What I mean is that the bulk of current copper wiring goes towards distribution and consumption, not generation.

Yes, but big batteries everywhere is going to effect that if there’s copper in lithium batteries, and apparently there is.

This isn’t a big thing. This is a constant thing in every system. It’s the push and pull between efficiency and resiliency. More storage capacity is less efficient when things are going well, but is more resilient and adaptable when they’re not.

Excess storage capacity, sure.

But inflating the base battery capacity to cover people having showers at 5pm because it’s easier than storage water heaters and time/remote controls is stupid. You can reduce the base need for batteries by reducing the need for electricity in the first place and reducing the use of vehicles that need to carry batteries in place of e.g. overhead catenary.

You’re wrong in terms of long distance power lines being mostly copper, but this does seem a lot like fossil fuel propaganda.

Motors, generators, and transformers can be built using aluminium; they’re just a bit bulkier and less efficient. Very common practice.

It looks like CCA might be making its way back into house wiring in the near future, with much lower risks than the 70s aluminium scare.

The big thing is that batteries really should be a last resort, behind demand response (using power when it is available, rather than storing it for later), long distance transmission, and public transport instead of private vehicles.

That’s incorrect. Aluminium is about 30% worse by volume than copper, meaning you need to go up a size. What stopped it being used for houses was that the terminations weren’t good enough, because aluminium has different thermal expansion and corrosion properties, plus they were using much worse alloys. That’s now mostly fixed and if you’re in the US, there’s a very good chance that your service main is aluminium, and there’s talk of allowing copper-clad aluminium (CCA) for subcircuit wiring.

Per mass, aluminium is a better conductor, which is why it’s almost exclusively used overhead and in pretty significant volumes underground. The power grids were built on ACSR.

Surely $75k isn’t nearly enough to afford a pardon?

They’ve been deporting those who are there legally too.

With an insufficient workforce, pay rates going up isn’t necessarily enough to get you workers. Moving regions to get a new job isn’t usually cheap or fast.

I don’t know if the previous pay rates were illegally low (the US’s definition of illegally low is itself low), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t & wouldn’t pay ~$20-30/h if there were workers available.

Going from a labour-cheap world to a labour-expensive world also implies that people want to increase mechanisation and automation, and that’s not cheap or fast either.

In a lot of the world, a school bus is a normal city bus that gets “school” signs put on the front and back, and runs a specific route. There’s not much point in maintaining a dedicated fleet.

Even “App App” would be better.

I am outside the US and I don’t think they usually are drug tested.

But that doesn’t mean showing up high to work in a supermarket is OK.

We have 5S.

The tool cabinets are in useful places but the keys for them are all back at the maintenance office.

They threw out the spare bolts because it was easier than organising them.

Which is what the meme talks about?

• Cash handling

• Forklifts

• Parking lots

It would have to be in a single district; attempting multiple would definitely fail.

NZ has had a number of individual electorates where the Greens* won the seat, Labour came second, and National 3rd. With a sufficiently left-wing area and a galvanised base, it’s possible.

• Note: NZ greens definitely are not the same as the US Russian plants.

It is possible for a third party to arise in FPTP elections, but it’s certainly not common or easy. The UK has a bunch; NZ had a couple before moving to MMP; I think Australia has some.

It usually requires a competent and well-known politician storming out of their party for ideological differences, but being locally popular enough to win their seat as an independent or new party.

AOC might pull it off.

Here in NZ I believe they mostly can set their own routes, being ‘independent’ contractors.

I have heard Amazon in particular is super tight in the US.

And probably drives on the most efficient route for their run.

You’re about halfway along the run? They’ll always pass you about halfway through the day.

I imagine something akin to a draft or arranged marriages. You’re not married, you’re not married, congrats you’re now married.

I’m not too fond of calling this a ‘tax’. Tax money goes to funding actually useful things. Conservatives want you to think that giving money to the government and throwing it down the toilet are the same thing.

That would likely be the winch, but yes, you’ll need a nice large regenerating motor drive.

I would hazard a guess that a 40t-rated winch, 40t-rated 100m wire rope, and 40t-rated steel bucket to hold the scrap each cost more than a 10kWh battery.

I’m not liking their maths.

For a large shaft, we move weights up to 40 metric tonnes, which give us the capability to store up to 10 kWh of energy per 100 metres of depth.

40t ~= 400kN, so at 100m that’s 40MJ. Sure, that’s 11.1kWh mechanical, perhaps a little optimistic to say you’ll get 10kWh back. That’s a smallish home battery.

Where do you get another five-and-a-bit orders of magnitude from, to get to two gigawatt-hours?

Pumped hydro works because water is really really cheap and pretty easy to store, so millions of tonnes of water is doable, whether the height is tens or hundreds of meters.

Steel/iron/concrete is just too expensive. And you can’t fit much in a five meter shaft compared to a lake.