Which is why I didn't even propose that it run entirely from that heat at any time. If a cloud passes overhead the induction heating system would just run more. Think of the solar heat as a pre-heater, it saves electricity by replacing it with cheap solar.

Happens every day. NHTSA rates the value at saving a human life (VSL) at $9.1M. Insurance adjusters do it. Courtrooms do it. Etc...

And while arbitrary, it's not completely arbitrary. A lot goes into the figuring. Expected lifetime earnings, funeral costs, medical expenses, school costs, all goes into the figures.

Again: Educated guess. We know mercury in the environment is bad. Ergo, we set the fees for emitting it extremely high. $10M/ton might actually be an OOM low. $100M/ton might be closer.

Whatever. The idea is that you have a serious board that 'does their best', and regularly reviews the pollution list, adding new pollutants and adjusting the fees as new science gives you 'settled' values. I say settled because values shouldn't be assigned on the basis of 'cutting edge' science, but science that has been verified for a bit. If nothing else, it allows industry to keep an eye on the studies and have a good idea what they're going to be charged in the future.

As for parking/speeding tickets, first you'd have to define a goal. When your publicly stated goal is prevention, but your actual goal is revenue generation, of course the fee structure is going to look odd.

Ah, good thing I'm talking about fees, not fines. It's the difference between a sales tax and a speeding ticket. I also explicitly stated that the schedules would be set in proportion to harm being caused, at least as best as we're able to. Of course, that brings up a different point - it should probably charge different amounts depending on whether the pollution is affecting the ground, air, or water.

As for civil asset forfeiture, I laugh because I just got a nice letter back from my senator after I wrote him to ask for actions to seriously limit said seizures. I haven't heard back from the other congressional members(state & federal) that I also wrote, but oh well.

So I'll repeat: These are fees, not fines, in that they're not punitive. Things do tend to get crazy when you go punitive. This is 'simply' an attempt to render an external cost not paid by the business doing the industry, an internal one, so they have incentive to reduce their pollution. While actually REDUCING the regulatory burden, because now rather than sticking their noses in 'state of technology' and saying you have to have XYZ technologies installed, they simply charge for your emissions, and the business installs XYZ simply in order to save money. They even have incentive to seek new pollution control technology because it'll save them money, as opposed to the current situation where they don't want to see new technology because the EPA will subsequently mandate it.

Very well stated. I'd also note that the 'easiest' way to cut all pollution from any one industry is to get rid of the industry. It'll most likely move to China and result in even more pollution on the planet, but at least it's not in your yard! Well, unless you're along the west coast of the USA.... A substantial amount of their air pollution is from China at this point.

Anyways, my whole idea is to turn the externality of pollution into a cost paid by the business, even if it's in a flawed 'guesstimate' way.

Very much so.

The usual: Lives lost, work days lost due to extra illness, medical care, damage to infrastructure and habitats, etc...

Then you're not thinking it through very well, because we do it all the time. Are many of these numbers anything more than WAGs? Often no. We can't assign meaningful damage to any given pound of pollutant, but we can make an educated guess, and that's really all I'm asking for.

If the further developments in science say that $10M per ton of mercury released is understating the cost, then we increase the fee.

Those two numbers? Yeah, pretty much pulled out of the ether, just to make an example. Calculating the real charges for polluters would require pulling out the serious spreadsheets and crunching some numbers.

Why? Are you thinking you'd rate them differently?

Having read up on queen excluder, it seems that the 'pros' don't like them, but take the relatively simple expedient of swapping boxes - IE if the queen starts migrating towards the harvest boxes(intended for honey), you swap the two brood boxes so she's at the bottom again.

Absorption cooling. Uses heat to cool.

a better breakdown.

Or if you want PV panels, you can get an ac system that runs directly off the DC power.

Do you understand what this means:

ibpook's original statement is incorrect for modern panels, and has been for quite some time. Modern solar panels will create more Joules of electricity than the joules it took to make them, their mounts, and yes, even the inverter, in about 4 years. Even if they were initially made by burning coal for energy, they will eventually more than offset that carbon by displacing carbon here in the USA(or Europe, or anywhere). Even if it's displacing natural gas, or in a slightly non-optimal area. Up here in Alaska, it might take 6.

I posited on using 'retired' EV batteries here.

Heck, a solar future where most cars are charged in the daytime(at work?) because it's cheaper would have massive load leveling capabilities simply by playing with the charging amounts for the vehicles.

Still massive numbers of home power batteries depends on numerous factors, including where you put them. Don't forget the fire hazard for LiIon.

We're working on it.

Low average density means we have a lot of room for biomass and such, like in the article you mentioned. Solar isn't so hot in the winter, and the heating demands are, of course, extreme.

Still, there's a lot of projects going forward to use biomass to provide heat & power, even in the dead of winter.

She's substantially bigger than the drones, so something as 'simple' as a gate would work. large enough for drones, too small for the queen.

In addition, I'd imagine that a cell with larva in it wouldn't drain.

While a large consumer of power, server farms aren't 'industrial'. Oddly, their sensitivity to power outages may actually contribute to their ability to use solar power normally.

Why? Because server farms are so sensitive to outages that they need battery and probably generator backup anyways. So you have a battery and generator anyways, you can use solar power without much difficulty.

Industrial, like the mentioned induction heating, are still sensitive to power fluxuations, but not as much. They also consume so much power that storage - battery backup, isn't practical. Not even generators.

Which is why I said that even industry, and yes, even the smelters, can use solar panels. Though I think it'd be neat if they used mirrors instead to provide at least some of the heat.

1. I figure there's exceptions, thus the 'to my knowledge'. That being said, citation please.
2. You always need an inverter unless you're only using DC appliances.
3. Of course, when 'green energy' was only starting they didn't want you feeding back into the grid. The rules hadn't been set up for safety and stability yet. They have enough problems with people backfeeding onto the power lines and endangering workers with generators.
4. Grid usage fee - it's spreading, but most 'customer fees' are more for paying the meter readers and billing system*. Connection charges can vary widely.

Still, some seem to be wanting to avoid the issue entirely - things like charging $60/month specifically for a solar setup(in addition to other static charges), when many people(like me) actually use less than $60 worth of electricity** a month anyways.

Of course, you also run into that many places have used their utilities as a sort of welfare platform. See California's reverse pricing scheme - rather than making electricity cheaper in bulk, like in most goods, and as seen when sold to industrial customers, they make it more expensive the more you use.

So where social reformers have a fair bit of control over pricing, you can see power companies having pricing schemes that cost them money on low-use customers, which those that mount solar panels imitate.

*And by golly they have to have the most inefficient meter readers and gold-plated billing system ever if it costs $20/month just to send me a bill.
**My bill is usually around $100/month due to the surcharges.

Actually, it'll help industry as well, assuming it's cheap enough. While they normally get their electricity cheaper than households, they can often install solar power cheaper due to quantity scaling.

As for the reliability of output - if you have storage it's reliable enough, and induction heating is only one of many industries.

I never said baseload would go away, just that pumped storage isn't a 'free' solution.

My scheme for taking care of the pollution issue is quite different than the EPA's 'cap & grandfather'.

Mine is simple: Rate the pollutants in terms of harm. IE Mercury into the environment costs $10M/ton. Charge any company that emits Mercury ~$11M/ton, and call it a day. Same with other pollutants. CO2 might 'only' be $.10/ton, but it'd add up quickly.