And, unlike Lightening, USB isn't widely used as a mechanical connector on top of being data. My iPhone doesn't work in most iPhone/iPod docks, but my USB keyboard doesn't have that requirement.

I suspect this will be a very smooth switch.

> Not specially. It depends on the satellite altitude

If it's anywhere above the atmosphere, which, being a satellite, it is, then the limit is at about five times that due to atmospheric diffraction. You need multiple times the limit in order to process the results into something near your diffraction limit. That's why WorldView-2 had an aperture about 2m to get 50cm resolution. Plus it was launched sun-sync at ~700 km, which I suspect is where WV-3 will sit too.

> hacking Nasa at age 13

He's currently 39, which means this took place in the 1980s. A dog could "hack" NASA in the 1980s. Hell, they were already so far back down the other side of that bell curve of interest, they were talking about it as passé in "Out of the Inner Circle" which was published in 85.

> Apple is all about the consumer space, and very little about business.
> Microsoft is all about the business space, and very little about the consumer

I'm not sure either company is happy about this, nor planned on it (not that you claimed either).

But of the two, which is in a better place? It seems business was perfectly happy with XP and 2007 running on older machines. There seems to be little reason for them to upgrade.

Consumers upgrade because they can and the products are low-end, but they don't buy software for $5000 a seat.

The crossover is the phone, and Apple's won that one hands down.

For now.

> bright, outspoken fellow who is working on his Masters in utility Electrical engineering

So has he ever worked in the power industry?

No?

Ok then.

> They're sitting in cubicles

So let me get this straight, you're complaining about studies made by university departments and professors, and as a counterexample you want me to trust a guy who is also in university but hasn't even graduated yet?

Yeah, I'll get right on that.

> From all I've learned from people working on these problems whom I trust

And from what I've learned by *actually working on these problems*, I have no concerns. 20 to 25% deployment should be trivial and basically zero cost. We're at about 5% in the US today, so there's nothing to worry about now, if ever (you can always stop deploying).

Case and point: here in Canada we're already getting over 1/2 of our electricity from renewables. Last time I checked out grid is doing just fine.

> Because it has diverted resources away from more serious problems and more sensible approaches.

Let me guess, the lifter. When you get a commercial model working you call me ok?

In the meantime we're installing wind and PV faster than any other power source in history, so everyone's a little too busy actually working to listen to people sitting in hotel meeting rooms clapping each other on the back championing the next great thing from the nuclear industry.

> No, it is a correct argument

No, it's not, and the many, many studies on this demonstrate that it's not.

Avoided costs due to less CAPEX expenditures on the parts of the companies offsets *some* of the cost of rollback. The debate is purely over how much. Depending on the source, it's either slightly negative, flat, or slightly positive.

> The solar industry hasn't reached a "tipping point" because solar power is still not cost-competitive

*sigh* PV and wind are the fastest growing power sources in the world, and they are growing even faster in areas where they are *not* subsidized. In the US, where people have to jump through hoops to do rooftop, wind is #1 and PV is #2.

Solar *has* reached a tipping point, and it *is* cost-competitive, which is why all the financials companies are freaking out:

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/ce17780900c3d223633ecfa59/files/Lazard_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_v7.0.1.pdf

> Utility grade PV is a horrendous waste of land. If we swapped all the worlds nuclear capability
> with solar we'd end up wasting more land than a few nuclear accidents ever did

I see no numbers to back this up.

I do, however, have an alternate set of my own:

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/revenge-of-the-electric-oil-sands/

> Bullshit. The app is closed source

I didn't say open source, I said it was available on their web site:

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/version1/US/code/C/pvwattz_hr.c

> Electric data comes from Ventex

The calculator does not use electric data from Ventex. You must be confused with some other tool on the PVWatts web site.

> Solar irradiance info comes from another private partner.

It comes from here, on their web site:

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/

> Are you illiterate

Astonishing. You're wrong in every statement you've made, and you're asking if I'm illiterate? Geez, at least I know how to type into google, which you've proven incapable or too lazy to do.

