ghouse

But the cameras that the law enforcement officers canvas in the area aren't centrally aggregated and tagged with meta data such that they can be queried at scale.

Anyone have insights on V2G or V2H capabilities?

If we can have open standards to allow my car to interoperate with my home batteries (Franklin, Enphase, Tesla Powerwall or others), we'll all be better off.

+1

I considered "(is supposed to)" preceding "protect"

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy, public trial in criminal prosecutions, protecting defendants from excessive, prejudicial delays between indictment or arrest and trial.

Due process under the US Constitution protects everyone in the US, not just US citizens.

If you can't make heads or tails of the videos, then how is it clear to you he wasn't merely filming?

Two cities that recently asked a automated license plate reader (ALPR) company to deactivate their cameras say they have discovered that some devices remained operative long after officials directed the firm to stop recording.

While I too find it distasteful and distracting, the inclination to expunge politics from conversation may have played a role in getting us (at least in the US) where we are: 1) where people have forgotten to talk about politics politely, and 2) where politics have been weaponized by tuning to especially divisive issues specifically for high-engagement.

And that is where many of us have played a role: increasing engagement.

Price signals.

One approach would be a revenue-neutral carbon tax on extraction of sequestered carbon. And border carbon taxes for imports from countries who don't also have an internal carbon tax.

This is because PG&E retail is about 2.5x the national average.

Also, worth noting in the event the conclusions are extrapolated to diesel over the road transportation: train diesel is much less expensive as it's exempt from fuel (state and federal) taxes.

Most of the energy used accelerating is recovered at the next stop, so the fast acceleration does not consume much energy.

Not "most," but a lot. From the article: > regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system

Though to become a law, the president would need to sign it.

I only know the western US. And my experience is consistant with your own -- specialized applications.

They would love to reconductor the other circuits. In the US, the utilities make a guaranteed rate of return on investments in the transmission system. So, anything they regulators will let them do, they'll do -- not necessarily because it has technical benefits, but because it has economic benefits.

This is one reason why reconductoring isn't that popular with utilities -- it allows the utility to get more capacity with less spend, so less profit.

Increased weight makes reconductoring much more difficult as the structures are designed to carry specific weight. Increased size can also impact structure loading from ice or wind. So, generally, reconductoring does not materially increase weight.

The primary difference between the traditional conductors and advanced conductors is temperature tolerance. Most transmission lines are aluminum conductors with a steel core for strength (ASCR). As current increases, so does temperature, causing lines to sag (or the steel anneal if too hot).

Advanced conductors use a different composition to operate at higher temperatures, or otherwise carry more current (one example: aluminum conductor, composite reinforced, or ACCR) so as to have similar weight (and profile) to the original, traditional conductor.

You may be referring to either 1) the real-time line ratings (directionally required by FERC order 881, or 2) technology like the "SmartValve" from Smart Wires which dynamically adjusts impedance to keep conductors within their operating envelope.

Among risks that are managed is ground faults caused by sage (as the line heats, it expands, getting closer to the ground), or 2) annealing which is a permanent expansion of the conductor due to operating too hot for too long. The advanced conductors use composite cores allowing the conductor to carry more current at a higher temperature with reduced risk for annealing.

As the new conductors will have lower impedance, some breakers may need to be replaced to interrupt higher fault current. Otherwise, it's likely the only substation equipment needing to upgrade would be series compensation stations which may have lower normal and emergency ratings than the upgraded conductors.

More likely is that lower impedance on the reconductored circuit will cause increased flows on other, non-upgraded circuits, either requiring those to be reconductored, or installing phase-shifting tranformers or reactors to limit current.

The algae, forest, and other capture projects do not appear to sequester, on a geologic time scale, the atmospheric carbon. Even the sequestering of carbon through enhanced oil recovery is of uncertain time scale.

I do not believe that this is accurate. California Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) have had their profit decoupled from revenue since 1981. [0]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) allows for an equity rate of return on assets of approx 10% (9.3). [1]

As a result, California IOUs don't have an incentive to sell more power, but do have an economic incentive to build more assets. Asset construction is driven by growing peak demand. Or under-investment in O&M.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09571...

[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-lowers-pge-transmissio...

It's not severed. Still part of the real property and owned fee simple, but subject to use restrictions.

The electrical grid has many different resources that can be constrained. For example, the entire grid may not have adequate supply to meet demand, a transmission line may not have adequate capacity to deliver electricity from generation to load, or a substation may not have enough transformation capacity to delivery electricity from the transmission grid to the distribution grid.

