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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • WOW, thank you for this write up! I am able to follow most if not all of this thankfully.

    I’m still learning things like this for myself, so I’m happy to share knowledge.

    I recently had the tug of war analogy used in an explanation given to me regarding some engineering work to sync a new generator to the grid and it is effectively eye opening.

    The tug-of-war was my third attempt at an analogy when I was writing this, so I’m glad the concepts made it through. I was thinking I should have put made Squid Games reference for more clarity about the stakes, like this:

    I also assumed that the ERCOT situation was largely or entirely due to gross negligence and Texas things, so it’s nice to learn otherwise. I’d done some reading on the matter awhile back but I mostly just recall the discussion revolving around winter weather without highlighting concerns such as these.

    Oh, don’t worry, as I understand it there is still plenty of ERCOT negligence. Apparently Texas’s ability to deal with over-production or under-production is seriously compromised because of its very small connection to the other grids around Texas (by intentional Texas design). From memory, there’s a small link west of Texas through New Mexico, but it can only pull or push a tiny fraction of the electricity riding on the Texas grid so its effectively useless to handle big gridscale swings.

    Texas has finally figured out this is a bad idea, and got a check written by Biden’s DoE for $360M to make big boy connections to the national power grids. source.

    I’m fine with some of my non-Texas tax money going to help the people of Texas step into to the grid the rest of us use. We’re all citizens of the USA after all. That is unless Musk and trump decide that $360M is waste that Texas doesn’t deserve and cancels the grant through DOGE. Then Texas is back where it started or will have to foot the entire bill themselves.


  • Not the dude you’ve been responding to, but I’m curious about the infrastructure and tech limitations just in attempt to be more educated.

    Warning: GIANT WALL of text incoming. Buckle up.

    We all know what happens when there isn’t enough power on the grid at a given moment: a blackout.

    However, do you know what the extreme result of too much power on the grid is at a given moment? Also a blackout.

    Curtailment

    The term to start reading up on is “curtailment”. Its used in demand (consumption of electricity) but also supply (generating electricity). Meaning grid operators are always on a knife’s edge of generating just enough electricity on the grid without being too much. For a small amount of waste, they have ways to burn it off. Think giant space heaters running outside. The loss of money from that “burned off” electricity is there, but its not that big and its considered a cost of doing business. However, there isn’t much “burn off” capacity infrastructure. Historically there hasn’t needed to be.

    Grid operators usually have systems of communication they use to contact their generation partners and ask for more juice to be produced, or more frequently these days telling them to hold off generation. At the grid level though, this isn’t like a light switch of “on and off” it can take many minutes or even hours for a grid scale generator to spin up or spin down generation. Also these systems aren’t meant to be rapidly spun up and down so it gets expensive to operate like that.

    So up to know its just been the grid operator guessing demand needs and talking to a handful of generators to scale up and down. Now with massive amounts of electricity generated by thousands of smaller operators (residential as well as smaller commercial) there isn’t the same mechanism for the grid operators to halt production.

    So what happens when there is a huge excess of electricity and that relatively small “burn off” capacity is quickly consumed? If that excess electricity is allowed through, things literally blow up in the electrical grid, in businesses, and in homes. Those gigawatts of electricity that cannot be allowed to exist on the grid. So grid operators can use another mechanism to try to burn off that excess electricity: negative electricity prices. They can pay people and businesses to use the excess. A note here, in the years and decades ahead, our society will evolve to use this excess more efficiently by timing high consumption at times of excess, but except in a few small examples, we just aren’t there yet. If there aren’t enough people taking money to use the electricity, the grid operator may have to cut off sections of grid to keep from blowing them up. Here’s the blackout from too much electricity. A full blackout also means coming back online later is a much slower process as sections of the grid are brought up slowly to make sure the demand can meet supply.

