Comments on: A Bill Gates for Distributed Generation?

By: Emilia

Emilia — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:31:24 +0000

Paul- You almost have it right: it’s separating utilities from profits earned through generation. Through decoupling utilities make money based on other factors besides how much electricity you or I use. This eliminates their incentive to generate as much energy as possible to earn profits–and will be a hugely important part, along with net metering, advanced metering and other smart grid technologies, of electricity generation & distribution of the future!

By: Harold Pierce Jr

Harold Pierce Jr — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:50:55 +0000

ATTN: Allan! How right you are!

In the awsome computer game, Jazzjack Rabbit, Gates is the “nerdy-yet- powerful Tortise King Devan Shell (as in Windows) who has kidnapped the beautiful rabbit princess Eva Earlong, and has inhabited the galaxy with his looting goons (i.e., Steve Balmer and his crowd). (This gmes was released by EpicMegames in the summer of ‘94 begfore Win 95 was released for sale).

If you recall, Gates made a big pile of money by forcing clone sellers to pay him royalites on every prcessor in a PC sold even if that PC did not use MS-DOS. DR-DOS was better at that time (i.e., early ’90’s). Thus, Gates cut a real sweetheart deal with all the clone sellers (i.e., Eva Earlong).

The hero of the game is Jazzrabbit is a soldier of fortune who has been hired by IBM (cf, the Big Bright Blue gems in the 3-D levels) to vanquish the tortise King and his goons, rescue Eva Earlong, recover IBM’s fortunes lost (i.e., the Big Bright Blue gems) and save Carrotus, the planet home of the open and free software movement.

Who is Jazz? I figure he repesents Linux. This is a great game, but nobody ever figured out what it was really about.

Here is the description for Planet Letni (=inteL): This is Devan’s ENORMOUS super-computer designed especially for building battleships, and figuring where to get lunch on a rainy Tuesday afternoon (i.e., in Richmond). Beware of magents and bugs in the system (i.e., Neptune chip sets).

MS eventually paid Caldera, who bought Digital Research from Novell) 180 million for all the lies the Balmer and his goons spread about DR-DOS not being compatible with Windows. DR orginally sued from several billion.

BTW: Devan escapes at the end of the game and he still trying to gain control over all PC and platform gaming.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:07:20 +0000

Joe,
I thought decoupling meant separating the utilities from the generation, so I stand corrected.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:54:05 +0000

Paul — California made utilities to sell off their generation. Very dumb. They failed to see how companies like Enron could game the system by cornering the market and by cleverly scheduling some plans for maintenance at critical times to create shortage conditions. Enron was smarter than California — in the short term, anyway.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:44:40 +0000

Joe,
Uma has asked me not to discuss our relationship. If not decoupling, what was the error in California’s deregulation that Enron exploited?

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:54:19 +0000

Paul — Thank goodness your memory ain’t reality. Any other memories you’d like to share with us? You weren’t married to Uma Thurman once, were you?

By: Paul K

Paul K — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:05:07 +0000

My memory is that decoupling provisions in California’s deregulation were what Enron used to perpetrate its scam.

By: Mark Shapiro

Mark Shapiro — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:56:32 +0000

Agreed that appropriate regulation is absolutely necessary. The California so-called ‘deregulation’ was awful: the Enrons simply bought the right to raise rates without limit and game the system.

Not to be flippant, but I don’t think I’d mind if fossil fueled utilities were put out of business by distributed PV. It could and should be done gracefully – without hurting the poor.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:45:05 +0000

Mark Shapiro — In effect, that is what happened with so-called ‘deregulation’ in California. I think a couple of utilities went bankrupt?

Anyway, distributed generation will require some sort of control system, governed by some sort of legislation, i.e., regulations. It is those which need to be done right.

By: Mark Shapiro

Mark Shapiro — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:30:20 +0000

I’ll leave the Gates-sinner-or-saint question to my betters; regarding Mr. Benson’s question about gov’t regulation – - yes we have seen some clunkers, but I can’t think of any that actually violated a law of physics!

But gov’t would have to lead to create a universal DC standard, one that would link PV (and batteries and fuel cells, too) directly to all electronic devices without the waste of DC to AC conversion and back again. It would also help provide reliable DC power to the server farms Mr. Killian mentioned. Imagine a server farm with PV on the roof and modular fuel cells, all providing DC directly to the servers with no conversion loss. . .