I think it utimately is in their best interests to develop a storage system, however complex.

It might be in OUR best interests (I doubt that, but...), but it's certainly not part of theirs. If it costs more, they won't build. Period.

About the rest of your message, I agree with it: It's time we stop doing things just to feel good about them. We need actual results and actual planning. Is not good to have stupid politicians approving stupid projects just because the concepts behind them are trendy.

If it is cheaper for them to waste the energy rather than store it, then perhaps energy hasn't gotten expensive enough yet.

Or maybe power storage plants are extremely expensive to build and maintain. If you compare the price of X wind mills with the price of the necessary power storage plant, you might find out that this is a technological problem, not something related to the price of coal.

Energy conversion (coal->electric, high-voltage electric->low-voltage, etc.) is cheap. Energy storage is expensive. Can you imagine the size of a thermal battery (less efficient than a car battery) for a city the size of NY? You would need hundreds of square kilometers worth of hot salt lakes. And to make things worse, the salt would probably get cold before its energy is actually needed. If you actually try to store the salt at insulated pressure vessels, you'll find yourself wasting billions of dollars on recipients used to save a few dozen million USD worth of energy.

That's why petrochemical plants never "store excess steam". They just simply open a valve and let it go to the open air. The boiler has a planned power setting for each time of the day while momentary excesses are simply thrown out. Why? Because the equipment needed to store the power is more expensive than the power itself.

I think you are missing the point that the other, non-sustainable measures must and will get more expensive, and so what is profitable will change. by the very definition, if it's not sustainable... it's not sustainable. right? so we need something else, that is sustainable, so we can.. you know... sustain it. long term.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm pretty sure you missed his point entirely. They aren't running "another business" but instead finding some temporary storage place for the excess electricity. That's why the GP said "over supply utilization system".

Actually you're the one who missed my point entirely. My whole point was: storing energy (by melting salt or using any other kind of mechanism) is a process that needs an expensive plant. Running this kind of operation is not part of the power company's best interests. What the hell, even thermoelectric plants (the ones that generate the power being sold) are avoided entirely by this kind of company, who prefer to "outsource" the ownership and operation of these processes to a more competent enterprise.

You can't expect a wind-power-distribution company to start building giant thermoelectric/hydroelectric storage plants just for the sake of not wasting precious mother nature energy sources. It's just a business to them: if wasting energy by heating the nearby river costs less to them, that's what they'll do.

Most people simple don't know how much a plant with the sufficient capacity costs to build and run. Their operation needs to follow hundreds of safety, environmental and union regulatons, and the maintenance itself of the kilometers of tubes, cables and support infrastructure will cost (after 10 years) more than the initial implementation itself. And these plants need to run 24/7 because stopping and starting most processes is an energy-expensive (and cash-expensive too, and also maintenance-expensive, as the plant will degrade itself a little bit at every start-up process) operation.

That's why most thermoelectric plants run 24/7, even at periods (0-5AM) where the power wasted to the environment (through the boiler/tubing walls) is higher than the power being sold (at extremely low prices) to the consumers. They just can't stop their giant machine.

People love to propose lab benchtop solutions to giant infrastructure issues. Unfortunately, things are not that simple in real life.

Melting salt sucks up power and then generates it when you use that trapped heat to make steam later. Running pumps lets you store power with gravity. Pump water up higher, it releases the potential energy when it comes back down. And there are many other methods.

That's only possible if the government dictates the use of this kind of mechanism. Otherwise, the power company will simply do whatever they want to do, meaning "whatever costs less". Not wasting power is the concern of an individual, not of a profitable company.

This year I'll insulate my home

What is the total energetic cost of the said insulation? Will it need more energy to be produced than what will be saved by it?

What are the raw materials needed for the insulation? What if everyone at the planet insulates their home? Will we have enough ore?

If you know you are going to have large amount of episodic oversupply there are all sorts of useful things you can do with it. Make ice. Melt salt. Run pumps.

The only thing the power company can do is sell that energy for a cheaper price. They are a power company, not a "salt melting company". Building a plant to perform these kinds of activities costs a lot of money and needs a very complicated business plan that depends heavily on logistics-related factors.

A salt-melting (or any other kind of process) plant would need to run 24/7 to be profitable, using valuable energy during most of the day. The only difference from a normal salt-melting company would be the cost of a single part of their operation, during specific times of the day.

Conclusion: They would be selling energy at a cheaper price. But to themselves, while needing to run a new (to them) and complicated business. It's better to simply sell the energy to anyone else.

And they already do that: they sell energy at a lower price during low usage times. And the part the can't be sold is simply wasted using giant "toasters". It's cheaper to simply burn the excess energy than powering off the thermoelectrical plant.