    Even in state sponsored electrical grids (like I assume France is), grid operators are expected to cover their own costs at least when providing the electricity service to the state. So forget that they still have to maintain the grid with all its equipment and employees when electricity prices are at zero, during these peak times they’re having to pay people to use more electricity. So even if they were at break-even before, they’re now at a loss because they’ve had to give out money to use their service. Again, in the future societies and technologies (power storage) can address this, but we’re not in the future. We’re here today with these problems. At its extreme, how many of us will continue to work at if we aren’t receiving a paycheck?

    Grid forming/Grid following

    One other difference in grid scale generators vs many/most solar generators is the responsibility for forming the grid. This means, keeping the frequency (60Hz in the North America and half of Japan) (50Hz in most of the rest of the world and the other half of Japan). This is done by grid scale generators with GIANT spinning generators and are required by their mandate to make sure the frequency is always stable.

    Imagine a game of tug-of-war. The grid scale operator would be the leader closest to the middle and the leader of the team. This is the grid former. All the solar producers are behind the leader all pulling at the leader’s instructions. These are the grid followers. So in the middle of a match it is clear that our team is losing and slowing being pulled toward the line. The grid followers don’t want to be hurt in the fall, so some of them start dropping the rope protecting themselves. As each one drops, the amount of force on the leader and those remaining increases. More team members drop the rope. The forces increase again! The leader cannot drop the rope because they are not allowed to even though they can see what’s coming and is eventually very violently pulled across the line and seriously hurt while all the team members (grid followers) are unharmed because they dropped the rope before anything bad happened to them.

    This is what happened in Texas a year or so ago. The result was huge blackouts across the state.

    This feels like something that should be celebrated regardless of needing to clean up and awareness to improve the grid and electrification moving forward.

    It should be celebrated, but it should also be recognized that it creates its own set of problems. We can’t simply “take the win” and not make any changes. We’ve got systems set up for different circumstances and we haven’t change the system even though the circumstances have changed.


  • I appreciate your attempt to engage in good faith, but no, my question was very rhetorical. I am not really interested in discussing any answers to that question that neither you nor I would support.

    I understand. I’ve faced some of the same frustrations I’m feeling in your post.

    I think most of the opposition to solar panels comes from disingenuous efforts by companies with a financial interest in fossil-fuel,

    Most is, I agree. However there are some truthful reasons too because of currently deployed infrastructure or technological limitations, but I agree the majority of anti-solar/ant-wind are bad faith arguments used by fossil fuel invested companies and industries to continue to justify their existence.


  • Why is this always worded in such a shitty way that makes it sound like a bad thing. “swamps the grid” “overwhelming the region” “prices slumping”.

    I’m happy to provide some real answers to you questions if you’re looking for discussion. Some of the answers I don’t personally like myself, but they make sense. I say this as a solar advocate as I am happily watching my own solar production climbing with the change of the season.

    If you’re just looking to rant though, I won’t get in your way.




  • It doesn’t work the way you’re describing for a bunch of reasons.

    First, while everyone thinks the CEO is the boss, they aren’t. They are hired and fired by the Board of Directors. The Board has a strategic objective for the company and has tasked the CEO with making that strategy reality. So in your hypothetical, the Board may not be interested in developing new features or putting lots of resources into R&D at that time. Its also possible that the Board is wanting to pivot the company into a different business segment where that new features isn’t attractive to that customer base.

    Lets assume for the moment the Board does have interest in the result $NewFeature might provide.

    CEO does something like this:

    • Contact Marketing and confirm our customer base would want this $NewFeature that $competitor developed. Also, we’ll need pricing strategy fairly quickly to know how much we will net out of implementing this $NewFeature or how much of our customer base we’ll lose to $competitor if we don’t have it in our product. Also, Marketing will need to come up with a new name for $NewFeature under our banner.

