Bob Higgins--
The political environment is all important, particularly the different
environments between states. In progressive liberal states, Washington falling
into this category IMHO, the utilities do not have the power that they have in
states such as Florida and and the middle west and Texas. Alaska, where I
vote, does not have a strong utility infrastructure and is ripe for distributed
energy systems. It’s way to costly to build such a system there, except in
large cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks. I have been off the grid for 16 years
there.
Another difference is the existence of public utilities rather than investor
owned ones. The hydroelectric power in Washington is mostly publically owned
and provides fairly cheap power. Even so the large cities in the West like
Seattle are quite progressive and are leading the way for the support of
distributed power systems. Together with the Federal government incentives, I
have a solar system in Washington on a house that I use in the winter. I
expect to pay off that system in 3 to 4 years. If it is as good as reliable as
the solar installation I have in Alaska, it should last a long time without
much upkeep costs. A large number (in the 60’s I think) of the Washington
utilities have signed on to the program.
Bob Cook
From: Bob Higgins
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 7:17 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Cheap Solar Power (harvard.edu)
The problem with the strategy presented by Smith/Edison is that the big
electric power utility companies have already made the big investment in
distribution. Smith describes a new installation. The technology for the
power management he describes is available today - you can go out and buy it
for your house (not new). You can install solar, wind, etc and batteries and
have a single power management station. What will be the result? You will
draw less power from the electric utility. If you draw less power from the
electric utility, you pay less toward maintenance of the big investment the
power companies have already made (power companies profit >50% on each kWH they
sell you). They will fight tooth and nail to prevent this income reduction to
insure they get the return they promised their investors on the huge investment
in big infrastructure. Face it, that's their job - to provide that return to
the investors in utility bonds.
If you are building a new system, based on each home having renewable energy
and needing less grid power, the infrastructure can be much smaller and
cheaper. But this does not help the power companies that have already made the
big investment in delivering lots of power to your home. This is why there is
a war between the power companies and those promoting and using such
distributed power systems. The war will last over 20 years and we are far from
seeing the worst of it. Many big utility companies will go out of business
before it is done. Some utility bonds will fail.
On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 3:49 PM, Ken Deboer <barlaz...@gmail.com> wrote:
Vis a vis this excellent thread, I'd be interested in people's thoughts about
a new video by Robert Murray Smith on "The Internet of Energy". This looks to
me to be better than Tesla's technology, and in fact, a very significant
advance for, especially, widespread solar.
ken
On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
As your analysis demonstrates, there's no warranty of any particular level
of insight that attaches to comments in this and similar fora. You are free to
leave when you like.
Eric
On May 5, 2016, at 13:19, Che <comandantegri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 4:07 PM, Blaze Spinnaker
<blazespinna...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Fortunately, looks like LENR may not be needed to rescue the planet
>>>
>>> http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog-1/cheapsolarpower
>>>
>>
>> Indeed. If solar power will help humanity to squeak by, and LENR will
allow it to build out all kinds of military capabilities, solar power may end
up saving humanity where LENR would doom it.
>>
>> Eric
* Dealing with an out-of-[democratic-]control Military-Police apparatus
is essentially a _political_ issue: generally only solved by class violence of
some degree.
* Cold Fusion OTOH is a _technological_ issue: with a political-economic
social nature necessarily attached to it, after the fact.
* These two issues do NOT easily conflate. Not in this (too-usual,
unfortunately) way.
And IMO it is one of the great failings of this and other fora that such
a basic understanding of fundamental societal relations is almost invariably
and essentially tossed aside -- in favor of the usual simplistic understanding
of how non-technological social issues actually operate. (i.e. 'technology will
save/doom us!!', yadda...) Technology, per se, *is essentially NEUTRAL*.
