It's called "NA Schutz"[1] and is required for all german micro-inverters by VDE-AR-N-4105:2018. Which in turn is national law following EU directive.
867 karma · joined November 18, 2010
Transmitting electricity over larger distances remains very expensive, which is why the idea of using the African sun for Europe (e.g. Desertec[1]) has stalled [2].
"So yes, Germany has a lot of gas-fired plants, and a lot of coal-fired plants, but they are actually used very little - only when demand (including from France) is very high and renewables supply is very low - which does happen, but not that often anymore."
This will continue to happen for the foreseeable future during the winter months. Solar is almost neglible, and wind obviously has slumps.
To fix this problem, the article brings up the recurring theme of saviour technologies that simply are not there yet: "flexible generation, whether hydro, new forms of storage"
Total consumption for 2021 in Germany: ~500TWhs [1]. That means ~10TWhs per week. At the moment our storage capacity is in the small GWhs ballpark [2]. We would have to increase this thousandfold. I haven't seen this gap adressed with actual projects yet.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164149/umfrag...
[2] https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/transformation/speicher/w...
I can sharpen my argument even further:
Existing nuclear reactors - keep them going. They are here today.
Solar - leverage its decentralized, bottom up expansion by the people that can use their own roofs, reduce beaurocratic hurdles. Its expansion does not have to wait 8 years. The products are here today.
Power 2 Gas - celebrate existing products on the market. They are here today.
All these things are here today and part of a solution which contains many parts. I welcome each and every betterment, because we will need it.
You on the other hand are dismissing key tools and instead focus on one thing that is not here today and will maybe be ready in 8+ years.
Still, it definitely cannot generate enough to bring you through the german winter. Some example numbers I have read: A 10kWp solar system that generates up to 1,400 kWh in a summer month will only provide about 200 kWh in December.
So the solution is simple. Nuclear has its place. Power2Gas too. Build and invest in both. And in the meantime, use what we have without ideolgical eye patches.
As always, There is No Silver Bullet™.
Nuclear is not the perfect solution. It cannot be powered on and off on short notice, which would be useful for complementation of solar and wind that have high power output, but also sudden slumps. Ironically, the ideal companion for renewables would be gas...
Lithium batteries could compensate short outages, but don't have enough (feasable) capacity for long seasonal shortages.
Enter Power to Gas. Hydrogen can be a good tool in that area.
A commerically available hydrogen storage system (that is in high demand even despite its price point) will definitely accelerate innovation very effectively. I think this tool will be available quite soon for mere mortals.
This is a pioneering product for early adopters - expect prices to go down significantly with economics of scale. And further research in this area is far from exausted.
Long-term energy storage with hydrogen, with 1-5x 300 kWh. Which allows for full electric independence (not including heating though). Price: 85,000-125,000 €, minus government subsidies.
Suggesting that gray areas exist would absolutely not imply that everything is gray.
Furthermore, my critique had several angles, each alluding to the possibility of a different interpretation.
How is my post binary in any way?
Do you live up to that standard, or would someone be able to find some damning evidence of some dark side of you?
Is it possible that people are messy, not always consistent in their behaviour, that they have bad days? That they haven't thought everything through, that they get caught in the moment and regret it later?
Is there any grey area to you?
Still, I would argue this:
Lets say your 19 year old daughter wants to introduce her boyfriend of same age into your family.
How would you rate her (and his!) seriousness if
a) they lived in his apartment or
b) they are organizing their wedding.
I would wager b) would be "well-established" much quicker, especially in the wider circles, and thus have more "social resources" sooner, thus giving their potential offspring better chances. Of course, with kids out of the picture, it wouldn't make much difference. But that is exactly my point: Marriage serves having children.
- In-laws - you become a member of a new family, new levels of mutual privileges and responsibilities
- Public wedding - Proclamation to both social circles that the new family project now has officially started
- Family name - new Identity
- ...
I would argue exactly the other way around: A lasting marriage is not itself the goal (though certainly nice to grow old together), but serves the purpose of raising offspring - that's what counts for every species that has survived.
As soon as couples start to have concrete plans for children (or children are already on their way), marriage suddenly becomes very relevant for many relationships, and is often demanded by at least one side of the partnership.
This puts aside the romanticised view of marriage (which might be perceived equivalent to living together) and points to a more fundamental reason for marriage: Securing resources for your offspring. And offspring needs a lot of resources for a long time.
In the end, its commitment that counts. And marriage was built for ensuring commitment as much as humanly possible, with a high barrier for abandoning.
I'm interested in this big, randomized clinical study, alas not yet concluded:
https://www.principletrial.org/news/ivermectin-to-be-investi...
A game is really a tough one though.
But well, there is the virtual planner feature that makes heavy use of carefully tuned iOS gesture recognizers for zooming, panning, dragging, tapping and holding, all in combination for a smooth and useable editor on a small screen.
Not that I have actually tried, but I suspect I would have to lay more groundwork to implement the same experience with the browser DOM. This could of course just be a lack of knowledge on my part, but my time is finite :)
Most notably though, it doesn't have the virtual planner yet.
Suggestions are always welcome.
My friend is also working on an Android version, though it doesn't have feature parity (yet).
My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try.
It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the problem(s), and I tried to simplify and structure it (didn't think gardening could be so complicated). Both of us were in their respective element, and from back and forth an app was forged.
To this day I only half-jokingly call her my product manager. The app has brought in 5 digits last year and is rising.
Last week, she briefly mentioned another problem, in another hobby domain of hers...
Can you with your laptop, and if so, which is it?
I had a Dell Precision M4300 for quite some time. Good laptop, decent trackpoint - but it was not good enough for design work:
My main problem was offsetting the cursor a tiny number of pixels, which needed some starting force on the trackpoint, which lead to more pixels than I needed. Some trackpoint laptop might have figured this out by now. But if not, I'm not interested.
It was my biggest surprise when I first bought a macbook: After a few weeks I noticed I didn't miss a mouse enough to bother bringing one with me.
I do 95% of my work when I'm commuting by train. Only for the last 5% super involved work I have to resort to plugging in a mouse when I'm in the office.
With all other laptops I have ever dealt with (admittedly not the replacements proposed in this thread), the ratio would be more like 50:50 or worse.
I also had a pretty high quality trackpoint from a business line Dell. Still missed the mouse.
So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed.
Some examples:
- Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of your proposed MBP-replacement?
- Can you comfortably and efficiently organize your photos/files&folders with it?
And, of course he does more than dumping documents. For example, he has to come by them (collecting as a journalist does), which is no small feat considering which kind of documents we are taking about.
If you're genuinely curious, just take a look at his work [1] to see that it's absolutely not "just dumping documents".
Check.
You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...