TFA had the 200 inch Hale telescope on a fictional geogrphical location, Mt. Palomar. The real name is Palomar Mountain. A minor detail, and very common error, but it is the same kind of error the author was complaining about.

The benefits in the modest increase in efficiency are not so much from reduced energy usage, but the higher efficiency reduces the amount of waste heat that has to be removed from the PCU. The higher junction temperatures allowable with SiC makes the cooling task even easier. What has Toyota excited is that the PCU with SiC is much smaller than the PCU with standard silicon power devices.

Except that Boeing, Convair, Douglas and Lockheed figured out how to put windows on pressurized airliners before the Comet flew.

The transmissions on current GE and EMD diesel electric locomotives are about 94% efficient from the output of the prime mover to the driving wheels. I would expect electric car motors to be on the order of 90 to 95% efficient, so this should compare favorably with a mechanical tranny.

Speaking of locomotives, the free piston gasifier was being heavily researched in the 1950's as a more efficient realization of a gas turbine and something that could compete with diesel engines as prime movers.

Back in the 1970's, Holdren was also going around saying that clean coal was safer and better for the environment than nuclear. His "analysis" showed that the largest number of deaths would come from grade crossing accidents with coal trains. After hearing that, I never took him seriously as he is more of activist pretending to be a scientist.

Parent post makes a great deal of sense. With PV generation reaching 100% of minimum circuit load for some circuits, HECO is justifiably concerned about how to safely handle the generation.

One huge difference between attaching something to the phone network and direct back-feed connections to the grid is that the back feed can be deadly if there's an issue with the local distribution network. This is usually taken care of by the anti-islanding circuitry in an inverter designed for grid tie use, and the utility has both the right and duty to make sure that circuitry is present and working in any grid tied installation.

FWIW, the peak demand in California typically occurs about 6PM, well after most PV installations fall off the grid (peak production from solar occurs at 12noon and solar output is largely gone after 3PM). This data is from the California ISO website. This implies that grid tied PV solar without some sort of power storage is NOT an effective source of peak shaving.

Seems to me that a cap on CEO to average pay take company size into account, the ratio should be smaller for a company with 100 employees than it would be for a company with 100,000 employees.

The first thing the rural utility co-ops did was to tell prospective customers that they had to render their windchargers permanently in-operable. In a similar vein, many cable companies required new subdivisions to have CC&R's that prohibited external antennas so that the residents were forced to buy cable services.

Obviously you have never taken a look at the California ISO website during the summer, which gives real information on demand and production. as opposed to rants of solar fanboys writing for Wikipedia. Peak production from solar occurs at 12 noon, peak demand occurs at 6PM. Solar does help with energy production during the hottest part of the days but is no help when demand is highest and thus does nothing to reduce the need for spinning reserves.

Hard to do when the guy in charge places ideology ahead of knowledge and experience. The website would have worked much better if the shopping for plans was done before the qualifications for subsidies was determined.

FWIW, some of the strongest stories about problems in firing teachers were published by the LA Times while it was part of the same organization that owned the Chicago Tribune. One recent case was the teacher who was giving his students cookies laced with his semen. The two propositions that were mentioned in TFA were sponsored by the Cal Teachers Union.

Especially considering the the California Teachers Union outspent everyone of contributions for California elections. These are the same people that make getting rids of child molesters from schools such a difficult task (see news reports about the difficulty in getting rid of truly bad teachers).

It will be interesting to see if the above post gets modded up or down, Reid is at least as much of the problem as the "Tea Party".