1400 watts is not "low consumption." It's rather high, actually. I'll grant that there isn't much leeway for storage and nighttime usage and such. But for a realistic assessment of what solar power is probably capable of (ie. not heating your house on a dark winter night), it's definitely in the ballpark.

The freestyle leg of her medley beat the male gold medal winner's freestyle leg. That is basically impossible.

Because fuck you, that's why.

I think we all know the technology we need to answer these important questions. Let's get to work.

Yes, that's the answer. It's not shitty Slashdot editing. This power plant violates the laws of thermodynamics. Good call.

Oh my god. That means Walmart is also taxpayer funded since taxpayers buy all their products! We must put an end to this!

Which do you think is more likely, Texans are incompetent at energy production, or Slashdot is incompetent at editing?

The point of an economy is not to create "jobs". The point is to create stuff, like electricity.

Where the hell do you get off calling private investment "pork"? I get that you want to criticize Texas for lots of other things. That's fine. But you've somehow lost your mind if you think this is a valid economic critique. Texas doesn't exist in order to produce "jobs" for the rest of the country, and it seems to be doing a good job of producing employment for its residents and a few million Mexicans as well. Do you have any evidence to the contrary, or just irrelevant social commentary?

Just because one project doesn't bother to calculate the multiplicative effects of a $350 million dollar renewable energy investment in terms of "jobs" created, doesn't mean they aren't there.

Someone mod this up. You'd have to be retarded to use natural-gas-generated electricity to operate an electric compressed air storage plant. The submitter just made that up.

Texas has a relatively de-regulated electric grid with a lot of wind capacity. Prices fluctuate wildly. This facility will use renwable wind and solar energy to compress air at times when it is cheap. Then, at times when electricity is expensive, the air will be used to operate a natural gas turbine and generate electricity.

But you can't reproduce a hybrid with just that "source code".

Okay, thanks. That article is a good source.

Do you have a source for that? What assumptions is that based on? I'm sure it's true in aggregate, but I doubt per-capita.

It sounds like the units have air conditioning as well as direct air cooling.

This has seemed like an obvious idea to me for a while. I figured Google would be the first. But I'm glad somebody is finally doing it. I wonder how many of these AOL could possibly roll-out? Hundreds, at least. Thousands?

Sorry, but the bank bailout was not a consequence of "deregulation". Glass-Steagall prohibited banks from dealing in securities. This was repealed in the 90s by Clinton in his zeal to help Citibank expand, and to increase subprime lending to Democrat voters via the Community Reinvestment Act. But most of the money going into mortgage-backed securities to build our glut of houses didn't come from deposit banks subject to Glass-Steagall. It came from standalone investment banks with access to the Fed's low interest rates, from government housing programs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), and from foreign investors.

Government interference, specifically the Federal Reserve's price-fixing of interest rates, is the primary cause of the business cycle and of all banking crises. Ron Paul is right to point this out.