I read the news at 4am last night after pulling some OT. Shit I had a hard time going to sleep doom scrolling for another 30 mins before I put down the phone.

From this video, seems like the ship's power was going in/out intermittently before the crash with heavy smoke billowing out, so that might be engine/fire trouble.

Why that is (poor maintenance record, sabotage or what not) is to be determined. It's just a very inopportune, and deadly, time to have that kind of power outage.

Damn stupid & cruel to politicize this accident.

So, you think there should be new regulations put on oil production companies so they don’t raise prices? Or are you calling for the full nationalization of the oil and gas industry? You must be, because for it to be Biden’s fault, he must control it somehow. I wonder, do you think he sets oil prices? Production schedules? Supply or demand? Controls OPEC or Russia?
Biden released oil reserves to mitigate the price gouging (didn’t work), but without nationalizing oil and gas, there’s little more he could do (maybe threaten to halt all new drilling permits until those already issued are used, but good luck). You would pretend cancelling Keystone XL raised prices, it wasn’t operational yet.

Just ask Texas how privatization and deregulation is working for them. Analysts say they aren’t better prepared for extreme weather than last year because there’s no requirement for them to upgrade, so statewide power outages and multiple deaths can be expected, and the hits to the economy that come with shutting the state down for weeks.

The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of the year as gasoline prices climbed in the US.
Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP among group of 24 who resisted calls to increase production but doled out shareholder dividends and bought back stock.
The oil and gas industry has fought Joe Biden’s attempts to pause new drilling permits on federal land, despite its unwillingness to expand operations in order to reap the returns of costlier oil and the fact the industry currently sits on 14m acres of already leased land that isn’t being used, an area about double the size of Massachusetts.
“It’s not the government that is banning them from drilling more,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. “It’s pressure from their shareholders.”


Soooooo…..nationalize? Gas in Venezuela is $.12 a gallon. If not, blame capitalism, not Biden, for your “high” gas price. (Try gas prices in Europe where gas isn’t subsidized, now those are high gas prices).

It was pretty disappointing that they didn’t include small generators in these equations. My solar is on my roof, it only uses transmission lines when I make more than I use, and then it stays local. Same thing with small home wind turbines and micro hydro. All these non centralized generation methods are incredibly better than huge farms IMO.

1) No transmission needed, power is generated and used locally.
2) multiple generation methods are tied together, so when it’s dark and solar doesn’t produce, wind and micro hydro are still available vs giant single method “farms”.
3) decentralizing power generation hardens the entire grid, and individual adoptors, against infrastructure attacks. (That alone should sway the climate change denying nationalist crowd to buy in if they could still consider thoughts, sadly they can’t .)
4) barring an emp, the entire grid could not go down and power outages would be limited to tiny areas and be easily repaired in the future.

And more Derp..
Reported today, the Texas governor and numerous other officials were warned days ahead of the storm by the then chair of the public utility commission of Texas DeAnn Walker that the state did not have nearly enough natural gas on hand to get through the storm. This, she warned, was guaranteed to cause power outages during the deadly freeze which would result in Texans dying unnecessarily.
They made no moves to get more.
Because they refuse to meet minimum federal standards, they could not just go to their neighbors during the emergency begging for help, but could have purchased more natural gas beforehand...they had plenty of warning to prepare.

Instead the asshats ignored the shortages, ignored the deadly storm, and pretended the power went out because their wind turbines weren't weatherized (which they would have been if they ran like California, especially California before deregulation destroyed our systems decades ago). This led to many deaths by freezing. Foreseen, avoidable deaths and billions in damages.


Once again, since you seem ignorant, California's power problems are due 100% to lack of maintenance by the companies that took over when we deregulated decades ago under Republican Pete Wilson's administration. (Btw, because I don't think you know, between '82 and 2011 California was under Republican leadership for all but 4 years) The for profit companies deferred maintenance so much that now they are the main cause for billions in wildfire damages... and the solution? Not catch up on maintenance, just shut down if there's wind. That's what deregulation gets you. That's what you advocate for and support....then deride as a liberal idea when it fails miserably.
So much ignorant delusion. It's all the right is based on today. Baseless lies and morons who believe it and NEVER verify. Lol indeed.

power outage waiting to happen.

How about that power outage SB game?

Your video, Powering Stuff when there's a Power Outage, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 32 Badge!

It was a REALLY big power outage.

South Park Fact: The show is made in Southern California, so a power outage in Colorado would have no effect on production.

I'm intrigued by the different strategies they seem to have taken with regards to different markets.

The US market has been covered here already. Living off the grid, buffer for power outages, etc.

But they appear to market the Powerwall as a decentralized buffer system for our regional/national grid, as a means to shave off the spikes in power usage at times when both wind and solar fail to meet expectations. Seems like a virtual power plant of Powerwalls would be an alternative to gas turbine plants. Add some pumped-storage hydroelectricity in Norway and the Alps, and the need for standby power plants would be vastly reduced.

