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Comment Spectacular technology, shame about the math (Score 3) 20

Sodium Ion batteries, less impact for mining (better materials), more cycles, lots of really cool results. The ability to spread solar and wind generation across the day makes a huge difference to the success of renewable generation.

The advertising though ... 4GWh per year and 4,000,000 million households ... really??? I wish we could use real numbers.

Containers are 3.1MWh. $71 million buys about 150. RTE say 75%. This reads a lot more like 450MWh, 200MW for 2 hours with 110MWh lost to heat. Good for negative 1,800 houses (I used 5kW 50% of the day per house). The equation does not swing to positive generation until there are at least 400MW of PV at roughly another $90million to build.

For all that it's a great story, there is not much past the headline that is safe to read and draw conclusions from.

Comment Re:Rock and a hard place (Score 1) 410

Their business is to supply power to you. You are going to pay. You will pay for the power, the poles, and the really big number that will arrive as you pay to bail them out from an unreasonable business situation and unrealistic legislative requirements that lock-in and amplifies the problem - but not with the people who create it.

As you are busy blaming them, are you happy to pay twice over for power?
Are your legislators doing a good job for you?

Their salaries are no doubt still being paid because the impact of a loss of supply would bankrupt every business. Their culture is defined in no small part by the inflexibility of some of the technical limitations - so don't expect effective change while the actual issues are being denied.

Comment Rock and a hard place (Score 4, Insightful) 410

Standard issue with electrical reticulation is that the general public are so uninformed as to be living in a land of comic book physics.

The industry is full of really responsible people invested in their business going well and delivering a service. The OP beautifully points out how a couple of inflexible limits: a requirement to provide power into dangerous places - uneconomically, liability through perverse legislation and the impact of climate change has come around to ... severely bite the legislators in the ass, and the voting public and consumers.

While it may be fun to win over in some legal match its a zero sum game and hugely wasteful.

Comment Code of Conduct is a Symptom (Score 5, Interesting) 1235

The code of conduct doesn't just land from Mars. It's the result of various people in the team agitating for change. The CoC might well be being promoted to give people who have a political agenda, not a coding agenda, the opportunity to gain more control.

Software rewards a high degree of discipline, a coherent technical approach. It's sometimes necessary to prune code contributions that are rubbish in spite of the fact that this might hurt someone's feelings of self-worth. When this happens its easier to blame another's bias than your own incompetence.

It would be interesting to know the level of code contribution, and its quality, from the promoters of the CoC.

Comment The BBC Reith Lectures (Score 1) 278

Admittedly a radio show (which I am loosely calling a documentary) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

The ones I particularly liked were Vilayanur S. Ramachandran: The Emerging Mind: 2003 and Trust and Transparency - Onora O'Neill: A Question of Trust: 2002.

I found it good interesting listening while driving.

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