I've seen other people progress from junior to lead developer within 2 years because there were not enough properly experienced devs to fill all the lead positions.

When your social class allows this kind of progression, or after years of hard work to achieve this possibility... Most people aren't born with all these opportunities and actually need to spend lots of years of their childhood working real hard. You mentioned lack of skilled/experienced workers: that's a bad sign. It's a sign that people aren't being given the proper opportunities. It's a sign that people actually need competitions and other kinds of events/programs to enter this specific job market.

As for why the kids want to win competitions... I participated in some of the local/regional Russian ones myself at school, and it wasn't about getting job offers at all. It was because taking part in one was expected of all the bright students, and because winning one could help getting into a better university later on (they're free, even the better ones, but the exams are hard, and this could help).

So you actually joined the competition to achieve a better life status. It means that you needed it. You were living a situation were your future was not a certainty and you tried your best to improve this situation.

For your specific case, a direct job or scolarship offer wasn't an issue. But it is for a lot of kids.

For some kids, winning a competition like this is necessary so their parents can allow them to study hard and avoid serving as cheap child labour. It's like a desperate scream of "please, daddy, leave me alone". At least that's what people from Russia, raised on different conditions than you, tell me.

And yes, of course, merely the feeling of being the smartest kid on the block is worth a lot - but that's only if the culture you grew up in fosters that, which it does in Russia for some kids (not all of them, not by a long shot - but I think we still do better than USA with their overemphasis on physical sports in school).

The fact that Russian culture fosters that kind of thing is not a good sign, actually. It's a good charateristic, but it's a symptom of other not-so-good things.

Yes, that's why you're posting book-length propaganda screeds.

I'm just disagreeing with the left-wing-created simplification of things.

Israel is doing this on our dime, in our names. There are solid, practical reasons why we should care about what they're doing, even if you shrug off the "humanitarian" ones.

Actually they're just surviving. I guess that living in the burbs made you forget that for some people this is actually a concern.

You believe in respect as long as it's nice white people who live next door (as though they would behave any different than the Palestinians, after being subjected to Israeli's treatment for half a century).

That's quite a stamement, calling people racist. I live on a extremely multi-cultural country. I'm not a closet tolerant feel-gooder like you. You're the kind of people that points fingers all day long, while feeling superior, but would feel unconfortable around black and asian folks. Not me, I actually have to practice respect on a daily basis, not only discuss it at greenpeace and "free palestine" meetings filled with white college students.

And you're idea of "civilization" is "whoever has the most bombs".

No. It's "whoever lives on a democracy based on solid institutions and respectful laws". And Hamas fails that criteria.

All of your "pragmatic" calculation is useless if you don't recognize that real strength grows from the sanction of other human beings -- "the force of our example, rather than the example of our force". Rule by force alone rarely succeeds in anything but the short term, and sometimes not even in that.

Nobody is preaching rule by force. Please quote me.

Well hey, I bet the handful of homemade rockets that Hammas scraped together were fired at military targets too, right?

Except they weren't. And it's not an interpretation, as Hamas's officially declares the the Israeli civillians as the targets of its missiles.

After all, there are Israeli military personel scattered all around Israel, right?

Actually, no. The military is surprisingly absent from israeli cities. All military buildings are sorrounded by a law-mandated security zone (to avoid, you know, using civillians as human shields) and most of them are away from populated zones. Even at settlements there is a long distance between military and civillian buildings.

You're acting like the typical leftard: shooting random arguments from your head like an AK-47 shoots bullets. I mean, what you believe MUST be correct, right? Gotta defend it at all costs.

And anyway, the Israeli people have repeatedly elected military aggressive, expansionist governments that are always invading and occupying neighboring territories.

That's a valid concern. And it should be addressed by official, law-abiding armies. Not by thugs hidden between children.

If someday Jordan, Syria or even Egypt invade Israel, that's cool. It will be just about the big boys fighting. Not about cowards using the population as a way to make shitloads of money and achieve almost infinite pwoer with a conflict that never ends. Because terrorism was never about doing an damage to Israel but about controlling the people of Palestine.

If these excuses work for one side, why not the other?

Because one side is a civilizated country, a democracy, making mistakes during the course of self-defense. A country where people from all religions and ethnicies enjoy freedom and respect. The other side is a terrorist organization hiding behind civillians and abusing their ignorance to inject hate and chaos so their group can continue to dominate the entire population.

If you can't see a difference, you're retarded.

Wafa' Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old pregnant mother of two, was one of those killed. Her husband and her mother-in-law told the team that the family had just had breakfast and were outside the house drinking tea in the sun.

