Copper is not "the last mile". It's the last five meters. If that. When people talk about "the grid", they're not talking about the wiring in your walls. Which you don't have to redo anyway for adding an EV. Nobody has to touch, say, your kitchen wiring to add an EV charger.

"The grid" is the wiring leading up to your house. Those conductors are alumium, not copper. Occasionally the SER/SEU cable will occasionally be copper, but even that's generally alumium these days. And that's only to the service connection point (not even to the transformer - to the point of handoff between grid-owned and the homeowner-owned, generally right next to the house), e.g. after the service drop line with overhead service that descends down to the building. The "last mile" is absolutely not copper. Approximately zero percent of modern grid-owned wiring is copper, and even the short customer-owned connection from the drop line into the house is usually alumium.

Grids are not copper. Period. This isn't the year 1890 here.

And no, grid operators don't make money selling power. They make money providing the grid through which power is sold.

I have never seen a single utility that charges a flat grid access fee to residential consumers, anywhere on Earth.

Distinction can be hard to grasp for someone utterly ignorant on the subject

Says a guy who thinks that there's a mile of copper leading up to your house.

The grid is not made of copper. You thought it was? Copper is for home wiring, if that. Up to that point, it's alumium, bundled with steel on major lines for tensile strength. Does it look like copper to you?

As for the article: grid operators don't build out grids on a lark. They do it to sell power, because they make money selling power. If people want to buy more power because they want to charge an EV, then that's more money available for them. EVs are a boon to grid operators. They're almost an ideal load. Most charging done at night, steady loads, readily shiftable and curtailable with incentives, etc. Daytime / fast charging isn't, but that's a minority. And except in areas with a lot of hydro, most regions already have the ample nighttime generation capacity; it's just sitting idle, power potential unsold. In short, EVs can greatly improve their profitability. Which translates to any combiation of three things:

1) More profits
2) A better, more reliable grid
3) Lower rates

    * ... depending on the regulations and how competitive of an environment it is.

As for the above article: the study isn't wrong, it's just - beyond the above (huge) problem - it is based on stupid assumptions. Including that there's zero incentives made for people to load shift when their vehicles charge, zero battery buffering to shift loads, and zero change in the distribution of generation resources over the proposed timeframe. All three of these are dumb assumptions.

Also, presenting raw numbers always leads to misleading answers. Let me rephrase their numbers: the cost is $7 to $26 per person per year. The cost of 1 to 5 gallons of gas per year at California prices..

This is not new territory.

It is just automatic speech to text. As long as it flags that the report contains or is based upon automated speech to text from body cam footage (which can be subpoenaed and reviewed and challenged in court) then it is all good.

The current reporting method is that after the fact the cops write down what they remember happening. That is pretty bad -but the best we had available before body cams.

Let me share actual numbers from my latest PG&E bill.

Note: this is from my business.
My home bill is not subject to the additional fees or delivery charges -residential users in my area are only billed for usage (the "Electric Generation Charge") per the deal with the local electric supplier (Central Coast Community Energy rents the lines from PG&E directly).

Electric Generation Charges : 62.95
PG&E Electric Delivery Charges : 157.44
Other Fees and Services : 152.74

PG&E is charging nearly 3x as much for delivering the power over their lines as the cost of the power itself...and another $150 in misc fees and services (whatever that means...)

The delivery fees are plenty fucking high enough.

So you are saying we could solve the whole fucking problem for a fraction of what Musk paid for Twitter.

Fuck Yea!

I have it on good authority that the President could just order Seal Team Six to assassinate them and face no consequences...

You sure you're responding to the right person?

Any severance agreement beyond the most basic "we are paying you not to sue us for wrongful termination" should be met with a response of "Let me have my attorney look this over and get back to you." (whether you have a lawyer look it over or just take some time to read it before you sign it is not the point -asserting your rights is the point.)

If they try to pressure you int signing with a "the offer is only valid NOW" kind of a deal - DO NOT SIGN. It is a trap. You have the legal right to seek counsel from an attorney before signing a contract.

Before you start working is when you have the most power to negotiate. When you quit working (voluntary or involuntary) is when you have the second most power to negotiate.

To be clear, this is FUD.

No matter what your cousin's friend overheard somebody in the know talking about down at the bar.... It is a theoretical possibility, but it is not a practical concern.

Much like the vegan reviewing the new steakhouse in town... Sure, you exist -but who cares?

Funny that to you, "Israel" and "Jews" are synonymous. As if all Jewish people unconditionally support all actions of the state of Israel, even those which are highly controversial within Israel itself.

This false synonymy creates an extremely harmful backlash. Stop doing it.

Ukraine is not free

Give me a list of Ukrainian prime ministers since 2000, and compare it to a list of Russian presidents since 2000 . Thanks in advance.

Even before the conflict it was the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe

This is not even remotely true. Ukraine's Rule of Law Index in 2022 was 0,50; contrast with NATO members Turkey at 0,42 and Hungary at 0,52. And its scores were dragged down by the consequences of the war in Donbas.

with a military second in size in Europe only to Russia (hence the poverty)

Ukraine's percentage of GDP spent before the current invasion was 3,2%, and that was *with* the ongoing Donbas conflict . By contrast, the US, at peace, spends 3,45% of its GDP on the military. For some European contrasts:

Azerbaijan: 4,5%
Armenia: 4,3%
Russia: 4%
Greece: 3,7%

Before the 2014 Russian invasion, Ukraine's percentage of GDP spent on the military was 1,6%.

ED: Just saw your second paragraph. But the things you speculate on are not exactly common on Titan, if they even exist on the surface at all (it's an icy crust ,not a rocky one). And either way, it'd be much easier with compounds other than methane.

And no, there doesn't seem to be meaningful amounts of nitrates in the atmosphere at least. You can see a list here. Nitrogen compounds are cyanide and nitrile compounds.

Metabolized with what oxidizer?

It's just the opposite - methane on Titan is like nitrogen on Earth; it's things like acetylene and free hydrogen that are the potential energy sources, and to a lesser extent the more common (but less reactive) higher mass alkanes, etc.

The main problem is that LAWKI isn't even remotely compatible with existing in the cryogenic environment of Titan. There are a lot of interesting alternative chemistries, but they require basically redesigning life from scratch. We're simply not up to this task with our current technology.

Sadly it's being launched to near the equator, not the poles :( The geophysicists won out over the geochemists...