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Comment Threads

• Dirk Bruere commented on The iron law of development
  The real costs come in getting your system officially certified by a specially trained electrician. At the very least you need it for your house insurance, and connecting your PV array etc to the mains is REALLY expensive. The expense in solar PV installation is almost all labour. The cost of PV is now around $0.30 per peak Watt, so you can work out the difference. Right now, solar water heading using vacuum systems are the ones where you can save a huge amount of money. You can legally do all the plumbing yourself, and even in UK winter the...
• Unholyguy commented on The iron law of development
  You need to connect the panels to an inverter not directly into the house. Generally it goes panel -> charge controller -> inverter. Labor and inspections are a big part of the expense...
• Dirk Bruere commented on The iron law of development
  https://techxplore.com/news/2016-08-lithium-metal-batteries-smartphones-drones.html "An MIT spinout is preparing to commercialize a novel rechargable lithium metal battery that offers double the energy capacity of the lithium ion batteries that power many of today's consumer electronics. Founded in 2012 by MIT alumnus and former postdoc Qichao Hu '07, SolidEnergy Systems has developed an "anode-free" lithium metal battery with several material advances that make it twice as energy-dense, yet just as safe and long-lasting as the lithium ion batteries used in smartphones, electric cars, wearables, drones, and other devices."...
• Sasquatch commented on The iron law of development
  Actually, world wide 75% of "dogs" are what we would consider "Feral", not well trained (Disciplined?) "Pets"; Here in Amurika, you get the Thugs and their Free Range Pitt Bulls. There was a Feral dog attack in Dallas (Texas) a couple of months ago that killed a woman (Local media only). (Poor part of town of course), turns out one of the problems was Animal Control had been taken over by "No Kill" advocates. If you don't pick up the discarded (Discards/Free Breeding/Free Range Pitt Bulls), you don't have to euthanize them.... OK, didn't realize the original was a CT...
• Nojay commented on The iron law of development
  Yet another "wonder battery" press release promising the moon on a stick and we're supposed to take it seriously. Really? About the only wonder-battery tech I've actually seen delivered and shelf-ready after the press releases had stopped has been Toshiba's SciB cells which have piss-poor capacity in terms of Wh/kg compared to regular lithium-X but incredibly good thermal capabilities and very fast charge rate (0% to 80% in 6 minutes) without that inconvenient "bursting into flames" deal or active liquid cooling. They're also very expensive compared to lead-acid or lithium....