Those who participate in net metering are selling surplus power when they have a surplus to sell, and buying power when they don't. It's rather absurd to say the power they purchase at night is "free," when in fact every single kilowatt-hour they purchase eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales. If they are selling power at, say, a wholesale rate of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour, and buying power at a retail rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, it massively eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales.

If you were correct that every kilowatt-hour sold by a solar facility has to be "thrown away," or discharged into the ground, then you would also be correct that that's not a sustainable business model. But you present no evidence for this. Here I present evidence to the contrary:

A utility can look at the forecast for how sunny it will be, and then conservatively scale back production at its peaking plants and at its load-following plants, to minimize the amount of solar power that needs to be "thrown away."

Wrong for several reasons.

Some households that participate in net metering are net producers of power, "exporting" more than they "import." Other households have remained net consumers of power. But no household has perfectly balanced exports with imports, resulting in zero net usage.

And even if a household did happen, one month, to export exactly the same number of kilowatt-hours as it imports, the fact of net metering does not guarantee that the utility will pay retail price for the exported power. The term "net metering" also applies when a utility pays wholesale price:

It doesn't make sense that a utility should be forced to pay retail price for each tiny trickle of power generated by amateur mom-and-pop producers, when bulk power generated by professionally-managed plants can be purchased at wholesale price.

Nope... that means it will fail, on average, every 50 - 100 years. That's a pretty good service life for any device... and if it became commonplace for households to have a flywheel, failure should be covered by homeowner's insurance, just as roof replacement is (which needs to be done every 20 - 30 years).

GP did specify a buried flywheel. If pieces of flywheel become embedded in the soil four or five feet under my lawn, I fail to see the catastrophe. A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for a device like that would be quite acceptable.

Why, when we already have a non-magic, non-free network of generating plants? Some of them burn fossil fuels, some of them don't, but that network as a whole becomes more robust when supplemented by distributed solar power installations that produce during hours of peak demand. Brownouts become less likely, etc.

I'm not in favor of going solar when other sources are more cost-effective -- and I'm not in favor of subsidies that merely give solar the illusion of being more cost-effective. Having said that, you've built a strawman: I haven't heard anyone asking to be provided with "free" energy from the grid during hours when the sun's not shining.

Allowing utilities to pass along 100% of "the fixed cost for just being hooked up" will -- in the long run, and not-so-ironically, if you think about it -- actually be good for adoption of solar power.

Because the alternative -- bankruptcy for the entities that add value to solar power installations, by maintaining the grid that ties them together and delivering power when the sun's not shining -- is not sustainable.

The utilities' current opposition to solar implies that they're being forced to provide money-losing subsidies for grid connections. Eliminate those, and everyone will benefit from the new transparency in the cost structure.

Actually capitalism is the only thing that is encouraging Americans to install solar power systems in any significant numbers. And within my city's limits, nobody has solar because the government-owned utility forbids residents from doing business with that capitalistic company (or its competitors).

Not only can the West trade with such people, the West is trading with such people, via black-market oil sales.

Thanks for the mixture of good news (solar storm only produces type 3) and bad news (average Joe can't defend against type 1). These posts should probably be +5 Informative.

What exactly is that first component? Is there any way an average Joe can protect his electronics from it? Or is the only defense, "pray that a nuke won't detonate above your region"?

According to http://watchdog.org/138940/sol... , "An EMP from a super solar flare would behave similarly to one generated by a nuclear missile that detonated in Earth’s upper atmosphere."

Are you saying that writer doesn't know what he's talking about?

One problem with your reasoning. Polish leaders very heartily embraced the West and NATO membership. In Cuba, on the other hand, the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power despite the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of theirr USSR sugar-daddy. If Cuba's economy had gotten a boost from the USA, the Castros would have used the additional revenue to further solidify their grip on power. I don't see a path to obtaining a Poland-like outcome, and you sure haven't pointed out such a path.

Another journalist misuses the word "accurately."

They can calculate it quite precisely; but if the number doesn't match observations, the model is not accurate.

Instead of a whimsical poll, I wish slashdotters would be sharing legitimate advice about how to protect devices from EMP (either natural or man-made).

For example, if I store a hard drive or other sensitive device in a safe, can any old safe protect it, or does it have to be a safe specially designed to offer EMP protection?