no kidding. I just checked my June bill. We used 100 kwh less than last year...and the bill was 10% higher - a net 15% rate increase in a single friggin year!

Speaking of a DC micro grid, a company just got approval for a PoE on steroids setup. 1000 watts / 400 v DC over ethernet (18awg) called Fault Managed Power, and can be installed *without* an electrician.

https://www.panduit.com/en/pro...

this has some good diagrams

https://www.buildings.com/smar...

It's not aimed at existing edge PoE devices but higher power middle hardware that would feed those edge nodes.

regarding rates...we used 10% less power last month than a year ago. yet our bill was 10% higher. A 16% rate increase.

Data centers are here to make that grid stability go byebye.

They are huge loads that auto-trip offline if they sense even minute fluctuations to protect all the computer equipment. The grid isn't designed to handle that. NERC just issued it's highest warning over potential instability b/c these huge loads at multiple data centers will all follow similar patterns and all of a sudden multiple GW loads vanish.

US power rates outside CA are generally quite cheap and makes ROI longer, no argument about that.

Solar + batteries is basically locking in your power rates for 30 years, vs the 10-15% annual increases we're seeing. That makes the ROI shorten fast.

I had a 2003 Civic Hybrid with a battery that lasted 10 years/140k miles - 20 year old tech. Modern stuff is *much* better.

My current 2012 Insight hybrid is going on 14 years/110k miles and *just* starting to show some loss of capability.

https://www.indexbox.io/blog/c...

30 YEAR warranty.

The way I look at it is this.

If you pay $2000 annually for your power. In 10 years that $20,000....probably more like $25,000 with rate increases.

In 30 years, that's $60,000 without rate increases.

$25,000 in solar to reduce your power bill for 30 years vs a guaranteed $60,000 spend is pretty no-brainer to me.

Outside of CA, US power rates are, at least for the moment, pretty cheap on average so that does extend the ROI period probably into 10-15 year territory.

DIY'ing a home sized battery is a great way to have your insurance deny a claim when you have one.

Building codes are still slow to catch up to newer types, but if it's not 'approved'/UL certified etc, something that big and even a small fire risk is gonna punt you out of coverage.

A YT'er put in a system and if it was 25 kwh in size, code said it needed a dedicated sprinkler system...even if the LFP batteries don't have the fire risk of Lithium Ion. So he sized it just under that.

Yet the same code lets you park a 100kwh LIthium Ion car battery in the garage without a sprinkler.

Florida has invented the 'disappearing' insurance company though.

Unlike the MAGA general population, actuaries can do math and are "Peace Out" of the entire state.

If you can even get Home Owners insurance the premiums make solar and batteries look CHEAP.

There are still low-volume subs that are worthwhile, and good communities that use it. I've got an account, and interact with mostly friends in a few subs, most are in the low hundred users, but a few like /r/cooking and /r/photography are higher traffic.

I understand requiring accounts for the interface, anonymous use is unfortunately abused.

That said, the day they kill off old reddit or subvert my ad blockers is the day I stop going back. The endless scroll design and ad-powered updates are unbearable for me.

This is great fodder for lawsuits around competition / anticompetitive business practices, and consumer protection lawsuits.

On their face, individual agreements that lock in prices as a voluntary agreement are enforceable. However, an awful lot of laws kick in when they are more than an individual contract and from the story they're hitting 16 of the biggest ones, and therefore a lot of the market.

Depending on the market such as the country or the state, there are potentially enormous penalties that can be applied. For some laws, the fines can be 2x the gains. If these account for 40% of the company's revenue, the massive fines would mean 80% of their revenue for as long as the profiteering was on the books. In the short term while they grind through the courts they'll look like a windfall, in the long term when court rulings come down they'll look like bankruptcy, as potentially years of revenue get charged to massive fines.

Great Scott! We just need 0.21 gigawatts more!

good news! if the point my post would have been a landmine, you'd still be alive you missed it by so much

And that's the core of the issue.

If it were profitable the companies wouldn't be shutting it down.

If it meaningfully impacted customer sentiment or business goals, they'd open up or release servers, or make that last-minute change to the game as a final update.

As games are, so much time has passed. The original dev team has moved on two titles, three titles, maybe even more since the initial development, especially for long-running games. The maintenance teams have also come and gone. The last teams who are there when the games are 'turning out the lights' are skeleton crews or some IT guys who reboot the machines when needed. The institutional knowledge has moved on, the teams have moved on, build farms have been repurposed, etc.

A few promised to keep source code and servers in escrow to be sure they were distributed when the product eventually ended, and that made approximately zero difference to the industry.

I'd argue for most people, it's not the servers they way, it's the nostalgia. It's the remembering the good times with guild members, the anticipation of new worlds opening up and the novelty of seeing them when they're new. It's remembering the overfilled lobbies, active auction houses with all the powerful items, the peak excitement of crowded, vibrant communities. There is no joy that comes with opening a server and seeing the player count: 0/1500 - open for join, or a quest that needs 5 participants while knowing the servers are empty.

The point was that even in its infancy 15 years ago there were fairly reasonable options.

EVs are bigger sure, but tech has advanced considerably in 15 years.

The concept of warehousing should explain it to you.

You can 'store' 100 people in the space of 5-10 trailers. More if you go more than 1-2 floors up.