> NREL are implausible and not verifiable or even peer reviewed

Based on what, numbers you don't even provide a source for? Yeah, good argument. Here, lets see the stellar data you present that causes you so much confusion:

"Bakersfield has twice the number of sunny days as Tampa"

Hmmm, I wonder where this came from? Oh, let me google "number of sunny days in tampa". Ahhh, you got it from Current Results. And you read the *wrong column of data*. "

Maybe you want to consider the actual definition of insolation and then read the "Total Days With Sun" instead of the "Sunny Days" column and compare. Here, I'll do it for you:

http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/California/annual-days-of-sunshine.php
Bakersfield 272
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Florida/annual-days-of-sunshine.php
Tampa 244

(272-244)/272 = 10%

From PVWatts:

Bakersfield 1461 kWh/kW/year
Tampa gets 1364

(1461-1364)/1461 = 6.6%

Are you *still* going to tell me those numbers look so terribly wrong to you? You understand the panels still make power on overcast days, right? And you further understand that *every single thing* you've said so far is wrong?

> Considering that Solar panels only have a effective life span of 15 years

Somewhere between 50 and 100 years, we don't know because the earliest ones are still working fine:

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/testing-thirty-year-old-photovoltaic-module
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2013/oktober/predicting-the-life-expectancy-of-solar-modules-7.html

And when they are done, they go right into the blue bin. They're about 99.9% recyclable using existing technology.

> Here is someone who has devoted his career to grid stability, understands it completely -- and what is his own take?

Geez, you're quoting someone at a thorium power conference? Who cares what his take is?

Let's look around and see what we can see... hmmm, Ars has a whole collection:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/variable-renewable-power-can-reach-40-percent-capacity-very-cheaply/
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/the-grid-of-2030-all-renewable-90-percent-of-the-time/
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/cost-of-the-variability-of-renewable-energy-is-dwarfed-by-the-savings/

Oh geez, this guy is quoting a bogus argument invented by the Koch brothers.

What, you don't believe me?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html?_r=0
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-koch-brothers-and-solar-power-20140422-story.html
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/

Isn't it wonderful that the ultra-rich can spend money and convince the non-ultra-rich like silfen here that solar power is bad for poor old people?

By the way, there have been, literally, hundreds of studies on this. The vast majority suggest the marginal cost is either flat or negative, meaning that if your imaginary rich neighbours put up panels, your power costs go *down*, not up.

> Without the government footing so much of the bill the utility wouldn't buy any of the power.

Well duh.

You: Here, power company, I'd like to sell you the power I made off my roof so that you don't get to sell me all your juicy on-peak

Unicorn fairy dust power company: We'll get right on that sir! We want to lose money as fast as possible!

Real power company: We gots yer power RIGHT HERE! Now screw off while I get back to solitaire on my Win98 box.

> maybe you should have read a little lower on the front page before making that claim..... http://tech.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

You're absolutely right, I should have. And commented on it too. The chart on page 12 to start with, claims that wind is over $2/W, solar is ove $3.80, hydro is almost $3, and nuclear is $5. They quote the EAI as their source of data, from *April 2013a*.

Now what's wrong with that? Well the EAI, as is typical for a large government organization, runs on data collection schedules that take years. I can't get to the April 2013a report any more, but the latest one shows that the collection date was a year earlier, and therefore represents data for the year before that. In other words, the data in the Brookings report was collected during 2011 and 2012.

Now, what's wrong with *that*? Well the fact the PV costs have been falling is one issue. The financial industry has been all over this, which is why reports on this stuff tend to come from people like Lazard and Citi. If you care to look at the link I posted earlier, it shows *todays* prices instead of those from three years ago, and of course one will come to difference conclusions if the all-in price is the current average of $1.79 in the US, as opposed to Brooking's out-of-date $3.80.

Yes that's right, the cost of a commercial solar plant fell 50% in two years.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/age-of-renewables-why-shale-gas-wont-kill-wind-or-solar-54691

And just so it's handy, here's the original report. Note that page 2 is *unsubsidized numbers*:

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/ce17780900c3d223633ecfa59/files/Lazard_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_v7.0.1.pdf

Even then, we were selling complete off-grid systems for those McMansion cottages for $25,000. Storage included.

> The NREL system has no description of its methodology, data sources, or other independently verifiable information

Holy crap, are you kidding? Every single line of code, bit of data, and the entire methodology is all on their web site! There's an entire page devoted to how the thing works, and where the data comes from. As you are apparently to lazy to even read the site, here, here's the data for you:

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/redbook/

> You also picked two non-representative cities

Oh my god! Go ahead, click on every one of them if you think I'm wrong.

Seriously, are you trying to back up the statement that California gets FOUR TIMES more sunlight than Florida?!?

> Try finding a source that actually explains where its numbers come from and what they mean.

OMG

http://bit.ly/XU3ibi