Batteries as you suggest can nearly DOUBLE the cost of a solar install. This is why it's so seldom used in more built up areas that aren't facing $100K costs to connect. Batteries are also not maintenance free either. Batteries make the most sense when you're off in the woods somewhere and the electric company wants to charge you the equal of a mortgage to get a power line dragged in. Batteries will make much more sense when they're more cost effective but right now there's a ton of downsides in having them that only make sense when electric isn't easy to get. Using your water heater as a dump load or running things like say pool pumps off of excess generation instead of selling it to the grid at a discount make much more sense IMO.

The perception of a big bad utility didn't just magically appear. The efforts by the utilities have created this and they certainly haven't done any planning for alternative power - in fact they seem to fight it tooth and nail wherever possible. I'm not discounting what you say are issues and I appreciate the input but understand that there's distrust for good reason. Utilities need to start helping figure this out rather than simply fighting it. Most folks running solar wouldn't mind batteries IMO if the cost wasn't sky high and the additional regs a little less intrusive.

Umm, why couldn't that happen? Every car on the road with On-Star has a cell modem in it, why not every home with Grid-tie? Atomic Clock? Guess what you can use a GPS signal for?

I truly don't think what you propose is needed, not when a signaling medium already exists called a powerline, but what you propose isn't nearly as impossible as you think it is.

Gried-tie inverters already match up to the grid they're connected to, I see no need for them to have to have knowledge about the larger grid when devices to manage that - including selling excess - already exist at the power company.

There are already strict requirements that must be met in order to connect a solar system to the grid. The devices that do this have all sorts of requirements regarding what the power must look like regarding conditioning and interesting things like disconnection should power drop in order to prevent energizing an electrical line that a worker thinks is dead because he doesn't expect you to push power. Meters that "run backwards" are also used with grid-tie connections already.

As it stands today in our existing system if an electric producer has excess they sell it to OTHER grids tied to their system, it doesn't simply go to waste. On an island like Hawaii that may not be possible but on the mainland it certainly is and those connections also stretch into other countries like Canada.

In short - most all of your assumptions about how power is just being thrown willy-nilly onto the grid are incorrect and already accounted for. If you think an electric company is going to allow you to (legally) connect without having passed those standards you haven't done your research. Look up Grid-tie to learn more.

Benghazi doesn't bother me overmuch although it does sound like the situation was pretty confused and that security sucked but I don't think the person who isn't making daily decisions about it should be crucified for it. Was there some spinning? Probably. But I'm not convinced of malice, stupidity perhaps. Clinton Foundation - something I have also not researched but have heard rumblings that make me squirm a bit. Now the email server too? It smells and it smells badly of someone trying to hide something. Taken along with everything else to include Whitewater and files mysteriously showing up just after statute of limitations and I simply refuse to buy into this person as someone I want running this country. I'm also not thrilled at all that she's married to an ex-president and I couldn't care less if he's a Dem or a Repub, I think it is a bad precedent. Bad enough we've had father and son! Will I vote Republican instead? Almost certainly not unless they find a sane person to run and I'm not holding my breath. This next election cycle is going to really suck I fear :(

As I stated, it was the bottom link I read and I think it's pretty reaching for a newspaper to think they can simply ask for and receive correspondence. When the legal system or Congress asks for it however that's a different matter.

I have zero doubt that officials occasionally use personal email accounts to discuss things they shouldn't - it's stupid. That is a long ways off from setting up your own server, doing it intentionally and solely on that server, and then DESTROYING anything in that account! Sorry Hillary but as soon as you made that server your "business account" you no longer get to say what is and isn't record copy. If you or I had done something so stupid I have little doubt we'd be charged and convicted of something. I don't trust someone who thinks they're so far above the law as to flaunt requests like that, as a lawyer she knows better.

How long are you thinking it's going to be in there?! If you aren't refreshing that thing at LEAST yearly it's pretty useless...

As said below - if you or I had destroyed "evidence" like that we'd be screwed so bad it wouldn't be funny. If you think it was no big deal she kept a private email server and then destroyed email off of it after receiving notification that she was to turn over emails then it's you who are crazy. This woman has enough skeletons on the past to make me wary but this? Oh hell no, last straw. If you think the Dems can dismiss votes so easily then you may be in for a rude awakening. I hope like hell she isn't on the ticket!

