holgerschurig

Weird.

In an ideal world no one would bother where power comes from. From "the grid" or "from local". Why should "the grid" get some benefit? Over local production? IMHO such a thinking artificially limits competition.

What should still bother the law makers is the impact "grid power" vs. "local power". E.g. if AI computing centers build gas turbines for local power, but that creates noise and air pollution.

"Balcony solar"'s idea is to get solar into the hand of people without almost no extra cost. By design, you can plug it in into a normal socket. So you don't even need to call an electrician. No new power cable needs to be installed. And the basic idea of this ("make it so simple that even 85 year old Aunt Mary can do it") is IMHO worthwhile.

For a regular solar, you need to check if your roof can withstand the weight and wind forces. You need to install electric lines, circuit breakers etc etc. All of this costs several factors more than the pure voltaic panels.

Well, no. This one is one thousands of studies on it. And they narrowed things down (e.g. only looking at Denmark) and setting their projected numbers exactly so that the desired outcome arrived.

And usually (I did not read into detail here) the total cost of energy is never calculated.

In Europe, nuclear power plants usually don't have an insurance. It's the state that pays of the cleanup after an aftermath. So total cost is socialized.

Few countries have final deposits. With current technology, you need to operate them for thousands of years (e.g. guard them, so that no terrorists can get the material for "dirty bombs"). None of these total-cost studies calculates this in.

Many countries don't have their own source of uranium or the fabs to bring it up for usage in power plants. So it happens that by betting on solar, you bet on the goodwill of some external country. Did you know that most nuclear related companies worldwide used to be owned by the russian RosAtom? I have no idea if that is still true now after 5 years of war against Ukraine, so maybe the odd country seized mines or enrichment plants. But RosAtom owned stuff abroad, like Canada or Australia. Finding new ways if some terrorist country like russia suddenly ceases to supply you (like they did with gas) has a very high oppertunity cost. These studies usually don't plan in "second source" economic calculations.

In Germany, the four big electric power companies (e.g. Vattenfall, EON etc) say since decades that they don't want to open new nuclear power plants. Since it is not economically feasible. If the TCO would really be spectacular, then they would say differently. In those places, where they still open nuclear plants, like France, even a single block costs billions. I mean, one block estimated to cost 3 billion euro was costing 27 billion. Do these fabricated studies calculate in this grave error of factor 12? In France, EDF only works because it is state backed. If the TCO would be any good, they would swim in money like the senior Uncle Duck.

Well, actually not. At least not in my country.

Governments have conflicting goals. You think "raise taxes" is the most important goal. But, believe it or not, some governments -- even conservative ones -- also have goals like "protect the envirnment".

In Germany for example, you are nominally required to register your balcony solar. Online, no fee. So it's easy. But .. there are no fines attached if you don't do it. And they don't ask for any taxes.

They are HAPPY that you do your local electricity power after Putin turned off gas export and it turned out that LPG import is way more costly (due to cooling and pressure, a lot of the stored energy is used for that during the transport/processing on that).

In Germany, there was even a process where the politics told the electrical engineers to not be so anal about electric security to make plug in of these devices into normal sockets a possibility. The VDE only wanted special sockets to be used. The politics said "Nope, too expensive for the normal people".

The idea that legislative and executive is only working AGAINST the people is invalid.

It happens that people need in planning things want to have numbers.

So for example a high voltage power line is planned to be installed between point A and B. Now, probably some land has to be bought. But maybe not everyone sells land. So maybe land is seized, for the good of all. But ... is it really for the good of alL? The government MUST know beyond a doubt it that line is really worthwhile for the entirety. They need hard planning numbers.

There are numerous scenarios available where a government --- or even private companies --- need dependable statistical numbers to do planning.

And that is e.g. the reason why in Germany businesses have to wire lots of data to a government statistical bureau. We all can then get the relevant statistics out of the 16 state and the one federal offices of statistics. Or (e.g in Germany) the "Bundesnetzagentur" uses it base decisions about the grid on it.

Or private people need to register (cost free, via web, at least in Germany) their balcony solar. Compared to what the businesses have to tell this is almost negligible. It only makes sense due to the sheer number of balcony solar installations.

Nah, the OP just posted some false facts.

And Germany is #4 regarding grid stability (measured in SAIDI) in Europe. There are only some tiny and small countries better than the german grid, and no large industrial country. And, btw, Europe has a WAY higher grid stability than the Americas.

Why is that important? Years ago, I had weekly telcos with a customer in Tucson, Arizona. And more often than not we didn't had one: they had no power over there. So the shabby quality of the public grid influenced in a bad way their economy. Businesses simply couldn't talk and plan during that period. Probably also not produce.

