates whose last names started with the letter “A”. Note that I did not skip through the names.
Ayman Abdelhady Mariam-Arin Abdelhamid Norhan Ashraf Abdelmaged Omar Amin Abed Yasmine I Abu-Hamdeh Abritha Mahmoud Abuhamdeh Robert Eugene Adams Fouad Darwish Ahmed Matthew James Akers Ibrahim Fawaz Al Babeli Sarmad S Al-ish Mahdi Salah Al Saffar Yousef Sameer Mohammed Al-Shinnawi Jason Charles Albrecht Mohammad Momin Ali Bushra Altabba Michael Parker Altman Leonardo Miliadis Anastasopoulos Johm Andrew Anitas Linda Musa Assad Omar Abdul Assad Marijana Atanaskovic Anwaar Emad Awad
And skipping to the names at the end of the list of graduates here are the ones whose last names started with "Z".
Ameen Ashraf Zayed Fatin Elian Zayed Mohammed Abdullah Zayed Nael Mohammed Zayed Shadi Elie Zogheib
I was totally surprised at how the demographics have undergone such a radical change. Hopefully, the selective "diversification" of this community will be for the better.
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 5, 2017 18:27:03 GMT
I'm not sure where to post this since it's very much off-topic but knowing that this is a group with wide-ranging interests, I thought it might be worthy of note. I went back to an upscale suburban city in Ohio on Saturday to attend a high school graduation ceremony and I was surprised at how the city has changed. When the 270 graduates entered the auditorium, I counted only 1 African-American which was in line with what I remembered from years ago. Not much change there. But when the graduates were introduced one-by-one there was a difference. Here’s a list of all the graduates whose last names started with the letter “A”. Note that I did not skip through the names. Ayman Abdelhady Mariam-Arin Abdelhamid Norhan Ashraf Abdelmaged Omar Amin Abed Yasmine I Abu-Hamdeh Abritha Mahmoud Abuhamdeh Robert Eugene Adams Fouad Darwish Ahmed Matthew James Akers Ibrahim Fawaz Al Babeli Sarmad S Al-ish Mahdi Salah Al Saffar Yousef Sameer Mohammed Al-Shinnawi Jason Charles Albrecht Mohammad Momin Ali Bushra Altabba Michael Parker Altman Leonardo Miliadis Anastasopoulos Johm Andrew Anitas Linda Musa Assad Omar Abdul Assad Marijana Atanaskovic Anwaar Emad Awad And skipping to the names at the end of the list of graduates here are the ones whose last names started with "Z". Ameen Ashraf Zayed Fatin Elian Zayed Mohammed Abdullah Zayed Nael Mohammed Zayed Shadi Elie Zogheib I was totally surprised at how the demographics have undergone such a radical change. Hopefully, the selective "diversification" of this community will be for the better. That may very much depend on the cultural tenets of the tree, given the apple is in close proximity. The more successes the better, as the failures often have this tendency to fall back on the worst elements of their religion in a last attempt to save what's left. The worst elements of Islam (in terms of their effects on others) are much worse than those to be found in the New Testament.
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 5, 2017 20:20:01 GMT
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 10, 2017 14:24:07 GMT
|
|
|
Post by sigurdur on Jun 22, 2017 23:07:04 GMT
We have NDAWN in ND that provides a continuous record of Watt per square meter. Solar is great down south. Not worth a hoot up north.
I have no problem with solar where it works. Just don't force us to try and use it.
|
|
|
Post by Ratty on Jun 22, 2017 23:29:57 GMT
We have NDAWN in ND that provides a continuous record of Watt per square meter. Solar is great down south. Not worth a hoot up north. I have no problem with solar where it works. Just don't force us to try and use it. Forget efficiency, Sig. Solar is cheap, clean and will save us all eventually .... I hear.
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 23, 2017 14:05:42 GMT
We have NDAWN in ND that provides a continuous record of Watt per square meter. Solar is great down south. Not worth a hoot up north. I have no problem with solar where it works. Just don't force us to try and use it. Forget efficiency, Sig. Solar is cheap, clean and will save us all eventually .... I hear. Passive solar has been working forevah ... a cave with a southern exposure! Or northern in the southern. Modern Neolithic. Lionel Buckett's cave house in Berambing in the Blue Mountains. Former occupant decorates the floor.
|
|
|
Post by slh1234 on Jun 23, 2017 19:38:10 GMT
Re: Solar.
I moved back to the US just about a year ago, and I bought I house in the East Bay Area. I bought solar - as much as would fit on my roof. On Monday, PG&E notified me that I was clear to turn it on, which is great because we're in a heat wave. So what I've noted from my panels, configured as they are, and what I think actually is helped by people using Solar:
By 10:00 AM, I am producing over 2 KW of power. That's much more than my house is using during the times that the air conditioner pump is not running. So I'm a net producer of power until the A/C kicks in, then I'm a net consumer. Overall, throughout the heat of the day, I'm a net producer of power so that the reading on my electric meter is lower at 5:00 PM than it is at 8:00 AM. The peak times for power consumption on the grid are also my peak hours for production. Overall, throughout the course of a day, I now consume a little more than I produce, but when the weather is back down to normal, I actually expect that to change.
