Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Wind is (Score 1) 262

Per California ISO, which may not be representative of global production, and using yesterday's data we have:
Source / Peak MW / Daily Production MWh
Solar Thermal / 543 / 2,759
Solar PV / 5,164 / 48,086
Wind / 2,366 / 25,584
Small Hydro / 199 / 3,615
Biogas / 206 / 4,716
Geothermal / 1,058 / 25,120
(Source: http://www.caiso.com/market/Pa...)

Solar PV has over twice the peak capacity and just under twice the total production.

I tried Texas' ERCOT, but they don't have as good of breakdowns. Their wind production is about half of California's at 1,359MW.

Comment Re:Wind is (Score 1) 262

Much of the issue (misconception) is smaller wind turbines. However, by definition a wind turbine is working hard to absorb most of that inertia into the generator, so there is variability on an individual machine level. The overall grid smooths things out. The complaints I have been hearing are that power flow direction and magnitude can change sharply with the wind turbines, creating challenges for the protective relays.

Sodium Sulfur batteries work great on a diurnal basis, but they seem less effective in short-term cycles, much like most battery technologies.

Comment Re:Wind is (Score 1) 262

Photovoltaics are absolutely fantastic for distributed generation at a building level. Solar thermal is great for grid-scale power generation. Photovoltaic is not a great grid-scale solution precisely because it is a good DG solution.

Wind only works at grid scale. The power formula simply favors the largest turbine, mounted with the hub as high as possible. That does not work for distributed solutions.

What does not seem to be resolved today is how to actually connect 2-5MW wind turbines to the grid without negatively impacting grid stability.

Comment Re:Classless action. (Score 1) 107

There are likely easy paths and harder paths in. If you can't put a malicious CD or USB stick in and take control, you hit one level. If you can't plug a device into a port under the hood that can take over control, that is another hurdle. Ultimately though, you need to keep the system secure from the OnStar and its ilk being an attack vector. From fairly credible reports, this is not the case.

Comment Dongle Insanity (Score 1, Insightful) 392

No, it heralds the beginning of another cycle of replacing various dongles and endless cables, much like what will happen when USB-C is eventually replaced with a standard that can accommodate 5K or 8K displays, more power, etc., which would generally be anticipated in about 3-4 years.

It wouldn't be that big of a deal to me, except for the fact that I need at least three sets of adapters for home, office, and weekend place, and ideally a fourth set for my travel bag. Between Ethernet, VGA, DVI, HDMI, USB, and SD this seems like a mess for me.

But what really pisses me off is that none of my USB receptacles that I have hard-wired in will work with the power requirements for the USB-C devices.

Comment Re:Yes. What do you lose? But talk to lawyer first (Score 1) 734

The biggest advantage in my book is simplifying inheritance issues. For taxes, it doesn't become an issue until you have more than $100k income per year; the paperwork is fairly easy to file up until you have (guessing) about $250k income. At that point, the offsets become important and you need to be more careful. Although it was 10 years ago, when I was last living abroad the forms only took an hour max to complete, due to actual tax liability in the US based on no local income taxes.

It all really depends on what the kids want to do. Having two passports is pretty nice for a wide variety of situations, if you like to travel or want to live in another country for a long time without proper paperwork...

Comment Re:who cares ? (Score 1) 185

Fortunately, we don't compete in the same markets, but we are in the same broader market. It has been this way for nearly a decade,

If they want to give us a few hundred $k, he'll, I am happy to re-brand and give them the "better" domain... but it isn't really impacting either of us.

Comment Re:who cares ? (Score 1) 185

How is that worse than the existing condition? My company is -----.com, and another is ---.net. They advertise much more. Some of my employees think they work for them.

Basically all this really does is eliminate the value of the domain name altogether...

Slashdot Top Deals

Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.

Working...