Hybrid hard drive. Basically, a hard drive with a large solid state cache.

Actual shipping would vary depending on location, but sellers are padding the shipping charge so they can display a lower unit price.

Need to add shipping charges to the price…

Brb, working on a lava-powered gas guzzler.

No oil. Not worth the effort.

There’s room for batteries in the rail industry.

Diesel electrics rely primarily on dynamic braking. To save wear and tear on friction brakes, they convert kinetic energy to electrical, and then to heat in a giant resistor bank.

Add a couple battery cars, and dynamic braking becomes regenerative braking.

Theoretically, you could back feed the grid with that electrical energy, but if you do that, the train’s primary braking system is now dependent on a connection to the grid, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea to me. All of the “stop” systems need to be far more reliable than the “go” systems.

To me It looks like a nightly routine of positive self-talk while visualizing myself getting up the next morning to carry out my planned agenda

All that visualization would have me excited to get started. I’d be up all night thinking about the plan, then be too exhausted to even get out of bed when it’s finally time to actually get started.

Dual boot sucks donkey balls.

Install virtualbox and spin up a Windows VM on a Linux host.

Fuck all that.

Install Linux, any flavor. Install virtualbox, and set up a Windows VM. Go ahead and install any of your windows bullshit on that VM. That’s your crutch, your failsafe: a windows instance that you don’t have to leave Linux to access.

Save snapshots before and after any changes, so if/when it goes to shit, you can roll it back to where it was still working.

I mean, long term, nuclear should probably go away, but that’s a distant objective. I’m talking about the next few years, not the next century.

The next major stage is to reorient the grid away from the traditional, supply-shaping “baseload + peaker” model that benefits from increased overnight demand. That model is replaced with a demand-shaping, “use it when it’s easiest to produce” model.

To get from here to there, we need to reverse the incentives that drive overnight consumption. This in turn lowers overnight demand. That reduction in overnight demand calls for a reduction in baseload supply, which reduces baseload generation at night and during the day as well. A reduction of baseload during the day means less surplus power is dumped, and more is sold.

The “places with different weather conditions” are across the equator. Everyone in the northern hemisphere has summer at the same time. The best we can do with interconnects up here is shift the problem around by a couple hours.

Now, if we convert that excess power into cryogenic hydrogen, load it aboard a tanker, and drive that tanker to the end of the earth currently experiencing winter, they can then burn it in gas turbine generators.

Hell, we can put such generators on ships and move them back and forth every 6 months.

wouldn’t be surprised if grids ended up using solar primarily for day time production consumption and short time storage (evening consumption time) and then used nuclear as the primary producer for power consumption over night,

Exactly. Nuclear carries us overnight, renewables meet our needs during the day.

Negative rates aren’t caused by excess solar. Negative rates are caused by excess overnight demand. Overnight demand is too high, necessitating the continuous nuclear output to be set too high. The sum of the continuous nuclear and the daytime solar exceeds daytime demand; rates go negative to correct.

The solution is to remove nighttime demand. Now the continuous nuclear output can be reduced. This is exactly opposite of what the grid needed before renewables, but it is the only viable approach moving forward. The other half of the solution is to add daytime demand, perhaps the same demand we removed from overnight; perhaps an entirely new way to turn power into profit.

(Nuclear plants won’t actually reduce their output. Coal plants will go offline, and nuclear will take over their customers.)

I don’t know why you’re framing this as solely a demand problem,

That is a very good question that has a very simple answer:

The supply shaping solutions to excess solar and wind power are to figure out how to store power, or to stop building renewables. Both of those approaches absolutely suck. We need more renewables, not less, and grid scale storage isn’t sufficiently scalable to meet our needs.

Demand Shaping offers a wide variety of potential solutions compatible with increased renewable adoption, and without massive infrastructure projects.

low or even negative prices can induce producers to curtail production

Until 100% of our demand is continuously met by renewable generation, curtailment is not a solution. Curtailment is what you do when you can’t find a solution.

