I'd describe my feelings around the current solar boom as cautiously positive with a good sprinkle of skepticism.
I'd like to see billionaires investing in education towards self-regulating communities. I'd like to see them heavily investing in funding coops, not buying up startups. Billionaires investing in renewables means more money in billionaire's pockets, because they will just sell the clean energy back to you for a profit while remaining the owners of everything and then some.
I'd carefully agree that more solar panels are good, but I've now lived through enough eco hypes to not have at least a few concerns. In the worst case we will now quickly and thoughtlessly plaster solar panels over hectares and hectares of useful farmland, important ecological reserves, and poor people's homes, just because line go up. And probably trash them all in ten years when maintaining them proves too costly, or the next hype comes along. In the best case we actually start polluting less and use the time we buy to seek for more energy-saving ways of living in general.
I'm also for community solutions and I don't oppose this. The rich are unfortunately also part of the world, they should be utilized as much as anybody in this crisis. More so, arguably.
Cool. Now can the local power companies (in cahoots with CPUC) stop changing the rules that make it less and less economically viable for people to have solar on our roofs? Every year they add bigger fees and pay tinier amounts for power generation. The ROI on solar is now measured in decades. And they're doing it on purpose.
No no no, you need to pay us a flat fee of $500 monthly no matter what, else how do we make profit for our shareholders. Because we can all agree on at least one thing right?? That a basic necessity like electricity definitely should not be publicly owned
Oh and yay for NEM 3, super beneficial to customers
Idiot troll. This platform is rife with y'all. It's become an issue, frankly. Honestly worse about it than Reddit, which is super unexpected. Fact is that solar is one of the best green energy industries that exist. A person using their big money to help it, especially in an INTERNATIONAL manner like this, isn't a negative. We don't have a method of free perpetual energy if you didn't notice, because somebody fucking murdered Nikola Tesla and destroyed his research to this effect. Probably there's even further people that have tried and been murdered and erased. You can thank capitalism for that, which if you ever bothered to read, you would know I am fully opposed to.
If a sociopath who has already extracted enough money for his own greed from society to have a catastrophic effect on the lives of ordinary people decides to invest in solar power, I'm going to be sceptical
Larger is not better with a motorcycle. It's gotta be quite heavy. Both of those things would take away from the biggest advantages a car has over a motorcycle.
I'd have to see a few things to care about this...
Braking time/distance. Sure it can go 126mph but how quick can it get back to zero.
How well can it corner or do a slolum maneuver? I don't how fast it can go in a straight line if it can't go though curves or swerve to avoid danger.
Police officers don't need to know the laws unfortunately. And depending on how much melanin you have determines if you should explain or if youre better off just saying "yes sir can I go".
A friend cycling in London was stopped for turning right at a "no right turns except cyclists" junction - police didn't even want to go read the sign that they were told to enforce!
I am deeply skeptical at the 450 mile range figure, after searching for more detailed specs. This Cycleworld article says that the manufacturer officially described the battery as "700V, 50 Ah" yielding 35 kWh.
450 miles is 742 km. So the efficiency needed for that range would have to be 48 Wh/km (aka 702 MPGe). But that's problematic, because that sort of efficiency is in the (higher end; ie less-efficient) territory of ebikes, which are lighter and have lower top speeds. In an odd coincidence, my Bikonit MD750 Class 3 ebike achieves 48 Wh/km when cruising at 45 kph (28 mph) and weighs 44 kg, with dual batteries summing to 1.5 kWh.
So how will this electric motorbike equipped with a substantial-larger and heavier 35 kWh battery pack be able to achieve the same efficiency? Even accounting for the different testing regime -- US EPA cycle vs China CLTC -- there are significant questions here.
The Cycleworld article expresses similar doubts, suggesting a 333 mile range might be more reasonable. I agree, although even 65 Wh/km may be generous if this motorbike can't shave weight in other places beyond the battery pack.
But they need to actually sell them. Electric motorcycles were a thing before they weren't. The market didn't accept them, and I don't think unrealistic range is going to be a major selling feature.
That must be some crushing range anxiety! I don't think most motorcyclists would even want to sit on their bike for 10 hours at highway speeds for an entire day.
This seems pretty cool. It's no crazier than putting a communication cable across the oceans and we already have the support for that. Is there something I'm missing?
Transmission over long distances is much harder with power since you have to send it through cables that have some resistance; fiber optic cables are reflecting light that doesn't degrade as quick.
I think this is doable, the only question is, at what cost? Losing a lot of energy is inefficient, but that's only if you care about the efficiency more than the result (getting cleaner energy to a place that wouldn't have it otherwise). There may be better solutions, but I appreciate the desire to get this going here.
I wonder what happens if the cable that carries this much power breaks under water. And even if it doesn't break the elecro-magnetic field around it is gonna be massive.
But anyway, other similar projects have either failed (plans to build such a giant solar-farm in Morocco) or have pivoted to "green" hydrogen as the energy transport medium.
It's also one of the many reasons power lines are typically aerial, and only underground at last mile locations when necessary. High electrical current experiences impedance due to the surrounding medium, and air offers the lowest impedance.
It's starting to become increasingly common - there's a project in the offing to run a cable from Morocco to the UK to take advantage of all that Saharan sunshine. There's long been talk of stringing a few across the Med and building large numbers of solar farms across North Africa to speed up the green transition in Europe (at one point there was talk of worried insurance companies bankrolling such projects as climate change could bankrupt them). Eventually there will be a web of such cables into and across Europe shuttling energy around - excess British being stored in Norwegian HEP facilities, etc.
I suppose the craziness comes from it being a $21B undertaken to build two of the largest renewable projects yet, which rely on both working properly. That's quite a bold move and it's risking a lot of cash.
Why would you just set it in front of Goodwill? That's littering!
You should go donate it directly in closed boxes so they can't just ignore it on the sidewalk. Plus, they'll probably even give you a coupon for your next visit.
Wow that's a useful list of things they accept for recycling. It's a total PITA to recycle anything electronics related in my city especially stuff like computers & hard drives let alone cables. That may end up getting me inside a Staples more often than once every year or two so maybe their plan is going to work.
thecooldown.com
Top