malchow

Honestly, no. PV does fluctuate, but at PG&E scale, the fluctuation is (a) smooth and (b) predictable. Demand for energy is going up, but demand for PG&E's brand of energy is going down. But state law guarantees PG&E revenues. That's the reason for these anti-consumer moves.

In any event, surely you agree that state granted monopoly utilities are public services. They're endowed with a monopoly to serve what the people need. PG&E seems to believe it has a right to live perpetually in... I don't know... 1988? But it doesn't.

SF Chronicle Editorial Board:

https://archive.md/fFG2l#selection-3261.0-3269.271

"While some modest rate adjustments may be appropriate, gouging rooftop solar users at the behest of private utilities, absent massive systemic changes to the way electricity rates are set in California, would be a terrible mistake. Making solar more expensive to operate will only entrench current inequities. If California is serious about lowering rates for customers, it should look for ways to expand solar roofs to renters and others who can’t currently afford to benefit from these installations.

It should also do something to bring its outdated utility model into the solar age.

PG&E is a menace, responsible for some of the worst and most deadly wildfires in state history. And yet California’s energy policy guarantees the company and other private utilities set revenues, regardless of energy demand or competence in delivering that energy safely."

* Purports to conduct analysis of alleged underpayment of pro rata distribution costs by people who have solar systems (and do of course pay PG&E when they draw energy) *

* Conducts no corresponding analysis of PG&E cost structure, assumes company is well run *

Pork doesn't work. Ask people inside DOD who are increasingly frustrated at the Primes leading DOD around by the nose with outdated ideas and outmoded products.

For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. All of the issues there are on the cost side of the ledger.

This is a pork bill from Intel, which used to know how to build competitive fabs and now does not.

Federal pork will not make our country better at semi autolines.

Yes, you're right. I was only calling out that the parent poster incorrectly referred to the COVID related demand slump of 2020 as a deflationary period. It wasn't.

Deflationary means prices going down, not demand going down.

This inflation is real, and isn't just a COVID rebound. It's bad policies leasing to lack of business confidence leading to fear of the future.

If you are posting here, odds are you work in software. Seek out some friends who work in hardware and ask them what they are seeing.

Congrats to Dylan and team on this release; incredibly cool - more companies, especially those for whom software is a functional organization but not the primary one -- need to take key leaks seriously.

For those interested in software in this space: https://cedar.ai.

High-level grid interconnection isn't so useful if one (or more) of the lower-level grids being interconnected is so badly maintained that it frequently has to be deenergized.

The future probably looks like microgrids, with MID/neutral-forming transformers [1] which generate their own 60 Hz pilot signal and allow multiple producers, batteries, and consumers to coexist on a common protocol even in the absence of the utility grid.

[1] https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-Q...

Great point. You can see CA public employee salaries here. [1] The numbers are shocking, not only because they are all overpaid (the effect of public employee unions owning California's Democrat government, a downward-spiral effect predicted by people as varied as right-wing economists and Franklin D. Roosevelt [2]), but because in many cases these people get $500K - $700K per year for life in retirement. A private sector person would need a $10-$20 million post-tax trust fund in order to have that.

[1] https://transparentcalifornia.com

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/18/the-first-b...

He's also wrong about there being a water *shortage* in California. There is water *diversion*, designed by environmentalists to save animals, that strips farmers of water.

No. That is a "with COVID" number, not a "from COVID" number. You really can't escape the truth that the public policy response to COVID was a mistake –– a very grave mistake. Nothing should have been shut down, and the contrarians who said so at the time were vilified then and continue to be vilified. But they were right.

The law doesn’t pass constitutional muster. There are several challenges underway.

Natural gas from trash is undergoing a rapid growth period:

https://www.archaeaenergy.com

Details:

https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_628372108fa37c6495a97d...

As ever, the cornucopians will win and the Malthusians will lose !

The best journalist in the space is Steve Levine — I’d start there.

Yes, they've been independently tested with production form factors at sampling quantities by major global OEMs: https://ir.enovix.com/static-files/9231246c-a419-46bb-be35-a.... So this is the real one.

You're right – lots of bad actors in the battery space. Investors don't really understand how wide the chasm is between prototypes and low-DPPM autoline production ready for grown-up purchases.

Novel chemistries in nano scale in the lab are fun to puzzle about, but pure silicon anode Li-ion batteries really are coming in the next six months, notably from Enovix, and will actually change things. A 2x density upgrade that's real is a whole lot more interesting than a 6x density upgrade that isn't ready for commercialization.

Swelling jelly rolls have a real competitor in the very near future:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-to-build-a-safer-more-energyde...

Solar energy is cheap, as in $0.03/kWhr. (PG&E charges you $0.30/kHWhr.)

The best inverters convert solar DC to household AC at 97.6 % efficiency. [1]

Adding more solar is a question of adding another panel.

The inversion loss is a small price to pay for safe power. [2]

DC is probably not coming back as a way to wire houses and buildings.

[1] https://www4.enphase.com/sites/default/files/downloads/suppo...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-solar-panel-fires-beco...

We have an interesting company doing this (high-efficiency landfill methane capture and reformation), if any HNers are interested in joining such a company: https://www.archaeaenergy.com.

Later this year, Archaea will turn on the world's largest garbage-dump-to-nat-gas factory:

https://dailyenergyinsider.com/news/29202-ugi-utilities-in-p...

Whiskey makers sit on a lot of inventory in order to use a library of older spirits to backstop their highly imperfect annual production. Producers also lose an astonishing 20% of inventory to the "angels' share."

The Bloom Energy guys –– fuel cell experts –– have now started a whiskey company doing interesting things.

https://www.sfgate.com/shopping/article/bespoken-spirits-mak...

It isn't promulgated primarily by historians studying the Middle Ages. It's promulgated primarily by classicists, and in truth held by the majority of academic historians, and I'm willing to believe widely by medievalists.

The author shouldn't have made such a pat assignation of blame. But, erm, I was supposed to subsume his (in my view flawed) sorting argument into my thinking, and not having done so shows I didn't read the piece? How odd.

Why do you say that's a "medievalist" perspective? The "change and continuity" perspective is endemic to an array of interpretive schools.

For casual readers unfamiliar, what is happening is typical of what is happening in other corners of university history departments: less factual history and more politicized interpretive dance. Typical young classical historians reject the idea of a "fall" of Rome. That basic long-arc story is now rejected. Rome simply evolved.

Most of us read Gibbon and later popular historians, thus we are familiar with the "fall" story. The clash between academic and popular Roman history makes for a lot of articles about how you, the layman, misunderstand Rome.

In short, you don't misunderstand Rome. For a very good riposte to these arguments, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press 2005.

I have posted this before, but I am hiring at Enphase. [1] [2]

I am building an architecture to move electrons at the same efficiency with which we move bits. This enables microgrids. Microgrids enable decentralization and networking. Decentalization and networking enables diverse prime movers competing on price. Price competition enables sustainable energy. If that's interesting, get in touch.

[1] https://enphase.com/ [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ENPH?p=ENPH&.tsrc=fin-srch

Increasingly clear that, at Amazon, the most passionate path to getting bigger is obtaining access to tax dollars.

... but Amazon's stock would be 1/4 the price if it were valued like Lockheed Martin.

The CFR of COVID is less than 0.5%, and in the opinion of many wouldn't be worth the destructive shut-downs even if those shut-downs had the effect of preventing COVID deaths.

As someone who held numerous briefings helping to put this case together, I think it is extremely strong –– in fact, it will be difficult to imagine a cognizable defense. My congratulations to the several states who joined together to delve deep into those deleterious actions in the ad market which have so harmed the open internet.