Oh god, this is hilarious. They there, just "chillin", drinking some tea, watching the sun...
ON A SIEGED CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLOODY WAR.
When people insert small lies in the middle of an article, to make it sound more "dramatic", the entire content gets compromised. "Yes, Mr.. reporter, we were just hanging outside, watching the missile shower and driking some tea while chilling at the sun. I wonder why someone got struck by military fire.".

All I see are small violations. A war is a war: things get messy, soldiers make mistakes. I never said that Israel never commited ANY violations. They're still small: compared to a militia that sends children with bombs strapped to their bodies and hides inside hospitals and schools, Israel is still a saint. An official army that makes mistakes is still an official army.

And about dropping flechettes on a civillian area: What's next, forbidding ANY weapon inside a civillian area? That's just a legitimization of human shields. Flechettes are extremely useful at urban warfare situations where floor face-to-face contact is too dangerous for your solders who are, I might remind you, members of an official organization and also people who do not deserve to be put in danger just to spare terrorism-cooperative citizens.

You people are asking for something impossible: a clean war. It's better to fight for no war at all, and that will never be achieved until the leftard world acknowledges that terrorists are also part of the conflict. Until then, you'll all keep bitching about Israel is just a mad state murdering civillians for no reason at all, while nothing changes, as this kind of partial attitude only strenghtens the Israeli's government position on what related to their own population.

I think it's mostly strong emphasis on math and other hard sciences starting with high school, and the system of "advanced" (but still public/free) schools for bright students (you usually have to pass some fairly hard exams to get in) with even more emphasis. I've studied in two such schools in my last 4 years of school studies - we had about 8 hours of math and 4 hours of physics each week, and in the last two years math involved solving cubic and quadratic equations, dealing with derivatives, integrals and logarithms, functional analysis, stereometry (solid geometry) and so on. It helps to set the right frame of mind.'

That's not what I hear from friends at work who migrated from Russia to, on their words, "any country on the west that would accept me". They often told histories about how smart young people from Russia had to survive by doing "tricks" and acting "cute" to foreigners and big national companies at events such as Math/Chess/Programming competitions. A good and modern example of this situation is the malware scene.

It's all about need. Those eastern european kids really need to win these competitions. They can't afford to be "normal" because the job market for normal people was always a great mess at Russia.

The same kid from the west, with the same capabilities, will simply dismiss so much work just for some competition and say "ohhh, screw this, I tried". The number of kids from the west who actually need this kind of victory is extremely small and this group is mostly composed of empoverished folks and people with extremely serious issues related to socialization and self-esteem.

Being quick and dirty: "spoiled" (that's always relative - I'm considering a eastern european view) kids won't put that much effort into this kind of event. They don't really care about being named "Top Coder" as they're living an extremely confortable life at the moment and will achieve good job positions at the future just for beinga national with a good diploma. That's why the malware scene is really weak at the US: people have better options.

That's also bad for the west: if you were born at the US and attended a good university, you'll end up being a manager without needing much knowledge or even an IT-related graduation. That sucks because it means that our companies are being run by spoiled idiots instead of leading the race of improvement technology creation.

Attacking civilian targets

They did that, huh? Do you have a source? Or do you actually mean "civillians being killed while the Israeli army attacked militants hidden in the middle of the population?". Do you a credible source that says that Israel actually planned and executed an attack on civilians?

bombing a territory that they occupy and control

They left Gaza years ago. They were not occupying the region. Israel controls the borders of Israel.

And the reports of phosphorous bombs, among other things, are pretty damn credible.

Actually, they are not. Not even the most die-hard leftist at ONU is giving much credit to these alegations. The only "source" of evidence of this kind of situations are palestinian doctors talking about "different kinds of skin burns" and onlookers (and I bet they're mostly militants) talking about "never seeing a building burn like that before".

If they have never seen a BOMBARDED building burn before, I guess they're either lying or have never seen bombs being dropped at a building before. An explosive not causing a fire at this kind of situation is a rare event.

Not that you care.

Yes, I don't. I see two armies fighting: one has soldiers hidden behind children, the other has an excessive amount of power. One lost, the other won. And both of them are far, far away from where I live and aren't connected to my culture or family. So yes, I don't care.

You're a "might makes right" idiot.

No. I'm not a leftist retard who wants to "SAVE THE PLANET!!!!" but will not actually achieve anything useful for the planet or itself on a whole lifetime. I'm someone who believes in respect and civilization. And I believe that "feel good" attitudes aren't worth shit. I'd rather plan and achieve actual results to help other people than acting like a simplistic prick who thinks that real life is a leftist retard fantasy.

