Yep, like I said, it's a special case - good mostly for examining to see where we might be in ~15-20 years if solar panels keep getting cheaper.

They still have quite a ways to go to make power cheaper during the day, but I actually think it's a worthy goal. I like the idea of cheaper cleaner power that's distributed enough that, worst case, I'd be able to keep the freezer frozen* even if I have to use flashlights/lanterns at night until they get the power fixed.

*I have a good one, it won't defrost if you keep it closed and give it power for a couple hours a day.

They'll still make it illegal because, you know, you could always turn the breaker back on. ;) They'll remove the meter, and you won't care until city officials show up and condemn your house because solar panels or no, without a grid connection you 'can't sustain a quality of life there'. Never mind that the alternative had her sleeping in her car... I'd take my house unheated over trying to sleep in my truck, even in an Alaskan winter.

Which is actually too bad; a lot of cities could use those today, better fuel economy then buses and higher passenger loads than cars.

I've seen old cites. They ran the rails right up to and into the factories. Outside of the commercial zones most of the trucks shouldn't be loaded as heavily.

Hawaii does have a coal plant, but they have to ship the coal in, and they are big enough for the generators to be efficient, even though it doesn't leave much slack.

If it was cheaper I would have expected them to do it just to improve their bottom line. Seems that they have one in Puna. Of course, it also mentions that the largest/most populated island, Oahu, isn't a good candidate for geothermal power. To the point that they're considering stringing a power cable undersea to connect the islands in order to transfer power between them, exploiting Big Island's geothermal plant for Oahu's benefit.

As for Alaska, hell no, save the oil for heating and selling down south. We have coal up here as well, we're currently in the process of trying to restart a coal power plant - it's even a 'clean coal' one that was built with the assistance of federal subsidies for the purpose of research.

Finally, I swear I've had a conversation similar to this before about Hawaii - Sure it's a special case, but that makes it a good candidate to look at for the potential problems the mainland could face if solar installs explode. IE look at where Hawaii is now to see where the southern US could be in 15-20 years.

Personally, I'm hoping 'retired EV batteries' becomes a viable solution. Too worn out to have the range necessary for staying in the vehicle, but retaining 50% or so of the capacity, which in the case of the 85kwh Model S, would be enough to power me for 2 days.

I take it you're talking about a full size fridge, not a cube?

It's not the size of your home that's the kicker, it's the maximum draw you need to size for. I'm not going to call your contractor incompetent, but he was probably sizing the battery bank for you to be able to run your whole service off of it. If you're willing to deal with something like no AC during a power outage, the battery system can be a lot smaller. Did he quote wattage and kwh, or even run time for that bank of batteries? Was it supposed to provide power overnight?

A quick google search showing a 2Kw battery bank, 4 batteries. It'll run your fridge(or a sump pump) and some lights, beyond that it'd need the pictured generator pretty quickly. Pictured here is a battery bank for an off-grid house.

Personally, I'd go with 20%. We use about 50% more power during the day than we do at night. So if we say night uses 2 units of power, we use 3 during the day, for a total of 5. 1/5th=20%.

Anything over 20% of power from solar means we start getting close to cutting into power production by base load power plants. Much above that and you'd see night power costing more than daytime. If we get much above 30% we'd need some massive storage banks to actually use the power efficiently.

That's currently true, but look at Hawaii - they're quickly reaching the point where they'll need their peakers more at night than during the day. They're quickly reaching the point where some of their distribution circuits will occasionally go negative during the day.

Net metering only works when you are indeed on average selling expensive electricity for the same rate you're buying cheap electricity. If more than 20% or so homes and businesses install solar panels the equation flips - now nighttime power is more expensive than daytime.

Nope, he said inverter, he was talking about a intelligent hybrid inverter like this Outback one.

The trick is that while it's called in inverter, that's only one of the things it does. Not only can it feed solar power to the grid, it can operate your home off of batteries, and if that isn't enough it can signal a generator to turn on(and off) as needs and power supply(solar AND grid) varies.

$125k to shill for an oil company? Sign me up.

$1M simply to look for dirt on somebody? That should be sufficient money to make a good start on a smear campaign.

Actually fairly unlikely. Give it a few more transactions.

1. The assets aren't forfeited(yet). They're being converted to USD with Ulbricht's consent. Doing so locks down the value now, and he might manage to keep some of it.
2. Who was damaged by the Silk Road? Well, allegedly Ulbricht tried to commission 6 murders on it.
3. The goods were illegal, even though I disagree with them being so. Well, except when the 'goods' are contract hits and such.

Jack Ma, being a Chinese Citizen, and Alibaba, a chinese company, would be rather hard to arrest them. Blocking them would be only very slightly easier because it'd become a matter of international treaty. As for being fraud/racket/exchange, I'd ask for citations, because as far as I'm aware it's a more direct source for cheap made in china stuff, with all the usual caveats for cheap stuff from china (buyer beware, probably lower quality than you think).

I'd have a lot more sympathy for him if he'd stuck to drugs rather than attempting to hire hits(contract murders) through his own site.

You know, I've never seen a attack ad/article like what you came up with? It's weak.

Sorry for not actually creating a template, but it'd be more along the lines of attacking somebody for having a liberal arts degree - not a science or engineering degree to indicate that you've been trained in how to assess the dangers of mining/drilling in an area. Revealing that they're getting money, or at least have ties with, people that the target audience don't like and don't think should have a say in their business. Example would be Bloomberg's 'donations' to help spread gun control in the USA. It's often counterproductive because, well, the gunnies* hate him so bad. The Koch brothers would be the ones from the opposite side of the fence. They seem to like donating to 'any' conservative republican running against a liberal democrat in a competitive campaign. They don't really care where.

Depending on how bad they are, you could also accuse them of simply being NIMBY or BANANA - Not In My Back Yard, or Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody. Fact is, we need resources to power our economy, and if you give the impression that you oppose EVERYTHING(and there are people who do), or your plan amounts to powering the economy on fairy farts, perhaps your efforts to constrict expansion should be restricted.

I say all of this as an anti-coal, pro-nuclear type. I think that the republicans have a point about the EPA - every regulation needs to be examined thoroughly, but consider diesel vehicles. Do you realize that because of the latest round of emission requirements, mileage in new diesels has dropped 20-30%**? We're talking about stuff like new hybrid buses getting worse gas mileage than their older non-hybrid cousins. The city can't afford to run the new buses in long routes because they don't save fuel. They WERE saving fuel until a new EPA approved engine was put in...

Anyways, to get back to the point - a single person 'rolling coal' with a deliberately modified truck in protest of the EPA's rules negates the benefits of the systems they mandated on about a thousand other trucks(and yes, those that do so are assholes). Personally, I think that the EPA needs to place stronger emphasis on retaining gas mileage, because we need to conserve oil. At this point the EPA is increasing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions for reducing other emissions - and I don't think that it's worth it.

*Given his staunch support for gun control and the fact that while Mayor of NYC he attempted to increase gun control on a GLOBAL scale, often donating money to gun control initiatives in individual states across the country I can see why.
**At least until you rip out the extra EPA stuff or reprogram the chip. Then you get the gas mileage back Details on modifications necessary depend on vehicle and emission system.