In a free market, less demand means a lower price. Utilities do not operate in a free market and can force their customers to eat their costs. Consequently, less demand during peak hours will require them to charge more from fewer people. . . until there are no longer enough people to recoup their costs from. Then they will go bankrupt (at which point, I suppose tax payers get to foot the bill for their incompetent decisions).

Which is a big assumption since this technology is going to allow a large portion of the population to greatly reduce their dependence on utilities. With utilities still thinking in terms of 20 ~ 80 years when planning their capacity investments, I think it is pretty certain we will start seeing significant increases in electricity prices as huge, misguided fixed asset investments have to be allocated across a smaller and smaller population. This will just cause more people to defect. So begins the Utility Death Spiral.

I think the word we want to use here is grit.

Don't take this the wrong way. This is for your own good, but. . . get over yourself. You stopped being happy as soon as you stopped seeing yourself as an underdog. You are a hairless monkey that occasionally leaves shit stains on your underwear. Be happy that you can feed yourself without help and without getting most of the shit you stuff your face hole with all over your lap. Your "I am awesome but I could have been so much more awesome" lament shows the true reason you are not happy. You are clueless. The dumbest humans are so, so much smarter than the monkeys with fur. The difference between the smartest and dumbest human is just a rounding error in respect to that. "Smart" people are so unhappy because they forget how "stupid" they really are. "Stupid" people are happier because they are more realistic about their lot in life. Understand that if you accomplished anything worth noting in this very big universe, it was being a little less stupid than your genetics and environment destined you to be. Forgetting that you are an underdog is becoming a self-entitled SOB who wastes precious time lamenting about forgone endless potential. . .

You act as though he is being punished for violating the rules on airspace. Clearly he is being punished for raising too much awareness about finance reform. The powers that be want to make an example of him before this gets too out of hand. . .

A situation that forced me to sell my home seems like it would also force me to sell a Treasury bond (perhaps to raise cash so that I would not have to sell my home). However, I suppose you are making a liquidity risk argument which is valid. Hence, I was careful to say similar to a “US Treasury, held to maturity.” However, I still think you argument is an exaggeration for the following reasons:
- Surely your house increases in value by the present value of the future electricity savings. We see this with solar installations, so why not with batteries?
- Batteries may not be as liquid as a financial instruments, but they are probably one of the easier fixed assets to sell off for close to their fair value on short notice.

Yes, but these risks can be mitigated by 3rd party warranties and/or insurance. You COULD structure the investment so that it is risk free by giving up some of your return. Since risk free investments are around 0% right now, the bar is fairly low. Also, solar panels are typically covered by home insurance, so it does not seem a stretch that a residential battery bank would be fairly easy to add on to an existing insurance policy.

Of course, but insurance companies exist because they cover risks of assets without causing the investment in the underlying asset to have a negative return. The risks to a residential battery bank are similar to the risks to a home, so it seems reasonable to assume the additional insurance cost to someone who already has home owner's insurance would be minimal.

Good point. The original poster seemed to be unaware of the concept of survivorship bias. . .
This is much better than the usual financial discussion that occurs on Slashdot. Now we just need you to make an account so that you are no longer an Anon and can help Slashdot have more rational financial posts.

As someone who has been dumbfounded by this since he first went to Japan as an exchange student over 20 years ago, I have a theory why this may have happened. It is hypothesized that the color Blue was one of the last colors for people to discover/appreciate enough to assign it a name (Radiolab has a great show on this). Accordingly, "Ao" was assigned "green" first but as the concept of "Blue" started to materialize, "Midori" became the new "Green" so that "Ao" could start covering things that were "Blue." That would explain why phrased implying youth ("He is still Green", etc. . .) use the character for "Ao," as they are old phrases that would have been invented before the concept of "Blue" came along.

Of course, since the characters for these words came from China, there probably is a significant Chinese factor to this story (I remember speaking to a Chinese lady who thought that Chinese language influence had been responsible for this nuance in Japanese). Perhaps someone with more experience with Chinese can try to fill in this part.

Right. . . over the period 1999 to 2009 the return was ~ -34% (I suppose we do not need to annualize that to show that it is definitely below +7%/year). . .

Besides, the idea that investment horizon is the only relevant factor when making investment comparisons is financial homeopathy.

Stocks and corporate bonds are some of the most volatile, high risk asset classes you can invest in. Only magical thinking would make one conclude that would be anything close to investing in a project to reduce one's electricity bill over a long period of time. A closer comparison would be to purchase a US Treasury bond and hold it to maturity (go look up those returns instead).

It is your choice to be ignorant about finance. However, Slashdot appears to have an epidemic level of financial ignorance going on over here. Think carefully before posting. When a Geek hands over his hard earned cash to the banksters, nobody wins. . .

Ah, Slashdot. . . News for Nerds and the financially challenged. . . There are some very basic problems with your comparison, like:
-WHICH years does the S&P "mostly" do better than 8%? For instance, an investment lasting from 2000 ~ 2007 would have net you NEGATIVE return in terms of real dollars. . . You are comparing investments that have completely different levels of risk (Finance 101 fail).
-Again, corporate bonds? Most batteries have an extensive warranty period, so this investment could be structured as something similar to a risk free investment (~0% right now). . . .
-Large used batteries usually have a significant salvage value.

Not trying to be harsh on you, but the modding certainly shows the deficiencies of the Slashdot community when it comes to finance related discussions. . . What is the point of being a smart Geek if you throw your money away due to lack of finance basics?

Typical /.er comment. . . I think the first such comment made by a ./er was about the Internet, back when Slashdot was still a BBS. . . and we all know how the Internet turned out to be useless. . .

Wait. . . we are trying to limit global warming by 2 Celsius over the next 85 years. 50 Celsius over 400 years is over 10 Celsius over that same period. Something seems amiss. . .

Worse, your link points to energy PRODUCTION reaching that level in 400 years. TWICE the energy amount produced by nuclear power is lost as heat, so we would reach that point much earlier than 400 years (not to forget that only a portion of solar energy falling on Earth is absorbed).

There has got to be a better answer out there somewhere . . .

Agreed. Where is your arithmetic supporting that nuclear power contributed to this 2014 "reduction" in any meaningful way?

It seems you are the one who is coming to a conclusion without any arithmetic. . .

Ah, and a new Slashdot meme is born!

*Some positive energy/global warming related article is posted that does not explicitly attribute nuclear power*
Some grumpy ./er grumbles: "but,but,but. . . NUCLEAR!"

Well, they would need to know they exist, first. . . If such a law ever passed, it would be trivial to make detecting such cameras near impossible. . .

Correct. However, Orwell did not anticipate that the general public would be the ones to have the majority of networked cameras that they could use to keep tabs on the government. I have cameras installed at my home, but I am not just going to share with anyone unconditionally. A string of events would have to occur first before I would even consider sharing specific footage with the local police. I believe anyone else (including in the UK) shelling out their own money would be inclined to do the same (else risk their own footage being used against themselves).

So, in short, yes, everything will be recorded just like Orwell's predicted. However, the economic tendency is for everyone to have a piece of the footage pie and be able to choose when and with whom they share it with.