Are people over at MIT stoned?

[nanrehvasconez]

Electric energy produced by wind, solar, thermal, nuclear, hydraulic = less carbohydrate fuels burned by the public energy companies to produce electricity.

Planting trees do not produce electric energy, but help reduce CO2 and therefore lessens the warming of the planet

Inteligent design exist because smart humans design smart gadgets to make it easy to live in this world. Smart humans find cures for desease, improve the quality of seeds and allows us to feed the world.

The only god, the commun god recognized by all religions and even non religious people is called MONEY.

Money in any lenguage makes the world go around, and around, and around...................

[Antisthenes]

money is faith based and fiat

choosing to believe makes you a slave.

there is another way

parecon

[starkca3]

This is great, you guys went from talking about PV to god and money.

Thats awesome.

Anyways, if i could interject, its absolutely right that if EVERYBODY had the PV we'd be screwed. But thats why we should incorporate two if not more power sources.

Sun by day,

water by night. Seems like a good idea.

[elad]

It is interesting to me that there is such an inaccurate understanding as to how the grid works.
The grid is not a battery in the traditional sense. It relies on the continual flow from producer to consumer to move the electrons along the lines. It is this demand that governs the amount of electricity that is produced by the production sources (ie dams, coal fired plants, or any source) In other words, there is never more production on line than need.
So if you think of this all not as electricity, but as energy, it becomes a little easier to understand that the storage capacity of the grid as an example lies in the water that is stored behind the dam, but has not yet been used to produce electricity, or the coal that has not yet been burned, this is in essence the "Battery". So therefore when the demand arises more water is sent through the turbines from the reservoir (the battery) to meet the needs.
The systems that are employed to send the electricity produced from Photovoltaic panels ( or windmills etc.) backwards through your meter and into the grid are called "intertie systems". And you receive as stated earlier, credit for the power you produce from those PV panels.
What this means in terms of environmental benefits is that for every watt produced by a wind generator, or a PV cell that is sent back into the grid, an equivalent amount of wattage will not have to be produced from "dirty sources".
On the other hand I have a friend/client who has his own micro hydro system, and unfortunately he cannot connect to the grid because of distance to the lines. Since he does not have a sophisticated system which would allow him to turn off his production, he has to "dump" excess production because as you said, the distribution system is not a battery.

[steve0]

Yeah, i think so !

[kellyhope]

time to go off-grid and live in a tent!