Lots of factories have large roofs that are suitable for solar, and it they are really large, they could possibly have wind turbines too. Even a 50% saving on power intensive factories would be useful to their energy bills. Unless they have tied themselves in a contract that says "use this amount and get it at this price, if you use less, it will cost more" . Micrsoft had this problem a few years ago where they were going to use that agreed so they turned everything on to use enough power to stay in the cheaper bracket.

i would have thought having only one large energy storage unit is a single point of failure. It would be more resilient to have loads of linked community micro-grids and micro-storage units connected to the national grid. More resilience, more jobs, more competition and less pressure on the national grid would be the outcome

A couple of quotes from an article on Forbes about this:-

“Using brushless DC motors and lithium battery cells, Rutherford’s turbopumps decouple the thermodynamic problem immediately,” said Beck. “We’re able to do things never capable before in a propulsion system. It takes complex piece of machinery and makes it simple.”

"Of course, designing the engine this way comes with its own set of challenges. The electric motor that powers the pump is about the size of a can of soda, but operates at 50 horsepower."

“Typically a rocket engine takes months,” said Beck. “We can build a Rutherford in 3 days.”

we're back to before we had any sort of screen writing. We'll be posting letters again soon

they want it all ways because they can't see the hypocrisy, double standards, lack of morals/ethics so if its a good thing "god did it" if its a bad thing then its either Satan who did it or "god works in mysterious ways"

it will only be a matter of time before USA puts some "behinds the scene" pressure on Ireland to force Microsoft, Twitter etc to cough up the data

a quick search will find http://www.iflscience.com/heal...

maybe this report about "Exorcists warn Vatican over 'beautiful young vampires' and satanic yoga" also scared them http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

I think its an okay analogy. Supermarkets keeps stock on the hope the customer buys. The veggie seller is the home solar supplier, the restaurant is the utility. if the utility wants my excess solar, it can use the already installed and (probably) paid for infrastructure to get it. It buys the power from the home solar at a suitable cost which it resells at a higher rate. The utility uses less fuel stock during the day (saves money), the home solar then becomes a power buyer during the dark period and buys at retail. The utility's major task is to develop its fuel burning generating systems to be more able to fire up quicker to take over (or increase) when its required or find a way to store any unsold solar. I can't see who loses apart from the utility that doesn't move with the times.

i pretty much agree with you but so many people expect the green solution to be 100% perfect and in place yesterday and have replaced the current infrastructure overnight. These things will take time. The main things impeding faster deployment of green solutions is the fossil fuel industry trying to protect their installed based and unfortunately those that don't think enough about the issues take their lies/dis/misinformation as truth.

Ultimately the customer pays because it'll be factored into his/her bill for usage of electricity

well, here's an analogy. if i sell vegetables to a restaurant, who pays for the the refrigerator at the restaurant to store those vegetables? if the restaurant wants to preserve those vegetables for longer, the restaurant will pay for the equipment. Ultimately this cost is passed onto the customer to cover his expenses.

Why shouldn;t the utility act in the same way?

"Journalists drive these stories, they drive the alarmism." - that is what he was implying (inferring?)

+5

"their desired "green" replacements don't scale well enough to maintain civilization at the current level " you forgot to finish this phrase with "yet"