Additionally, they are probably aiming at the time when diminishing feed-in tariffs for PV panels make it more attractive to charge batteries instead of feeding into the grid.

However, even if they manage to sell only a handful of Powerwalls, it'll force all the other players to get off their fat asses for once. Politics managed to kill the local solar industry and the big players came up with fuck all in terms of meaningful innovation over the last years.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Siemens!

I use slightly less than that myself on average, but we have solar water heating (supplemented with gas), so that's a good savings (especially since it also heats the hot tub), and we replaced all our light bulbs with led bulbs when they became feasible last year. Now, we usually read between 400 and 1000 watts during the day (depending on how many lights I have on, and if the refrigerator is cycled on or not.) That's running a big screen TV, computer, and often ps4 almost all day, every day. We also have electric stove and oven...and I weld, adding somewhat to our total.

Yes, my battery bank is only useful for power outages. It's enough to keep the lights on and the fridge from thawing, but not much else. We get about 3-4 hours out of it if I don't notice the power went out, but can make it all night if we conserve. Our system is grid tied, and first powers the home, then tops off the batteries, then sells any excess to PG&E. To date, I've never drawn the batteries down to zero...but we do have a small generator to supplement it when the power's out for days. The average home would certainly need more, but a 10kwh battery should be plenty to make it through an average night without AC (we don't have AC here).

My current system could not produce that much, but close. I live in N California, one of the foggiest areas in the US. Because we have a renter, an electric hot tub, dishwasher, and electric washer and drier, we use slightly more than we generate at this point, but my system is upgradeable to 6500 watts of generation (I have less than 1/3 of that now) when panels get cheaper...and when I can find space for more.

My system is not flat to my roof, and I have 2 strings of 8 panels. With the solar water tubes, it takes up most of the south 1/2 of my roof (1200 sq ft home). I could maybe fit 4 more panels up there and still be able to walk around them to clean them, but any more and I'll need some mounting structure. I really want to add a small wind turbine to generate at night or when there's a storm...solar doesn't work in the dark.

In America, we still have some rebates for people adding solar to their homes, but they are drying up fast. 15-20 years ago, you could almost do it for free if you got every rebate available.

We used to have about 1-2 weeks of power outage where I live per year, and that was part of why we did they system. We hated having no power and losing food every year, and also hated paying the ever rising cost of electricity. Before adding our system, we had $4-500 a month electric bills, now we have <$100 in winter and sometimes a negative bill in summer...we pay our bill once a year now, lump sum at the end of 12 months.
On to your second post....
I often think...electric cars were popular and the norm in cities before Ford came along. It's still astonishing to me that it was basically dropped for a century as a technology (with minor exceptions). I'm glad someone had finally gone back to it and is trying to fix it's issues. If I could afford a Tesla, I would have one.

I also agree, people won't adopt the technology as long as they have to sacrifice lifestyle for it. I said the same thing, but I found that I don't change my lifestyle at all with my solar system, I just pay lower bills. I determined that buying a system would pay for itself in under 10 years, with the lifespan of a system being about 20 years, that's 10 years of free electricity! That all assumes electric rates didn't go up, and they certainly have gone up...but not for me. You just need to be sure you install enough panels to supply all your power, and you're there.

The battery thing is really mostly for non-grid tied systems, or emergencies. Most people don't use batteries at night, it's simpler and cheaper to just sell power to the grid during the day and buy it back at night if you can, using them as your battery. Perhaps this battery will change that, but with lead acid, it's hard to make them worth the cost.

Panels aren't that expensive, really. In many areas, with rebates, they can be near free. (some companies will even give them to you and split the power generated off your roof). It's a myth that solar is expensive...when compared to non-solar. Mine are paid for by bill savings already (8 years + in) so I'm saving money with them now, and my lifestyle has not suffered in the least. I have lights on if its dark, I watch TV all day, and use the computer all day, have tons of electric devices I use, and soon will power a pond, etc. I often think that my life is a much better example of how you can be 'green' without much change than Gore's. He really doesn't seem to walk the walk, but he can sure talk the talk.

What did you see? Archive.org is having a power outage from its rain storm in San Francisco. Are you sure it is not related? Please recheck it again after Archive.org is fully working again.

Where I live, in the boondocks of N Cal., we usually have a few days of power outage a year. On those rare occasions when there's an outage and a clear sky, we get to see this. There's nothing like sitting in your hot tub, looking up at the night sky FULL of stars, and watching the international space station get re-supplied, and noticing how many satellites cross it's path every orbit. I feel like we should have at least one 'blackout' night per year worldwide, where we do our best to not use outdoor lights in an effort to show this beautiful expanse of nature to those who never get to see it.

Or the money laid for such a useless thing. I swear my neighborhood would be having a lot of suspicious power outages if I had a neighbor like this.