Endlessvoid

joined 1 year ago
[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 107 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Remember the tmobile un-contract? This is literally from their press release in 2017: "T-Mobile ONE customers keep their price until THEY decide to change it. T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile ONE plan. When you sign up for T-Mobile ONE, only YOU have the power to change the price you pay." https://www.t-mobile.com/news/press/un-carrier-next

Remember how they promised the FTC they wouldn't raise prices if they could pretty please merge with sprint to become the biggest telecom network in the country? https://www.yahoo.com/news/t-mobile-promises-sprint-merger-195428217.html

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry for the industry jargon, but measuring things in kW won't give you the full picture, you want to compare things in "kWh". Your utility bill should show your price in $/kWh and the solar company should have given you a production estimate from Helioscope or some kind of similar energy estimating software that shows expected annual kWh output

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Their pricing looks good, you're getting black on black modules and optimizers for a bit over $2 per watt after incentives. As someone who works in the industry I'd say that's a pretty decent price.

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

What have they promised for your annual production estimate? Also what's your current cost of power?

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Most places where this can be done, it is already being done. The low hanging fruit for pumped hydro was all picked decades ago, and at great cost to the ecosystems it destroyed in the process - turns out that drowning thousands of acres in massive man-made lakes had a bit of an impact on the plants and animals that lived there.

Not saying that the benefits weren't worth the cost, that's a whole different debate. But there's little to no opportunity to scale this energy storage tech beyond it's current footprint.

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (6 children)

As a professional engineer who literally designs solar power plants for a living, this is not how electricity works. It is true that solar inverters can throttle their output by operating at non-optimal voltages, but you can't just dump power into the ground without causing major issues to the grid infrastructure.

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 70 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I burst out laughing while reading this article, it's laughably bad, written by someone who doesn't have the slightest understanding of the content matter.

Virtually all existing communication mediums are light based, since "Light" is a term that covers electromagnetic waves spanning a range from radio waves, all the way up to xrays, with visible light getting a small part of that range in the middle.

With all light there is a tradeoff where higher frequency light can carry more information at the cost of lower penetration. It's why your 5Ghz wifi is faster than your 2.4Ghz wifi but the 5Ghz doesn't reach as far in your house

Visible light is in the 400-800Thz (Terahertz), so it's orders of magnitude better for transmitting a lot of data but since it's blocked by most materials it works better if you use something to channel it, like a glass tube. Which is why visible light is already used extensively as the backbone of the internet, aka fiber optic cable. (to be completely accurate, most fiber optics use near visible infrared light, just below the visible spectrum, since it doesn't scatter in glass as easily)

The new communication standard referenced is nothing ground breaking, it's just a standard for any niche application which can make use of it. It's not a new technology, and if it was better than existing methods we would already be using it.

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Immediately shared this, great job OP

[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Definitely a bitter, almost aggressive tone to this one. It also comes off as a "fuck you, I got mine" kind of messages to say "North American infrastructure sucks, which is why I emigrated to the Netherlands", because it's not as if emigration is an option for most people in the US or Canada since it's expensive and most people don't have a viable path to a resident visa.

That being said, nothing he said was wrong, but sharing this video is probably not going to help anyone change their view.