rgmerk

29 ms·

421.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes and no. Yes, I get that winter lasts for months and agree that you can't possibly store enough energy in chemical batteries to cover it all. However , demand peaks by definition occur only for short periods, and shaving those peak
422.
by rgmerk 3y ago
While the solar may be of relatively little use at that time a battery would still help shift the load around and reduce peak demands on the grid. V2G would also really help in this scenario because of the sheer size of EV batteries. If yo
423.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Utilities don’t particularly like rooftop solar here either, but a combination of factors has meant that their efforts to stop rooftop solar have been less successful. Now, the constituency of people with solar panels on their roofs is so l
424.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Subsidies were historically very important in getting the industry established. Today, while there are still some subsidies available the unsubsidised costs are so low it makes financial sense even without them.
425.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Rooftop solar power is roughly as popular as puppies and kittens. But the USA has very little of it because it’s expensive in the US (due mostly to regulation and utilities being obstructionist). By contrast, rooftop solar is very cheap in
426.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I get the appeal but there’s a reason commercial wind turbines are really big and located in optimal wind resources. In short, the capacity factor of small wind turbines in the places most people will choose to live is terrible. It may not
427.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Not an expert, but I’d expect that in the USA the IRA would treat them both as “not clean”, and in the EU the gas maker would have to pay the carbon price.
428.
by rgmerk 3y ago
From the introduction to the linked blog post: “ We’re developing a scalable electrolyzer to deliver the cheapest possible green hydrogen, which we use as a precursor chemical to make cheap synthetic carbon neutral natural gas in our Terraf
429.
by rgmerk 3y ago
They’re saying that the synthetic gas will be carbon neutral. If you’re capturing CO2 that comes from an industrial process like cement production, turning it into methane, burning the methane, and releasing the combustion products into the
430.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Yes, I agree, and am of the view that the widespread distribution of piped gas (hydrogen, methane, or blends thereof) to homes and small business is going to be phased out for the reasons you describe. But you can see why some people are tr
431.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Sure, if you're only using it as storage in a largely electrified economy. The attraction of synthetic methane is that it is 1) transportable in existing pipelines, including to millions of homes and small businesses. 2) usable in lite
432.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the plan is to use this hydrogen in combination with CO2 captured from the air to make methane. If so, the hard part is getting the carbon capture cheap enough, not the hydrogen. I crunche
433.
by rgmerk 3y ago
My point is that engineers sometimes view anything that goes wrong with their tiny corner of the system as a disaster, which is not always the case. My (engineering) boss is more risk-tolerant than I am, but after 30 years in the business I
434.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Worth considering: why did the managers ignore the writer’s warning of the apocalypse when the system went live? One possibility that comes to mind is that they’ve heard dire warnings before from other engineers which have turned out to be
435.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Are you sure about that? Some of the nuclear thermal rockets tested way back in the 1960s were very, very powerful. That said, it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever be used for launches from the Earth’s surface. Mars, maybe.
436.
by rgmerk 3y ago
If you’re sincere, you’re being myopic. The USA is a great place, but there are so many cool things to see and experiences to have that you simply can’t without leaving the country. And, professionally, there’s always new things to learn.
437.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Geoengineering is bad. The problem is that the alternatives may be even worse.
438.
by rgmerk 3y ago
New nuclear energy, at least in the places where most of the HN readership is concentrated, has very little to contribute as an incremental solution to climate change. Now that Vogtle 3 & 4 are complete or almost so, there is essentiall
439.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I went on a guided hiking trip in Iceland. The first day, we climbed to 1000 metres, after our guide warned us the weather was going to be a “little streamy”, which is a humorously Icelandic way of describing 1 degree Celsius, hurricane-st
440.
by rgmerk 3y ago
A) you can charge your EV at off-peak times. B) the US electricity grid is uniquely unreliable for a developed country.
441.
by rgmerk 3y ago
In the case of EV pickups, it’s about towing. Towing a 3 ton trailer at highway speeds roughly triples the energy consumption of a pickup truck, so for 200 mile towing range you need 600 miles of unladen highway range.
442.
by rgmerk 3y ago
That’s not true for the New York Times, which makes more money from subscribers than it does from advertisers.
443.
by rgmerk 3y ago
This is an excellent point. A lot of crappy research goes on, and nobody pays it any attention (except, occasionally, when cranks outside the field want to prove that "peer-reviewed research proves the Earth is flat). It's frankly
444.
by rgmerk 3y ago
To be fair, the bits of Australia where the significant military and intelligence installations are located are literally thousands of kilometres away from Australia’s larger population centres. Nuking Australia’s cities would do precisely
445.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I’m not sure that demarcation is easy. As I understand it, the Manhattan Project (for instance) was science Monday, engineering Tuesday, and usually by the same people.
446.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Sorry, to clarify, I think US regulations require this, with the net result that prefab becomes more costly than conventional construction in the USA.
447.
by rgmerk 3y ago
It’s interesting - in Sweden, the vast majority of new homes are apparently prefab [1]. Aside from customer expectations for customizability in the US (and other countries) I believe regulations also contribute, with prefab homes actually r
448.
by rgmerk 3y ago
There are plenty of legal things that people discuss in parks that they nevertheless wouldn't want recorded and disclosed to all and sundry.
449.
by rgmerk 3y ago
As has been pointed out approximately a billion times, technology has made surveillance possible to an extent that was inconceivable back in the founders' time. Before sound recording technology, if there was no-one else around and had
450.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Say it was possible to sit in a large public park and record every conversation within it. Would this decision mean that the state would be unable to ban the use of such technology? If so, it strikes me as a dumb decision.

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