Flooding levels updam is a concern (but not for Hoover) in general. Yes, daily/weekly flow rate downstream is also a concern. But not hourly flow rate.

then our lives are dictated by CBC meal mouthism. It is a bad rule, IMO, even if excessive editorializing is a good rule.

Title is honest summary of Ford positing/request OP title. With focus on key quote Ford is gaslighting us in substance of article.

Title is not editorializing. It is just focusing.

But there are sensible paths to going off grid. Why you would write about an impractical fantasy path was my puzzlement.

I did math for Toronto, Canada. 2000l of hot water was enough (2m³). Winters here have gotten cloudier from great lakes warming. Instead of more water as a buffer, dirt is much more space efficient, and just needs the hot water routed through it to get heat transfer.

The volume looks more like a room than a box, unless you can somehow make it molten that is

If hydronic heating system was already being directed towards outer walls instead of straight up from water storage, then a tall “hot dirt” storage, and dual cold water mixing valves (pre and post dirt flow) next to each other, it’s less in additional storage costs per heat unit than water, though it does use more electricity to input heat compared to heat pump.

No need for temperatures higher than melting/softening point of copper to get useful heat storage for a home. Just water can be enough if you have the room.

Ok, to be polite, you were just mistaken in portraying a 1 mwh battery as a reasonable idea. It is just so absurdly stupid that motives for the proposal need to be looked at. I accept your admission of stupid instead of evil.

they use heating. I should of just said heating.

Yes. Hydronic flooring is cheap at construction time. Complicated if drilling into finished ceilings/floor with thicker under floor space making. But instead of 9kw of winter electricity you are forced to import, it is free fall surplus generation. 100w of pump circulation.

But you are saying, a resistive boiler made more sense than a heat pump, with the hydronic floor conversion. At first I thought you were just saying resistive heating electric floor. The latter, to me, would be the cheapest capital outlay conversion, and then a heat pump would beat a resistive boiler on operation costs if hydronic.

Did you investigate all of these alternatives?

Not sure they were incapable of improving, but they were definitely behind everything else, especially on drivers.

The likely result of this is licensing NVIDA for igpu design. Seems anti competitive, but should catch up to AMD, and better for consumers as long as AMD not killed by it.

High rise apartment buildings have a challenge with pumping water up more than 3-5 floors. This can be solved with intermediate storage on floors, but for high rises, forced air is the usual solution. Heat storage still works well enough with forced air, but water is much better due to internal piping through heat source, where air volume is harder to do there, and if gaining heat from outer shell, then insulation meant to keep heat in is not as good at heat transfer. Water is most perfect heat fluid in world. Air not so much.

And a lot of whoooshing in the walls just when using hot water.

This doesn’t apply for heat delivery. Tends to be continuous. A faucet is different.

That scales down to the home level easily. Box filled with cement dust, dirt, sand, gypsum, gravel is all free material. Water gets more heat lift from heat pumps, but can’t store as much heat in a volume as dirt. Both are highly complimentary, because delivering hot water to everywhere in a home is efficient, quiet, dust free, heat. But if you are lucky enough to have centralized option, that is easier.

Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption

All hydro is automatically “time shifting storage” when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.

In US, and EU is having similar nightmare, nuclear was last built at $15/watt. Installing solar is under $1/watt, and for 20 equivalent hours of nuclear per day (less demand at night means not full production even if available) equivalent to $5/watt-day. $1/watt capital costs is 2c/kwh for solar, and for full day production needs 10c/kwh. All before financing. Nuclear is 30c/kwh. It adds 10 extra years of construction financing, requires political bribes to suppress alternative supply whenever they decide to begin operations, uranium purchases/disposal, expensive skilled operations staff, security, disaster insurance.

Solar does need batteries for time shifting its daily supply. At current LFP prices of $100/kwh, 1c/kwh full cycle is prefinancing cost. and so 3c/kwh if triple the charging/discharging daily capacity. 6 hours of storage is a very high number in power systems. It will capture all energy from a northern summer. It will rarely fully discharge with any time shifting incentives to daytime (much higher convenience to consumers and industry) providing resilience to rainy days. A 2c/kwh value (before financing which is apples to apples comparison to nucclear) means a 5gw solar + 30gwh (much lower if enough private EVs are available for time shifting needs) battery costs 12c/kwh or $8B vs a $15B equivalent 1GW nuclear solution. Both last 60 years due to low battery charge/discharge rates and capacity cycle use, with much lower maintenance costs/downtime for life extension costs for solar/battery system vs keeping a nuclear reactor operational. No/minimal operations costs.

It’s very infuriating talking to people about this

Yes. Nuclear shills are frauds who should be frustrated in their theft of the commons.

It is possible that, not too long in the future, every home could also have a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery. They would be able to capture all the excess solar power generated in a year.

