You forgot to mention SONGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

2 GW of nuclear power mothballed right after they finished spending $671M upgrading them. And who do you think the utilities want to pay for the lost revenue? I'll give you a hint - they sure don't wan it coming out of their guaranteed profit margin...

Not just slashdot, it happens everywhere.

"Electric cars suck, I can't drive it more than miles / charge!"

Yeah, this. For way less than the price of what Dyn charges for DNS service, you can get your own domain name AND dynamic DNS service.

All with a company that doesn't try to screw you over every year, too.

I am not aware, yet. Have only see one owner be vocal in the past about trying to get it, but haven't . A few relevant threads. Lots of noise and general ignorance about Copyright in there, so prepare yourself.

Anyone want to get the source code for the Linux (etc.) in your car?
Running on Linux
Copyright (and Libel) Discussion

Actually, what's more likely is that they saw his post on the Tesla Motors Club forum detailing what he'd done and then connect the dots between the forum post and ownership data:

Successful connection on the Model S internal Ethernet network

Tesla has been known to connect forum users to actual owners and proactively contact the owners via phone when they report problems with their car there.

Even with built-in battery or UPS, while that reduces the risk of unexpected power loss, in my experience it still happens.

As far as comparing reliability of SSDs to HDDs, an actual study found that SSDs were much more likely to lose lots of data, sometimes bricking the entire drive.

http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/...

Enterprise HDDs were the most reliable, even the best SSD they tested was not as good (though similar to consumer grade HDD).

Unfortunately, the study does not reveal which drives were tested.

But the main reason for the Intel 730 is to get power loss protection so your data doesn't get scrambled if your computer suddenly loses power.

The popular Samsung 840 series don't include that.

Where are you getting your failure rates from?

No, you could use the Facebook Messenger app as a replacement for the crappy stock Android SMS app and it would use your phone to send/receive SMS messages just like the newer Google Hangouts does.

You could also use it to just send regular Facebook messages, just like you can use Hangouts to send messages to other Google users using a regular internet/data connection.

The last big update of Facebook Messenger for Android not long ago REMOVES the ability to send SMS messages. There is also no way to send SMS messages through the main Facebook app. Why would Facebook remove the ability to send SMS messages through their apps if their long-term goal was to be able to send SMS messages through their apps? IMO their goal is to have all messages routed through them directly instead of SMS, but they really screwed up by removing a feature that a lot of Android users used.

Coincidentally, Google Hangouts added the ability to send SMS messages right around the same time that Facebook Messenger removed theirs.

Obviously, one would need to know the forecast prices for at least some period of time in the future and use that to find the compromise in convenience and price when running said appliance.

Obviously you may not want to wait for prices to drop in certain cases.

In California, at least, I'm pretty sure there is no markup on wholesale prices. Utilities get a regulated fixed profit based on distribution charges.

The rate of growth has been enhanced by subsidies, but even without them, the industry would still be undergoing very rapid growth as costs have come down an order of magnitude.

I love it how the goal-posts keep on moving - and how a solution has to solve 100% of the problems or it is a complete fail. Why can't a solution simply be a step in the right direction? Or a solution that works for a very large portion of the population?

On to your arguments:

Tesla will be able to get you from Virginia to Tuscon and Colorado via their Supercharger network in the next month or two. St Louis will be accessible by the end of the year.

Will it be as fast as a gas/diesel vehicle? No, but for cross-country road trips just rent a Prius if you're aiming for maximum speed and efficiency. And as many people will attest, actually slowing down an enjoying the scenery can enhance the road-trip experience. Or simply use a plug-in hybrid - all your local miles will be electric - and you can still have your road trips. The vast majority of your annual miles are within 40 miles of home - low hanging fruit.

As far as 18-wheelers: Most of that cargo should be moved to rail leaving short/medium haul trucking. Short-haul trucks can be electrified, medium-long haul can use natural gas and/or fuel cells. Railways can also be electrified (most trains are simply diesel generators that run electric motors, anyway). Aircraft are a tough nut to crack - bio-fuels are probably our best bet there in the near term.

And as far as power plants go - we need more low-carbon power plants regardless of whether or not we electrify the fleet. But a huge portion of the fleet can easily be powered without substantial changes to the electrical grid.

I would never claim otherwise. My math is for small residential installs. For larger installs the cost is already half - they are getting installed for $2/watt.

As far as "flex", sure they can flex, but of course the cost to run those plants goes up the more you flex them. There's a reason why all plants aim for 100% run-time. Similarly you can "flex" PV by simply reducing power output. Or by adding storage. Both of these will increase costs, but as we can see, costs are already reaching parity with conventional generation sources - as evidenced by the enourmous growth in PV generation as well.