First, please realize that right now we as a country are in the process of rebuilding the entire power transmission system. That's happening no matter what, and it needs to happen no matter what.

In terms of the HVAC thing, which was just an example but one that seems to have stuck with you disproportionally so whatever... you would need to reduce the duty cycle to reduce power consumption, agreed? You would not have to turn it off for hours at a time - the entire concept here is that you could spread that reduction across a large population so that no single group bears the entire burden. We could, in theory, reduce electrical loads from AC units by 33% by disabling one in three units each for twenty minutes per hour.

As for "getting that power to flow the way he describes" - what is it you're imagining is happening NOW? You have power plants dotted all over the place, each with varying output, and power flows in any particular direction at any time. Nobody is proposing we instantaneously divert megawatts halfway across the country on a moment's notice - such a thing would be entirely unnecessary. However, diverting megawatts - even gigawatts - between substations and across counties and states is something that happens routinely right now, planned and unplanned. Nothing that can't be handled.
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Yes, a boom in coal plant construction... I guess that explains why Germany's coal generating capacity (hard coal + lignite) is down nearly 5% over the past ten years... all those new plants they've been building.

Any new plants they have been building - mostly to replace older, decommissioned ones - have been having problems because the cost of power has dropped significantly since construction began thanks to the glut of wind and solar. All that, despite reducing their nuclear generating capacity by nearly 44 TWh/yr after the Fukushima meltdown.

As for subsidies... have you accounted for the subsidies that current fossil generation gets? Land rights, construction cost subsidies, operational cost subsidies, environmental remediation subsidies... to make an indirect comparison, there's a reason the rest of the world pays three or four times more for their energy than the US does - subsidies.
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Does he? His only claim here is that both supply and demand can be predicted, and that these can be choreographed to optimize utilization. He mentions that current power generation technologies are not available 100% of the time and proposes that the predictable variability of renewable power would be functionally no different. Nowhere does his proposal require loss-less, instantaneous, unlimited transmission of power.

How are, for example, all of the AC units in a particular neighborhood "averaged out"? That makes no sense. There is no communication between these units. It's also not a matter of delaying the start times, it's a matter of remotely disabling them entirely - across entire neighborhoods - to shave peak demands.

So what ARE those costs, versus the cost of business as usual? Just because the article doesn't go into that kind of depth does not mean it hasn't been considered at all.

Largely Irrelevant here; Of course different regions are going to have different characteristics, but you can still model and predict the behaviors of each region and the system as a whole. Other countries manage to do it, and there's no reason the US can't do it as well.

It's also nice to rant about things you don't agree with while not providing any of the expertise you criticize others for claiming.

Unlike, say, Slashdot users who of course are experts in everything...
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Our technologically advanced society will not fall into ruin if nobody ever becomes a 5-time Jeopardy Champion ever gain...

On the other hand, guru-level engineers are considerably more important.
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For traffic lights that are really long, and I'm familiar with, I will often turn my engine off since I know I'm going to be going nowhere for >1min. The timer on the crosswalk sign gives me plenty of warning so I can start the engine and be ready to go.

Of course, this is hardly any different from just looking at the traffic light for the opposing direction - most of the time you can see it change to yellow, then red, and you know a few beats later your way will turn green. Drive the same route for more than a few days (e.g. your typical commute) and nearly anyone will know how the lights behave throughout the day and be able to predict them.
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Even if the hard drive isn't yours, or it hasn't been established that it's yours, if they know you have the password for whatever reason they can compel you to give it up. Failure to do so would at least be obstruction, or perhaps as bad as aiding and abetting.

Provided they also have probable cause to think there's evidence on that device of course.
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Plus, you'd scoop up a lot more oceanic plant and animal life trying to extract that plastic material.

Actually, the critters might be a better fuel source than the plastics...
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In a perfect world, there would be no primaries at all because there would be no rigidly defined political parties as such... but I suppose it really is too much to ask that a candidate be considered on the weight of his individual ideas and actions rather than a postfix next to his name on a ballot.

But the next best thing would be to have each party solely responsible for nominating their own candidates, without outside influence. At least in that respect we could get someone who best represents their party, rather than the WORST representative.

Campaign financing is a whole other ball of wax...
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Not really, no. There is almost always more than two candidates for any particular office. The only exceptions I've personally encountered were lesser thought about elected officials like judges and public works.

But I think the parent's comment about "fewer choices" still applies: You are choosing the least bad instead of the best, so the real choice is diminished. Giant douche, or turd sandwich?
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It's a primary election, not a general election. Nobody is being elected into power here. The primary election is only to choose who the candidate will be that will run for office for that particular party.

If you want your political party to win, and you have open primaries, to group together to force the opponent party to select the LEAST desirable candidate, thus increasing your own candidate's chance of winning.

That's not democracy, that's gaming the system - and we all lose in the race to the bottom.
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Why not? You benefit from that partial ownership, you should share in the responsibility proportionally.

Having thousands of owners screaming at you, as well as being financially culpable, would be good cause for the people in charge to actually be careful about what they do.
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Hahahaha... oh wow.

Yeah, assuming that everyone is willing any able to do their own cooking and yardwork (Ha!) who's going to do property maintenance for non-residential properties? Going to take turns at the office to see who's turn it is to trim the hedges that week?
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I think you're reading a bit too deeply into the words and missing the overall point... there are jobs that need to be done regardless of their cost.

Fine, bagging groceries is a poor example. What about janitorial work? Someone needs to do the basic maintenance of a public or commercial building.
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Setting aside the stupidity of $100/hr minimum wage... (I mean, why not $1,000,000/hr right?)

The jobs that people do for under $15/hr still need to be done. Not every job produces wealth. Nobody gets rich by having clean floors, or mowed lawns, or bagged groceries. However, these are examples of tasks that arguable have to be done by someone, and the cost of not having them done can, at least in some cases, be argued to be greater than $15/hr.

The same applies to jobs that "do not produce that much wealth" - they still need to be done. Either you pay someone $15/hr to flip burgers, or you stop selling burgers and go out of business. Don't want to go out of business? Pay the $15/hr and increase your prices by the ten cents or whatever it averages out to be. What a goddamn stupid argument you're making.

I'd rather pay an extra buck for a trip to the local fast food place than have my tax dollars end up subsidizing the employees through food stamps and housing because they're barely paid enough to afford the same food they cook all day.
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We already tried slavery, feudalism, indentured servitude, company towns/stores, debt bondage, wage slavery... these are the labor systems that arise when you don't enforce paying laborers enough to keep them independent of their employer... aka "a living wage."

Maybe the problem is you don't understand what "living wage" really means.
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