You're right, GOP is nutz and I don't want them in office. I also do not want Hillary in office. Server mess sealed that deal for me. Dems had better find someone else to have a chance of getting my vote...

She's a LAWYER, she was ordered to turn over emails, she had a "neutral" 3rd party decide what to turn over, then trashed the rest. She knew what she was doing looked shady and she kept her own server for exactly the reason of wanting to make sure no one could see what she didn't want them to see. Shady from the word go on this one, that single act alone cost her my vote for sure. If she makes it as far as public debate I cannot wait to see her drilled for this. Want private emails? Sure, use your own server but OFFICIAL emails shouldn't be mixed. If she thought this was okay, as a lawyer, when official email services were available, then I'm sorry she's too stupid for my vote in that case either.

I only read the last one of those. Newspaper asking for internal emails is a good bit different than a judge ordering a Govt. official to turn over emails. emails not stored on a Govt. server. I see exactly no reason why a Govt. official would have an issue turning down a newspaper requesting internal emails. I have ZERO issue with Govt. officials using "private email", I have massive issues with them doing it for official business. Particularly on a server they physically control. Especially when they decide what to turn over after a court order and then DESTROY the rest. If this is the best the Democrats can bring forth they're in a world of hurt from my perspective. She's a lawyer, she knows better than to do that kind of crap.

I lean Democrat because I think the Repubs are batshit crazy. I voted for Obama 2x and I don't think he's done a bad job despite the crap the Repubs have been pulling since day one. But Hillary? I'm sorry but I can't do it. The last straw for me was her running her own server, having someone supposedly neutral decide what was pertinent, and then destroying everything else. Now, maybe she's just lily white like fresh driven snow and ever so innocent but this smells bad, really really bad to me. It gives the appearance of someone hiding something. She had official Govt run services made available to her and she sidestepped them. Nope Nope Nope, not going to touch this candidate. There's been enough controversy around her that I could more or less shake off but this tears it for me. I'm also not so thrilled that she's married to someone who's already been president. Bad enough we've done Father and Son but spouses? Lets pretty please get some fresh blood into the race?

Truecrypt volume on an external drive kept in a Tupperware container in a safety deposit box that's a duplicate of the one you keep at home in a safe. It's not an Italian Job I'd be worried about it would be someone in authority deciding they needed to have a peek. Chances of a fire at the bank AND at the home at the same time are pretty far fetched. Can sub friend's home for safety deposit box easily enough and maybe even do an exchange but use a locked box so said friend doesn't decide to use it to store his p0rn!

I've got a few of the Cree bulbs bought from local big box stores - they work GREAT and the bright white is really white while the warm white looks a great deal like an older incandescent. So happy Cree finally got into the market!

Some of the hacks that claim to be done wirelessly have relied on reprogramming entertainment firmware, others simply flooding the bus as you've surmised. The OBDII port is but one way into the bus, any device on the bus offers access to this bus to include some surprisingly easy to access places. It's a shared network, nothing knows that these signals from from the OBDII port. Rate limiting WILL call for more processing, something has to count packets and have smarts - you've added another computer to the bus it seems.

I don't think you're going to get a light on the dash for diag mode, how would that work? For one thing you're going to complicate diagnostics and end up having to build in new interfaces or replace existing diagnostics - yuck. If they can get in past a locked door, they can get into the glovebox. I'm not such a special snowflake that anyone is trying either of these.

An interface between the OBDII and the bus might slow some of this but it may also screw with diagnostics, it's an interesting idea but it will also increase cost in an industry that tries to shave pennies off of a production run :(

As for controllability - I can make thermite at home if I want and I can use the same BT interface you're slapping into an OBDII port for a controller to light the stuff. You're not buying any real safety but you DO make things more complicated. Oh and yes I do drive with an interface plugged in, sometimes BT, more often wired. I'm not concerned that someone will interface with it - seriously. I would remove it if I were, the OEMs aren't offering that sort of access to the system from the factory.

Bottom line - why are we so much more worried about this when the capability to do all sorts of wicked things exists already right now at the local hardware store? Why does cyber make it more scary?