The same that happens in medicine happens in college textbooks - and other forms of high margin, but relatively fixed/finite initial investment and stable cost to produce.
American scholars write some of the most respected textbooks in the world, they are then sold in US colleges for $100-400/each. The same book is then sold in SE Asia and Africa for $10-40/each.
China residential construction growth is slowing. Their rates of urbanization have almost reached levels seen in developed countries. People are paying close attention to where China goes from here.
Smart move. Ohio has a well diversified economy and they really standout among rust belt states.
I read semiconductor plants need a lot of freshwater. It is confusing why Arizona is receiving so much investment in fabs. The entire west is lacking in water. With the exception of the Seattle area; there isn't a city out West that doesn't have a major water concern.
Meanwhile the Great Lakes have the largest bodies of freshwater in the world.
Texas is ridiculously pro-energy. It doesn't matter what type of energy, either. Just look at west Texas oil fields - thousands of rigs pepper the landscape for tens of thousands of miles.
NIMBY attitudes are not as popular in Texas.They really don't care what the world looks like. As a result, Texas has a massive amount of solar / wind production. They beat their own production goals, repeatedly.
It would seem like a good idea to just sprinkle in solar and wind farms all throughout west Texas. Then setup high voltage lines to run the power to Albuquerque, El Paso, Waco, Odessa, Midland, etc.
For perspective at the extent of oil production (and their lack of care over the landscape), look on Google Maps at Andrews, TX
I own a solar array. I heard an argument against solar owners participating in net metering that was interesting. The argument is: net metering doesn't account for the cost of transmission and maintenance of the energy credit that is consumed.
Basically, we mooch off the grid. We're supposedly freeloaders, using the grid as our giant battery - only when we need it, and we're not paying to maintain the grid*.
This argument was new to me. The state I live in doesn't credit me 1:1 per kWh, per se.
Each kWh of power I pay for has 3 components; when added together, consumers pay a rate per kWh anywhere from 7-15cents. Each credit of power I produce can only offset 2 of the 3 components (like 95% of the cost)
Tldr - it sounds like some utility providers do not require solar owners to pay for transmission costs, or break their bill up in such a way that the credit can only be applied toward the power, but not the transmission.
Net metering sounds like a topic that needs to be defined. Some states definition of net metering could be very advantageous to solar owners, while other states have reasonable net metering rules that still incentivize residential solar.
Ford does not understand infotainment or charging experience.
Tesla literally ship with AMD Ryzen CPUs, while other manufacturers still can't even get CPUs. They got 8 cameras, 4 of which you can watch live....anytime on your mobile phone. The supercharger experience sets a standard that no 3rd party comes close to reaching. The supercharger network itself gives Tesla customers the ability to confidently travel and easily charge - fast.
I actually test drove a Mach-E and a Model Y. Ford was straight up trying to rip me off, and made the whole experience really off-putting. On top of that, the Ford dealers literally had no idea what they were doing, or any of the facts. There is no passion in it.
Tesla is all passion. Every Tesla employee wakes up to do one thing; make the world's best EV. Ford (and every other legacy) is trying to change engines in an airplane midflight while trying to learn how to build EV's.
It isn't for the lack of trying - in any area, that Tesla isn't the best at something. Tesla has the smartest people in the room/industry. Their energy and focus is on AI, scaling up manufacturing, battery tech, charging tech, etc. They spend nothing on marketing, and get more free press and word of mouth than any brand but Apple.
Marketing like legacy car companies comes off as desperate and thirsty. Just listen to the two CEO; Ford CEO will play buzzword bingo and talk high level corporate empty-speak. Elon Musk will talk to you about the challenges in battery manufacturing, the nuances of the minutia of building these amazing vehicles. Elon Musk will sleep on the factory floor to get it done. What other CEO has slept on the factory floor?
The man is not without his defects, but literally consider his life accomplishments; PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, tunnel digging because why not, solar panels, residential utility scale battery storage, 30000 "gas stations" around the world.
Literally Ford can't even build vehicles right now. Like production down. Assembly stopped. Tesla is pumping out EV faster than ever before. And Elon Musk is trying to fly rockets to Mars in his spare time.
I respect the history of the legacy's; but they are simply not in a strong position. Musk won. His cars are the cool ones everyone wants.
It isn't that Ford has crazy demand; they have no production. Same as Rivian, etc. It markets well to say Ford/Rivian deliveries of EV are way out to 2024 - but has to be taken in context that they are struggling to produce 50k EV a year.