    Those number from Marketing will give us an idea of our budget for building this $NewFeature

    • Contact Legal and confirm that $NewFeature is not covered by any filed or pending patent or copyright claims. Take the name that Marketing came up with and search for existing copyright and trademark claims to see if we can use the new name or if we have to come up with something else. If there is existing IP covering the functionality, we need a breakdown on what that is to see if Marketing and CTO can make something else that does all or some of what $competitor’s $NewFeature does. Depending on how important $NewFeature is, don’t rule out licensing the IP from $competitors

    • Ask CTO to work with the Project Management Office (which probably works under the COO) to come up with a rough Work Breakdown Structure and folding into a Project Plan with identified Milestones and rough release date. CTO will also need to provide a Resource Allocation (how many people, how expensive of people, and for how long) to complete the development of $NewFeature. This Resource Allocation will be folded in with the additional development costs of tools, etc, and compared against the number Marketing is providing to see if this is a good business decision to even pursue making $NewFeature.

    There’s a bunch more, but this is a taste.






  • I made these comments as I was reading the Executive Order. If you skip the rest of my post, at least scroll down to the last quoted section. If my reading is right, it could have huge implications. However, IANAL.

    Federal law, 52 U.S.C. 30121, prohibits foreign nationals from participating in Federal, State, or local elections by making any contributions or expenditures. But foreign nationals and non-governmental organizations have taken advantage of loopholes in the law’s interpretation, spending millions of dollars through conduit contributions and ballot-initiative-related expenditures. This type of foreign interference in our election process undermines the franchise and the right of American citizens to govern their Republic.

    Looks like this follows the rule of “Every GOP accusation is projection”.

    (d) The head of each Federal voter registration executive department or agency (agency) under the National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S.C. 20506(a), shall assess citizenship prior to providing a Federal voter registration form to enrollees of public assistance programs.

    This one is weird. Is this saying that those on public assistance programs get extra scrutiny if they’ll be allowed to vote?

    (ii) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Election Assistance Commission shall take appropriate action to review and, if appropriate, re-certify voting systems under the new standards established under subsection (b)(i) of this section, and to rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standards.

    This one is divorced from reality. 180 days to make voting equipment comply with these new rules? Many voting districts are using older equipment because their limited funds. For any of the software based machines, 180 days barely defines the project requirements and assembles a team, much less the needed onboarding and execution of the change. What about mechanical voting machines? These could take years to design changes and implement them. The consequence if the machines (electronic or otherwise) aren’t updated? " and to rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standard". Those machines are no longer eligible to be used in elections.

    Sec. 8. Preventing Foreign Interference and Unlawful Use of Federal Funds. The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, shall prioritize enforcement of 52 U.S.C. 30121 and other appropriate laws to prevent foreign nationals from contributing or donating in United States elections. The Attorney General shall likewise prioritize enforcement of 31 U.S.C. 1352, which prohibits lobbying by organizations or entities that have received any Federal funds.

    Woah! Talk about burying the lede. Receive federal funds and you lose your right to lobby or contribute to any political campaign? Wouldn’t that include every Fortune 1000 company, Elon Musk, and every single person that has received PPA loans or even FEMA relief?!



  • she thinks i’m disgusting or inferior because of my disabilities.

    If she said this to me, this bit right here is the “full stop” where I would have cut ties with her and she’d be gone from my life. At best she may be younger, and this may have been said as a tantrum of someone too young. She may grow out of it, but its not my job to “fix” her. There is much better use of my time, effort, and empathy with anyone else but this person. Its also possible this is who she is.

    The result is the same: I’d simply never interact or talk to her again, and move on with my life. There are literally billions of other people in the world that aren’t this person. I’d like to get to know those other people instead.



  • Wise companies have limited themselves to the basics

    “Wise” is subjective here. Using a cloud vendor’s implementation can yield many times more efficiency, simplicity, stability, scalability, and agility vs rolling you own. Does it come with the cost of vendor lock-in? It absolutely can. Will that make migration to another vendor difficult? It will.

    So for organizations that never embraced the cloud alternatives have had to maintain their own infrastructure or use commodity solutions, as you mentioned, to deliver their IT needs. How much more was spent using a general purpose approach with higher portability to deliver the same result vs a cloud providers proprietary version? Then include the time component.

    Only time will tell.