Having worked on Smart Grid, and more recently, working on different ranges of problems that deal with predictive analytics and other machine-learning problems, I think people installing Solar has the potential to reduce the amount of power that must be produced by PG&E, and thus, the amount of fuel burned to produce that electricity.
As we've discussed on these boards several times before, it takes hours to spin up a steam generator, so it is not something that can be done quickly. As a result, when Hydro is not available the gas/coal fired generators must be kept generating for peak demand pretty close to round-the-clock. In California, we have hydro capacity, but we're subject to multi-year droughts, so it is not always available. After the rainfall we had this last year, though, it is producing again. Hydro is used to quickly spin up new generation for peak demand hours - it spins up in moments.
PG&E knows exactly how many of us install solar panels, and exactly what our generation capacity is. They also know what the weather forecasts are. It becomes a predictive analytics problem for PG&E to ensure they have adequate generation for peak-demand hours. Since our solar peak generation hours coincide with peak-demand hours, it allows them to project for lower demand, and thus produce less power round the clock, thus reducing the overall gas or coal consumption used in electrical generation. They already have to take the weather forecasts into account to project the demand, so this just allows them to also take our power generation capacity into account when projecting.
I've changed my thoughts on this fairly recently. I think solar, probably much more effectively than wind, really does facilitate conservation of resources, especially in places like California. It's not likely to be nearly as effective in places like Seattle (one of many former homes for me).
If you're curious, the way that PG&E has to handle our generation and bills is that they install a "Net usage" meter. The excess I generate at any moment goes back onto the grid, and I can see negative readings in my current utilization on my meter. When I am consuming more than I generate, of course, I can see a positive number there. At the end of the billing cycle, I just pay for the net consumption, so in effect, PG&E has to pay me the same price as I pay for electricity consumed.
|
|
|
Post by nonentropic on Jun 23, 2017 20:18:03 GMT
On the face of it the solar works. Where this hinges is what do they PG&E charge for the supply connection and what is a fair rate for the backup and no sun days. The subsidy discussion is legendary and there is also the loss of supply due to shutdowns by coal/gas generators due to loss of base-load.
In NZ we have had a south island dry spell in the key hydro generation regions. The result of 15 years of relentless push towards wind and other alternative energies has doubled the price of power at the consumer level above inflation and just last year we shut 2 combined cycle gas generators. so we are now restarting 2 coal units to fill the gap. CO2's big day out. Those coal units were targeted by the greens for gas axing, a shame because a crisis would help discussion.
|
|
|
Post by slh1234 on Jun 23, 2017 20:51:26 GMT
On the face of it the solar works. Where this hinges is what do they PG&E charge for the supply connection and what is a fair rate for the backup and no sun days. The subsidy discussion is legendary and there is also the loss of supply due to shutdowns by coal/gas generators due to loss of base-load. In NZ we have had a south island dry spell in the key hydro generation regions. The result of 15 years of relentless push towards wind and other alternative energies has doubled the price of power at the consumer level above inflation and just last year we shut 2 combined cycle gas generators. so we are now restarting 2 coal units to fill the gap. CO2's big day out. Those coal units were targeted by the greens for gas axing, a shame because a crisis would help discussion. I think I hit on some of this, but let me hit it again. I pay for net usage, so in effect, PG&E is paying me the same rate I pay them, and we settle up at the end of the billing cycle. There is no storage. This will not totally eliminate the need for generation. The key is to reduce the amount of PG&E generation during peak hours. They must generate all day for the peak demand, even during the parts of the day that are nowhere near peak demand. A couple of interesting points here:
- The solar panels still generate power during cloudy days. It produces LESS power, but it still produces during peak hours.
- The demand for power is also lower during cloudy days, so the solar panels still contribute significantly toward satisfying peak demand.
- This is the "predictive analytics" problem I identified. Predictive analytics are used extensively in pretty much every industry these days.
PG&E, or other power production companies, already make use of predictive analytics in planning generation day to day. The level of available solar power production is really just one more parameter on this. If they can predict 24 hours in advance, they can plan for the peak demand on that day, and and produce less power for cloudy days (accounting for available solar capacity across the grid).
|
|
|
Post by Ratty on Jun 24, 2017 0:59:38 GMT
Good discussion. I'm considering panels for our current home. We had them at the last place and were happy with the output over about eight years, most of the time in credit with the power company.
|
|
|
Post by missouriboy on Jun 24, 2017 3:18:14 GMT
Good discussion. I'm considering panels for our current home. We had them at the last place and were happy with the output over about eight years, most of the time in credit with the power company. Did you ever figure out what the payback time was or was likely to be after 8 years of use?
|
|