Braindead strategy, that most likely is discrete fossil fuel shilling, for purposes of making decision inpractical.

The cost of storage as a baselines is how much you can charge/discharge per day. Bonus for smaller (= cheaper) that can have more discharge/charge than its capacity per day. Plus the resilience/reserve capacity value which is a convenience factor. Resilience alternatives include fire places or gas generators (that are not expected to be used often) which tend to be cheap per kw. But noise, smell, variable costs, and startup effort are all inconveniences. Driving an EV to a public charger can be a similar inconvenience level to a generator for resilience value. If a 1mwh battery is used 10kwh/day it costs 100 times more per kwh than a 10kwh battery.

OP gives an example of 12kwh summer use (no AC?) which is very high for most people, but can include cooking and floodlights.

The braindead analysis parts are “because 100 days of 10kwh surpluses happen, I need 1mwh battery”. Actual battery storage requirements are the lowest theoretical winter solar production over 1-2 weeks, together with running pumps for heat (stored mostly in fall) distribution. A 10kwh/day maximum deficit for 1 week straight, with 60 day average deficit of 5kwh/day (without requiring additional heat input), means that any consideration for a large static battery should stop at 70kwh. This is sharply reduced with 1 or 2 EVs where summer surpluses are free fuel, and EV provides backcharging at 3kw whenever needed. 30kwh battery is plenty to charge an EV overnight (300km range for small car) before next day’s sunlight exceeds needs. Even less battery with 2nd lightly used EV, but 30kwh will be cheaper than un-needed EV.

Instead of relying on batteries for heat generation, which is where $100k 1mwh delusion proposition comes, heat generated from solar stored in under $1/kwh hot water and dirt storage. Outside of winter, this also provides completely unlimited showers and hot tub use, and a $10-20k heat pump and heating system (fossil fuel systems often cost the same) and insulation improvements is the the unquestionable non-distracting path.

you really need scale for sand batteries to work

Not at all. First, (hot) water batteries are excellent for home heat storage. Sand/dirt is even more storage per volume required, and completely complimentary in sending hot water through it (pipes) to make it hotter. No combustion heat means less air exchanges, and a 300C rock/dirt/sand pit has losses that radiate through house.

1. Is HVAC excluded?
2. Do you have an EV?

With an EV you can have 80%-90% of days covered, and top up with EV. You also get to dump daily surpluses into EV, and you can think of covering winter heating with solar and a heat pump. Easier if you have a fireplace for extreme cold possibility.

Storing heat with fall surpluses is path to get winter heating covered. Heat pump can make hot water very efficiently, and resistance heating can make a pile of dirt 300+C. Radiant floor heating is most efficient because water is distributed around 30C. This means your 90C water volume is 60C effective heat storage that is generated at 600% efficiency in fall, and 300% efficiency in typical UK winter, and your dirt heat storage can be 5x more dense.

A 2nd EV even if not frequently used during the day can be an attractive option, especially if used, and tax credits will go away soon, or have gone away (makes used prices lower) can be much easier than home batteries, and much cheaper if it remains uninsured/unused, and resale value doesn’t go down much because of few miles driven. Where utility service includes a high fixed monthly charge, ($50/month in Toronto), $12000 over 20 years savings creates high incentive to remove electric utility. Gas utility has similar fixed vs variable equation, but for Toronto, heat is somewhat reasonable from high supply on our continent.

Can we remove this traitor and actually restore the rule of law?

How. DNC? Which does Israel prefer (DNC will go along with that preference)? If allies bend over for Trump, it’s not DNC that will free them. They don’t even object to that part, and only guillotines from NATO colonies will change DNC perspective. It’s much easier for US to win war against those welcoming invasion, and gaslighting their people restricting speech, than losing wars to blocks that are stronger than US.

China or Russia do not move their red lines. US concerns about TikTok were always exclusively the lack of Zionazi supremacist control over the messaging. This is what is getting “fixed” by buyer group. China will also receive other unrelated trade concessions, though falling short of “normal”, they will do better than “allies” who have no red lines on bending over.

Huwei and SMIC are iterating too fast. As they get good enough yields on current/last generation, they move up/announce new generations that freeze a bit of demand. I think they are doing this to get good pricing for SMIC and local designs. It doesn’t help that all the Trump sycophants are calling him brilliant for enslaving China to “NVIDIA’s 4th best chips and software stack”.

6000d with 48gb gddr7 at 1100gb/s bandwidth, or just H20s, should be sold to us for cheap if Nvidia can’t sell them. H20 at 96gb and 4tb/s is awesome.

There’s still a price that compares well to multiple 5090s that is more suitable to tasks.

h20 is actually faster than h100 for inference (what most of us would use most of the time) at less than half the price to China.