With US backing. 20% of their military expenditures are covered by us.

It is still a victory. And the support for Israel is also good for the US: they almost 100% of their expenditures on foreign equipment is based on US products.

No: if you step on their foot, they blow away a thousand people standing over there, in the ultimately vain hope that people will get so pissed off at you for provoking them that they'll put pressure on you to avoid it next time. Weirdly enough, the "arab street" blames Israel when Israel kills a thousand innocent people.

If you accept terrorists to speak on your behalf, the consequences will also apply to you. Giving support to extremist militants is the same as fighting at their side.

The Palestinian population has two choices:
+ Remove terrorists from their "foreign relations" posts.
+ Declare themselves as powerless victims and ask someone to run the house for them.

They can't have it both ways: independence is directly tied to accountability.

You have to be a nut job to think that Israel's warcrimes are "small violations".

Can you name a proven crime, please? Doubts about the nature of skin burns are not acceptable at the moment, as they're just speculation from palestinian doctors. And firing back at left-wing organization buildings that allow militants to use their facilities as missile silos is not relevant either: the legitimization of civilian shields is not and will never be an option.

You can not justify this insanity on grounds of realistic pragmatism: it's both stupid and evil (not unlike much of the Bush Jr regimes foreign policy).

What's your point? Israel should just ignore rockets and kidnappings?

The ones hiding behind those children should be, in theory, the first ones to care about that.

Weirdly enough, when Israel drops bombs on them, they tend to blame Israel. Funny that.

That's the power of religion brainwashing. If you think that using the civilian population as a human shield is an acceptable practice, I'm sorry for you.

Now try doing some comparisons to the people behind Israel's foreign policy -- most recently they intentionally violated a cease fire (and then blamed it on the other side when they retaliated), and began bombing a defenseless civilian population that was trapped in a box they had created... apparently they were in a rush to get in some last licks on Bush Junior's watch.

I guess you've been spending too much time being told what to do. Don't worry, you're not the only one with this problem and it's not such a big deal. But it makes people consider global situations such as middle-east conflicts as if they were interactions between individuals being watched by the police, the boss or any power figure you might want to choose.

Lots of people mention specific events as if the planet was ruled by a single onipotent institution that sets rules and laws that must be followed without questioning. Like if countries were citizens of a "country of countries" able to guarantee the well-being of its members, justifying the blind adoption of a set of rules.

But, guess what: the world doesn't work like that. If a country does not take care of its own stuff, there will be noone able or willing to provide the proper help. If your country signs a cease fire and the other side uses it to increase their weapon stock so they can try to completely destroy you, it's up to your country to predict the obvious outcome of such a system and react to it.

There is no benefit of following such agreements because there is and there will never be anyone responsible of taking care of such situations. There are no "global policemen", only extremely powerful countries that will turn the entire situation into a giant mess if they ever need to get involved in. A cease fire agreement doesn't mean "let's all be happy friends". It only means "I think I might stop kicking your ass... until it's convenient for me to keep the conflict ceased".

Israel is living a real-life situation at the current moment. And as a sovereign country they need to consider real-life events and strategic positions so they can keep existing. They can't call mommy and tell her what jimmy just did. They need to take action.

But hey, who cares about slaughtering children, they were only Palestinians right? I bet those kids voted for Hamas. Or would have, if they could.

The ones hiding behind those children should be, in theory, the first ones to care about that. But they don't. And legitimizing the act of using civilians as a shield to official (after all, they control their own fate now) military operations is not and will never be an option.

Poor little Israel, just wants to be left alone but keeps getting picked on? While you're looking things up, you need to review the history of this conflict. Try starting with 1967. Or if you like more recent events, try figuring out which side violated the truce agreement before Israel decided to stomp on the Gaza strip. I would not go as far to say that Israel is always at fault, but they're far from being angels.

You're forgetting that they actually win all conflicts they get involved in, and are the only truly wealthy (a sustainable economy based on internal generation of wealth instead of just pumping oil out of the floor) country of the entire region. They don't need to care about "getting picked on".

You step on their foot (and you can use lots of dates and events to justify it) and they'll smack you in the head. Later on, after attacking an enemy (whose destruction you listed as your top priority) that's hundreds of times more powerful than you, all you have left is the ability to moan and cry.

Yes, sure, there are small violations here and there. There is actually lots of fuel for any kind of nutjob to burn as a justification for anything at all. But the nutjobs will lose the battle, and then all they can do is cry, cry and cry. Lots of spoiled westerners will turn to your side and try to help you, but they won't be of much help if you consider the real life needs of your objective or even your population.