Having a top-notch grid is IMHO a basis for a successful economy.

(And fun thing: the german grid is so good ALSO because of our neighbors. We're all interconnected. In Germany, we don't really have the landscape for massive water pump storage power plants. But when we have excess electricity, the ones in Austria and Switzerland are using "our" power. And we need the power, we get "their" power back. Or France ... in the summer, they now routinely have to power down their nuclear plants due to cooling issues. But in France ... no one notices. We all help each other. In year 53% of the french atomic power was "out" due to climate change and regular maintenance. And it all worked nethertheless. As it should be!)

> you still affect it by using less, which might cause issues with grid stability

That is weird and IMHO totally wrong. And I'm living in Germany. Anyone here can e.g. create an isolated network, without any permission. The local electricity provider etc doesn't care. All they care however that they remove the counter and the main circuit breaker at their end, to really isolate your house from the rest.

No, it means nothing. You shall not needlessly anglicize.

The name Hallstadt (not the two l letters) means Salt Town.

Or, actually "place". In a lot of location names of germanic origin "stadt" doesn't the current semantics, of being a town with > 10.000. More often than not it just means "place".

And "Hall" is an old term for salt. Many towns related to salt have it in their names, in many places of Germany and Austria. "Halle an der Saale" in Thüringen, Bad Reichenhall (Bayern), Hall im Tirol (Österreich), Schwäbisch-Hall (Baden-Württemberg) etc.

"Hall" is believed to be of celtic origin.

And the double l is important. German is a language where in the written form you look at the letters and you immediately see how it is spoken. A double vocal makes the speed slower, and a double consonant makes the speech faster. So "Halstadt" would be slow Hal (so more emphasize on the "a" instead), and "Hallstadt" would be a fast "Hall", similar in speed like the english "hell": little emphasize on the "a".

> Europe is economically uncompetitive

Really? The last time I checked, Germany was sitting well in the middle of Europe

* contrary to many countries it has had export/import surplus since decades. Not a single year with a deficit since 1952. Compare this e.g. with the USA, which had the last surplus in 1975.

* it's tiny, look at it on a globe. And yet it's number 3 worldwide on economic power. Two years surpassed Japan that is larger by size and has double the people

* in June it had the highest exports ever in it's history

And that is just ONE of the European countries. Others, like Switzerland and Netherlands aren't shabby either, especially normalized to inhabitants or country size.

> are harder to held accountable

Well, that is not an issue. The US companies that hacked other seem to not be prosecuted at all.

Also, no state attorney doesn't seem to prosecute them on the large scale intellectual theft. Instead content creators like movie companies or the kids book author that made the Grüffelo need to start one-after-the-other civil claims onto them.

So US companies in the LLM area can be ruthlessly criminal. No one holds them accountable.

There are rumors that they stole chat logs from mathemiticians running problems through them for their own math findings. Again, no one holds them accountable.

The "hold accountable" is IMHO just CEO speach: fluff and empty air, but nothing behind it. If my opinion is true, then it doesn't matter if I can NOT hold an european company, a US company, or a chinese company accountable.

Also, currently the US is more and more aggresive towards other countries. Haven't heard of China raising tariffs for no reason at all, but random amounts. Or bullying e.g. european companies if they want to control the the market might (and abuse of it, see e.g. their uncontractual price raises or what they did to Ukraine --- with Starlink terminals payed for by european countries!).

China is no one friends ... don't get me wrong. But it isn't as vile as the USA currently is.

> If you want a government job, you need to be member of the party

Do you know this? Or do you assume this?

I actually don't know. However, being from (west) Germany and old enough I know how a real socialist state, the east german GDR, handled it. And keep in mind that they were way more stalinistic than China is.

In the GDR you could have government jobs without being in the SED. In November 1989 they had 2.1 million members. Since the GDR had a population of 16.4 million, a whopping 12.8%. That a higher percentage than in China. And yet they had numerous even higher officials that weren't in the SED. Example "Hauptbuchhalter" in the combinats (some kind of main bookkeeper --- but keep in mind that their job was to follow the planned economy goals, not booking activa and passive). Or members of the central bank. Or lots of teachers (which in both Germanys are traditional official clerks ("Beamte").

They however couldn't be in (open) opposition to the system. There was "the sword of the party", the SED. And they had informants everywhere. So if you showed any sign of opposition, you were removed.

So you needed to be a "yes sayer", but being "SED party member" was not mandatory.

Why do you talk about North-Korea?