As a society (natural monopoly), we pay to meet peak demand. In fact, most of the cost of electricity (in the US, in most markets...) is not the marginal cost of generation, but the amortization of fixed costs.

My reducing the peak demand, we reduce the need to build new infrastructure that is unnecessary for all but 8755 hours a year.

PG&E is an investor-owned regulated monopoly. Other utilities in California are publicly owned (either government, or non-profit. For example, LADWP, SMUD, Palo Alto, Turlock and many, many more). Those publicly owned utilities have much lower rates.

PG&E has a "revenue requirement" which is the amount it needs to bring in to cover operating, energy procurement, construction, and profit. At the most simplistic level, rates ($/kWh) are set by dividing the revenue requirement by the anticipated quantity of electricity sold.

The amount of profit it is allowed to make it determined primarily by how much it has invested to safely and reliably deliver electricity. Some of that is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Something like a 9% return on equity for investment.

This creates a misalignment of incentives: PG&E would rather spend CapEx than OpEx. This is the market failure (of the natural monopoly) that the regulator is supposed to address.

However, PG&E's lack of maintainence on a metal hook (over > 80 years) which eventually failed caused the Camp Fire. Instead of replacing all of the hooks (a relatively inexpensive OpEx), PG&E proposed, and the CPUC blessed, an incredibly expensive effort to underground transmission lines. [0] This is a windfall for PG&E's investors and organized labor in California. But a huge headwind to the economy of California, and California's efforts to electrify. As others have noted, PG&E's rates are now so expensive that driving an EV doesn't save materially (or at all) over gasoline (even with California's relatively high gasoline prices).

[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/pg-e-wins-ap...

As an industry, the term "power plant" is something that generates power (electric energy). However, much of the DER opportunity is not generation, but load. Which is why the term "Virtual Power Plant" is a misnomer and predisposes people to only be thinking about the generation side of the supply/demand equation.

The electrical grid is designed to cover the highest load (typically the hottest hour of the year; A/C drives peak load).

Most of the grid is a fixed cost. The transmission lines, distribution lines and the power plants recover enormous investments whether they are used or not.

The marginal costs are surprisingly low. Marginal costs of fueled (fossil or nuclear) power plants are typically < $0.05/kWh.

Peak load is what drives capacity expansion -- both in wires (transmission and distribution) but also generation. Building all of this capacity to only run for < 1% of the year incurs tremendous cost.

By flattening the (demand) curve (through either generation or load reduction) there are tremendous savings for society.

However, electric utilities are natural monopolies, so investor owned utilities (contrasted with munis or coops) must substantiate investment to their regulators who in turn allow them to make a rate of return on their investments. So, these utilities only increase profit by increasing investment.

It's a horrible naming choice and it shows the industry preconception that a power plant is a large, transmission-interconnected facility.

It also, IMHO holds on to an outdated concept that all generation must be centrally dispatched. There are plenty of concepts that allow distributed dispatch including voltage (which in turn can be controlled based on local conditions).

Finally (and perhaps most importantly), it implies that only devices that export generation are part of the solution. The supply and demand must be balanced in real-time. And the demand side of the equation is often much less expensive than the supply side.

I think the Democrats (Intuit headquarters in California) are primarily to blame here, but they find odd common ground with a portion of the Republican party who want to run up the debt by cutting revenue (while increasing spending).

For most tax payers in the US, the government has all of the necessary information to calculate tax liability through W-2, 1099, and other filings from third parties.

A pragmatic approach might be to use this information, populate a tax form, send out for signature confirming accuracy and completeness. The balance of the tax payers could continue to use Intuit, H&R Block and others to handle their circumstances.

There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad. The more painful tax preparation is, the more sympathy they find with this narrative.

The CDC believes that: "Lead fumes are produced during metal processing when metal is heated or soldered."

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/workerinfo.htm

So long as the supply of oil is finite, it's not a lie. The predictions of timing, however, were clearly wildly wrong.

Rectifiers (which convert AC to DC) are quite efficient. Apparently up to 98% [0]

And then there is the voltage conversion, which traditionally happened on the AC side (inexpensive and simple AC transformers are generally why the transmission and distribution systems are AC). Modern power supplies allow for buck/boost on the DC side.

USB-C power supplies are above 90% efficient. [1]

[0] https://eepower.com/new-industry-products/huawei-claims-most... [1] https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tidudw2c/tidudw2c.pdf?ts=168350042...

If a Real Estate Investment Truest (REIT), then yes.