By that logic, a country can't make long-term investments, and can't provide unprofitable services that have other benefits. My two questions challenged your circular reasoning.
The framing comes from this reasoning: not enough resources yet to build 100% renewable generation + storage => still need nuclear or fossils for now
But many people think this way instead: we have the technology for all the parts => build all the good stuff right now
Ironically, nuclear is selectively framed as just one thing with every safety issue ever, while fossils are further sub-divided into different environmental impacts.
I'm saying there's no storage solution yet. Even combining all storage types, you'd still run out of materials (battery) or locations (hydro) before finishing.
It's not speed vs speed. It's speed vs forecasted capacity.
People often don't realize that intermittent renewables must be paired with backup generation or storage. But energy storage at the scale of a 100% renewable system is currently an unsolved problem. So you really only have two options:
1. Continue to back up with fossil fuels
2. Temporarily back up with nuclear
Check my comment history for a debate on nuclear safety.
Thank you for pointing this out. I think most people assume that companies are just being greedy when they solder previously socketed parts, for example. I'm not saying it's never a factor. But it also solves real engineering problems.
Modern technology often requires tighter integration. We accept integrated circuits because we're accustomed to them. But then people flip out when they see what's effectively a naked module because it looks like a greedy version of the old thing.
You cover a lot of interesting topics. Some exposition:
Reporting power is easy with the power triangle. It's a mathematically exact concept.
Measuring power is a different story. Distortions of the assumed perfect sine wave create measurement errors. Meter bandwidth matters, but most have low bandwidth.
Grid meters at least use voltage phase, if not magnitude. Residential customers are billed only for real power, so the phase information is necessary to exclude the reactive power from the measurement.
One rating is for maximum output. The other describes a short-circuit that you can create with an overly reactive load.
The degrees of freedom complicate the implementation, but the bottom-line discussion abstracts away those details.
I don't have a down button, but I can see why someone used theirs.
1. Why would you verify local need, if the need is national?
2. Why would you verify inability to pay with ability to pay?
Spain's demographic problems are exacerbated by lack of rail access to certain areas. Portugal faces similar issues. If they want a strategic rail line, why would they apply the unrelated criteria you propose?
There are actually three parts of the power triangle: real (W), reactive (VAR), and the hypotenuse apparent (VA) power. If voltage and current are exactly in-phase, VA=W and VAR=0. All of the power is doing work.
Being out-of-phase is like turning a crank with one hand while resisting with the other - wasted effort. Some of the VA becomes VAR instead of W.
The math thing is a simplification so you can take measurements with a multimeter, and do just a bit of arithmetic to get all three power values. It comes from the average power integral of trig functions with complex numbers.
Watt rating is what you'd expect. Voltage and current are working together to do work. The limit is probably thermal.
VA rating at max current is a short-circuit. If your load draws enough reactive power, the voltage and current get so far out-of-phase that a huge current sneaks through without much voltage. It could be many times as much current as the max current at max Watts.
> if the locals think it's important for them then they can pay for it
That's what I thought you were saying, but that's not what I'm saying. There might never be enough local money to support it. But the regional or higher levels of government might think it's strategically important, or even profitable over a much wider area beyond local municipalities. For example, the USPS services rural areas where they lose money because it's considered important enough.
This is the difference between a business and a service. The unprofitable lines could have continued as a government-backed service to promote economic development, for example.
> enables the very things conservatives are worried about (CRT, Marxism, etc), so long as it isn't the only thing taught
Any subject was already allowed before. What more could be allowed?
Here's a class on CRT from a few years ago. I can't see what good the bill would do here. But I can think of a lot of ways to harass people with it, or get the class cancelled out of fear of being sued or fired.
Here's a real and recent news article about how potential risks and opportunities are being explored regarding electric vehicles and the grid [1]. It basically says they're looking into stuff and working on it. Neither doom and gloom, nor the future is now.
Just like the grid adapted to the growing use of HVAC, it will have to adapt to the growing use of electric cars.
Both processor hardware and the Linux operating system are powerful in large part because they're opportunistic. But that's the opposite of predictable, which is what defines hard real-time.
I've worked for one of the big three you mentioned. Probably a different one, or at least a different group, since the culture seemed fine to me.
I can't think of single a time where old code or tools were a barrier to innovation. We updated when there was a real need, but otherwise left working code alone to focus on adding innovative engineering features. The code was so heterogenous that it was modular by default, so the pain of one library's tooling was limited to that one library.
The PDFs below are a little dry, but they have noticed and cared since at least their 2018 forecast. As for the remedy, what exactly does it mean to lose public utility status?