Tesla has the proven product. Literally no one knows how well a Rivian or Lucid will hold up, or what defects will haunt their early buyers. There isn't enough data out there yet. Same for the Mach-E. Tesla has 10yrs of data for customers to look at; and Tesla has what feels like a 100yr head start...
>> The man is not without his defects, but literally consider his life accomplishments; PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, tunnel digging because why not, solar panels, residential utility scale battery storage, 30000 "gas stations" around the world.
So, let's check list, shall we?
Paypal, wasn't him (at least not even close to the level of what people think)
Tesla, there Elon had to sue to get the title of founder
SpaceX, at least as much Shotwell than him
Tunnel digging, well ever herd of subways?
Solar panels and residential solar, one isn't even noticeable in terms of market share, the other had to be bailed out by Tesla (did I mention some strange corporate governance and financial links between tesla and SpaceX around that time? And that the bailed solar company was owned by his cousin?)
30k "gas stations, impressive... Just ask BP or Exxon how many they have. Credit where credit is due so, Tesla did build the first true charging network. The first, not the only one.
And let's not pretend SpaceX will be the first to reach Mars.
I live in Michigan. I have a 5.9kwh solar array. Spring/fall, I can produce over 40kwh/day. Summer heat lowers my production to upper 30-40kwh.
January 2021, I produced 197kwh the entire month.
I know this discussion is focused on heating. But from an electric vehicle perspective; 197kwh is not that much. In the winter, I don't think it would be enough electricity for a homes electric needs + EV or electric heat.
I can make 1MWh over 1 month in the summer. Basically, Michigan has short days in the winter. Snow does sit on top of the solar array until it melts, which robs me of production during sunny winter days.
It wouldn't be impossible to use solar to replace heating oil in Michigan, and the over capacity installed to satisfy winter demand could serve as a "peaker plant" during the warm summer months.
While I know renewables have decreased in costs, I think the costs related to building overcapacity is a hindrance.
It's not that hard to store solar power as Hydrogen and turn that back into electricity. The end-to-end efficiency is not as good as for batteries, but building something that can hold Hydrogen for a few months is cheaper than building the equivalent amount of batteries.
It's true that hydrogen is more practical for storing energy for months, but I think that storing energy for a few hours each day between daytime and nighttime (and transporting it from hot, sunny states to freezing, dark ones) is the important problem to solve.
You need to solve both problems to reach 100% renewables, but doing in the order of demand side improvements, short term storage and then long term storage is probably the cheapest way to proceed.
Did you miss the part where Michigan is already connected by a transcontinental electricity distribution grid to places like Las Vegas (8 average hours of sunlight in January, average temp 9C in January)?
That’s a gross oversimplification of reality - to the point of outright falsehood.
Michigan can’t get any electricity from Nevada today - they are on different grid ties, and there would need to be a ton of upgrades in the DC-DC and VFT ties between them to get that significant a chunk of electricity sent the ~2000 miles from Nevada to Detroit.
That's the job of utilities, not individual consumers.
Look, if the government wants to migrate utilities away from gas for heating and replace that with something else, the way you to do that is to have the government build, or contract out to build, the something else that is just as reliable and just as affordable, and then when that is in place, you work with the utility to switch over to the new thing and then retire the old thing. This is called a migration.
Shocking, I know.
The way you don't do it is to adopt some neoliberal obsession with turning everything into a market where end users trying to heat their homes are facing higher prices, and the hope is that these higher prices just cause the utility to transition to something else through the magic of markets.
That's not what markets are good at. Funding big infrastructure projects and coordinating the replacement of one infrastructure with another is the responsibility of government, not markets.
We didn't build our hydro and nuclear capacity by relying on the magic of the free market. We had a planned decision to build this infrastructure as a result of public need, and so we built it, and then the utilities hooked up to it, and the end user got power. We didn't build the interstate highway system by relying on free markets either. When people want to deploy subways, the solution is to build subways, not just tax gas and hope subways just spring up out of the market.
Telling individual homeowners "Well, there is wind power technology out there" is eco-sadism.
It is taking things offline or penalizing them instead of having replacements provided, and we just hope that the penalties will cause replacements to spring up.
This is faith-based energy policy. It is not effective governance, and it is not politically sustainable.
American scholars write some of the most respected textbooks in the world, they are then sold in US colleges for $100-400/each. The same book is then sold in SE Asia and Africa for $10-40/each.