Well least we don't have cage fighting at the White House. Oh wait. Never mind.

"The era of software without embedded AI assistants is increasingly ending" is a really dumb way of saying that applications are increasingly using AI.

This predictable pedantry accompanies every single discussion of batteries on /.

Batteries can serve as a source of energy to feed into the grid in times of need. In a practical sense, for the purposes of this discussion, they are an energy source.

Not really, no. Last night PGE was paying a premium over the buy price for my battery surplus being sold back into the grid.

We should all fight the good fight to somehow fix our broken civilization, but in the mean time you can either sit in darkness during blackouts, or you can take action to make yourself self-reliant for home energy.

Embarrassment? We're living in a world without shame. Propriety is a quaint notion from the past century.

TFS contains a simple comparison. Within the context of VPP it's an apt, accurate and correct comparison.

The number of charge/discharge cycles is unchanged with VPP. You just discharge a bit more during the evening with VPP. In exchange, they give you a large rebate, plus pay you premium peak prices for your juice. Nobody is fooling anybody.

The sheer tonnage of uninformed comments for this article, by people who obviously have no knowledge of VPP, could stop a herd of charging elephants.

The problem being addressed by this experiment is how to handle peak loads between 7-9 PM. For the purpose of solving that specific problem, a VPP delivers an amount power during those hours similar to a big hydro dam.

If your point is that one is big and gray and made of concrete and the other isn't, you're right. In fact, there are any number of differences like that between the two which are irrelevant in this context.

Of course there's compensation. The VPP rebate is substantial.

The goal is to help with peak demand. Continuous isn't necessary for that.

On summer evenings when demand is high, it makes sense to sell some of your stored energy to the grid. PGE will pay you _more_ than the buy price this evening during peak hours. Keeping it on your side of the meter is dumb in that situation since doing so effectively shifts the period you sell from the evening, when you get paid a premium price, to the afternoon when PGE pays you almost nothing.

If you want to be pedantic, sure. But in a practical sense it is the same. It's a source of power that's available when the grid needs it the most.

No. Most evenings recently the opposite has been true.

You have a battery and yet you are somehow unaware that the VPP plan is voluntary? Seriously?

"After Trump" will require fair elections. Fair elections, unfortunately, is a quaint notion that has been killed by the GOP.