And negative prices therefore take the place of disposal:

Disposal is not a solution. Disposal is what happens when you can’t find a solution.

Until 100% of our power needs are met by renewables, curtailment and disposal both suck.

Demand Shaping is a solution. Demand Shaping moves subtracts load from when it can only be met with non-renewables, and adds load when it can be met with renewables. Demand Shaping makes non-renewables less profitable and renewables more profitable.

Demand Shaping fixes the problem in such a way that encourages renewable growth. Curtailment and disposal makes renewable less profitable. Curtailment and disposal resolves the problem in such a way that discourages renewable growth.

Depends on your definition of “feasible”.

It is certainly within the capabilities of humanity to do it.

It would cost far more, and have much higher ecological impact than alternatives.

To me, that is not “feasible”.

Looking again at historical data, we can find the maximum lull there ever was and put enough storage capacity to cover that with generous padding.

Baseload storage is a pipe dream. The storage and generation capacity necessary to make that work would be about two orders of magnitude more expensive to maintain and operate than the equivalent nuclear capacity, and the environmental impact would be far greater still.

That’s not to say that storage is useless; it certainly isn’t. But its utility is in leveling spikes and dips, not replacing baseload generation during a “lull”.

There aren’t many other options for long-term storage. Massive, cryogenic storage facilities could hold summer-produced hydrogen for winter generation, or allow grid-scale energy transport across the equator.

Solar and wind are cheaper and potentially more plentiful, more distributed than nuclear. Renewables are going to be the primary source of power; nuclear and every other type of generation will augment the renewables.

What you’re saying is what nuclear has been, not what it will be.

Storage is important, yes, but it’s mostly a pipe dream. Few grid scale storage options are sufficiently scalable, and all storage is inherently inefficient.

We have a steel mill. We currently run it on nuclear power, overnight, during off-peak hours. If we want to switch it from nuclear to solar, do we continue to operate it at night off of pumped storage and batteries? Or do we move it to daytime operations? The former is “supply shaping”: adjusting our production to meet demand. The latter is “demand shaping”: adjusting our consumption to meet available supply. That’s the kind of thing we need to focus on.

At home, the single most important thing we need is mixing valves on our hot water tanks. These add cold water as needed to maintain a constant output temperature. This allows a variable, smart thermostat on the tank, that will superheat water when power is cheap, and let it fall when power is expensive. When solar excesses push rates too low, all of our water heaters start kicking on, sucking up cheap power during the day, and holding it through our night and morning showers.

If supply is higher than demand, then getting rid of that excess supply costs money, and the producer might have to pay someone to take it away

That is all absolutely correct, and that is all completely irrelevant. That scenario only exists after shaping efforts have failed to match supply and demand.

The purpose and intent is to sell power at a profit. Where demand cannot be increased enough for rates to remain profitable, demand shaping has not achieved its intended purpose. Negative rates are not an example of demand shaping. Negative rates are an indication that demand shaping has failed.

It applies to grocery stores that over order inventory of perishable goods

The dumpster behind the grocery store is “disposal”, not “demand”. The solution to negative rates is not for the power companies to find a dumpster in which to dispose of their excess power.

The supply shaping solution to this problem is reduced solar and wind production, augmented by flexible peaker plants, and drawing on previously stored grid power.

The demand shaping solution to this problem is flexible loads that can be added or removed from the grid as needed, and storing grid power for future use.

We are currently charging very low overnight rates because we need to increase night time load on nuclear. With solar and wind being cheaper, grid operators are going to want to drive consumers to daytime consumption wherever possible. Night time rates are going to naturally increase, and I would expect artificial incentives on top of that to drive as much consumption as possible to the day, especially to clear, windy days.

The alternatives to nuclear are pumped storage, (which isn’t sufficiently scalable); traditional baseload generation (which is significantly more expensive); and various forms of peaker plants (which are much more expensive).

Basically, overnight and winter rates are going to rise to wherever nuclear needs them to be to remain profitable, because every other option has either limited feasibility, or higher costs.