Actually I have. We did a road-trip into and through California when I was about 22 and we were all poor; we slept in the car at the rest-stop along the I-10 that's located in the San Gorgonio Pass and the San Gorgonio wind farm. No problems sleeping with the car windows down; couldn't hear turbines but could hear plenty of strong wind.

Besides, out in the bay where the turbines are visible near the horizon aren't going to amount to a hill-of-beans for houses so far from the project, other than that they're visible.

I have a nearly 1000sqft detached workshop with a flat roof and parapet walls in addition to a large portion of my house having a flat roof with parapet walls. If I don't put any panels on the south-facing sloped roof I still probably have 2500sqft of flat roof with direct sun exposure for the bulk of the day, concealed behind the parapets.

I'm not unhappy to make back less than the going rate for a given time of day, but they want to pay-back the rate during the peak of the day that they charge in the middle of the night to time-of-use customers. So they take power from me during the hottest, highest-demand and highest-customer-cost part of the day and pay me something like 1/8 of what they charge. They also want to charge a separate fee, that they don't charge to non-solar properties, to tie me to the grid, and it's not insubstantial. Their crap-reimbursement plus high fee for simply being tied to the grid (and it's not permissible to not be tied to the grid) means that it costs the same to have solar as to not have solar. If they charge every customer the grid-tie fee and then put actual charges for their electric use on properly I bet that many customers would find that half of their monthly bill was simply for the grid-connection. That's my problem; they're intentionally screwing-over solar customers because they don't want anyone to be able to do without them. Eventually a tipping-point will come where we don't need them; storage capacity will make that so. They're attempting to swim against the oncoming flood.

I don't disagree, that's why I want a controller that can detect when the grid is down and island the property from the grid, so that linemen aren't working on energized lines coming from my house.

There was a NIMBY problem when a whole bunch of rich twats wouldn't accept a windfarm in the bay that they lived adjacent to. No nuclear at all.

When The Gamers and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising made on a shoestring budget with amateur actors are better than anything from Uwe Boll, maybe it's time for him to just stop...

Actually they do make one with an AC/DC dual voltage motor. Lennox sells one. It's ridiculously expensive without even including the panels, but it was an option that we looked into a couple of years ago when we had to relace a 2.5 ton unit that had failed. The replacement alternating current model has a 30A circuit breaker on a 240VAC circuit, so it can draw a max of 7200 Watts. This 8000W system would be enough to power that air conditioner and have some to spare.

I have enough roof space for probably 40,000W of panels. The thing causing me to hold back is the electric utility. I want grid-tie with intentional islanding and battery storage if the grid loses power, and I don't want to get hammered with utility company fees like they're trying to get out of us if we go that route. I'd also like to get reimbursed a fair rate for the power I'd supply back to the grid during peak usage, but they're not interested in doing that either. I'm hoping that Solar City wins their lawsuit against the utility so that I can feel comfortable proceeding at some point down the road with this.

AC has one significant advantage in that it generates much less heat on the wire, and the higher voltages, within reason, allow for smaller wires to do the same work, as wire size need is a function of amps.

Yeah, that seems like a rather silly argument if that was the principal reason for not buying an otherwise appealing property. Humans have had methods to raise water for literally thousands of years. Adapting one to an unpowered well shouldn't be that difficult or expensive.

The line losses are a NIMBY problem, people don't want power plants near their houses.

The fuel-source problem is people not being willing to pay for more expensive renewables, or in electing politicians that oppose them while continuing to subsidize fossil-fuels.

Those things can be fixed only if people as groups are willing to accept these differences and their costs, or if someone decides to put solar panels, at increasing personal expense given the utility companies' objections, on their property.

So, "its work to continue," is a misnomer then. It's more accurate to state that other organizations with similar objectives will continue to pursue them even though this organization has bowed-out. It's not like the closing of this organization is directly causing its resources and specific pursuits to be applied post-mortem.

Hitchbot is a robot. Hitchbot has no gender.

No, but technically, neither did you.

I suppose I should add, even in those circumstances it would be demoralizing to rely entirely on this drink for complete nutritional sustenance, and at least one real, substantial, solid meal per day would be needed. Soldiers on-patrol or on-alert that simply can't stop to have a meal would probably be the only ones that would 'benefit' from this.

I can only think of specific applications when this might be worthwhile, like where one has to remain mobile for some time and carry one's supplies in an area with very little water available, but that's a pretty unusual set of circumstances. You almost have to be a refugee or a forward-deployed soldier to involuntarily enter those conditions, and only militaries would have the supply capability to afford to intermittently replenish stock at that price.

It's a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.

One also doesn't have to use facebook. I don't even have a facebook account, nor do I plan to ever have a facebook account.

On the other hand, for Google's integrated stuff for Android to work properly, ie, contacts list, mail, documents/drive, calendar, etc, one has to have a Google account. Before Plus, that Google account was essentially private. Plus felt like an unwelcome intrusion that was one messed up privacy setting away from publishing stuff that wasn't meant for more than my own personal interoperability.

Fact of the matter is, most people that want a social network for personal communication have signed up for one already, and they've probably gone with Facebook because it's the biggest, and being the biggest makes it easiest to justify choosing it. Google's attempts to foist Plus on us felt a lot like how Microsoft forced Internet Explorer on us by bundling it with Windows 95 OSR2 and later versions of Windows.