ERICOPOLY

I found an article that measures how much the rest of America depends on California water. My penalty is $45 per 748 gallons that I use in excess of my ration. So a family of four living in Virginia, for example, uses 1,200 gallons of California's water each week. My marginal cost for 1,200 gallons is $72. I just found that sort of interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/21/us/your-contribution-to-the-california-drought.html The average American consumes more than 300 gallons of California water each week by eating food that was produced there.

It costs a lot of money to bring water from the northern reaches of the state down to Southern California. Southern California cities could rely less on the State Water Project if they could take more water from the Colorado River. They already take some of the Colorado river's water: http://www.sdcwa.org/colorado-river And yes, the alfalfa farmers of the Imperial Valley Water District are relying on the Colorado river's water. So if they gave up some of it, then more would be available to Southern California cities which aren't that far away. And that would reduce the dependence on Northern California's expensive-to-transport water. It's a bit like a shell game. But it doesn't make sense to have that enormous canal from the north going all the way down to Southern California if they have the Colorado River right there in their backyards.

Better?

Yes, he mentioned something like that towards the end of the article: It’s also true that model forecasts through the month of May are still being generated in the midst of the so-called Spring Predictability Barrier–the period during which long-lead ENSO forecasts remain challenging due to the chaotic nature of the ocean-atmosphere system. I will note, though, that forecasts from May are notably better than those made in March or April, and that the projected peak strength of the current El Niño event has been monotonically rising with each month’s forecast so far in 2015 (while in 2014 the opposite was occurring).

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this would work. Fed Assets as a % of GDP were just as high after WW2 as they are now. Back then, Fed wound down assets gradually over 40 years, bottoming out (in terms of assets) in the early 1980s. Possible they do that again? creating mild inflation (<10%/yr) along the way? I wrote a bit how i thought this would work in the link below, but the more I think about it, the more confused i get, and think my analysis has some major flaws in it. I would think that unwinding the Fed assets would raise interest rates as there would be less private money available to chase down the yields. Currently, after the Fed purchases Treasuries with QE dollars, it forces the resulting cash back into the market to buy more bonds or stocks (this chases down the yield and creates a bull market for bonds as well as stocks). Higher interest rates would be a brake on inflation -- so why did you mention higher inflation?

http://www.weatherwest.com/ Another indicator of increased confidence in the forecast for 2015 is the eyebrow-raising amplitude of El Niño projections being generated by a wide range of ocean-atmosphere models. Several of these–including (but not limited to) the CFS and ECMWF models–are suggesting the strong potential for Niño 3.4 region SSTs peaking more than +3 degrees C during the coming autumn/winter. For reference, the highest values ever recorded were around +2.5C, and occurred during the strongest El Niño events on record in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998. In other words: a majority of the global atmosphere ocean models are currently suggesting the potential for an event rivaling the strongest event in the historical record.

I think what QE did was just reduce the supply of safe-haven US Treasuries. It's like musical chairs. The Fed took away the supply of chairs. This leaves a pool of cash that instead needs to be invested someplace else (considering that interest rates on bank deposits are so unacceptable). So it creates increased appetite for things like stocks and corporate bonds -- meaning a bidding war. And that still results in an equal amount of cash on the sidelines (the people who sold their stocks). The Fed could reverse the cycle by selling their holdings of government debt back to the people who hold the cash. Or perhaps new issues by the Treasury would accomplish the same.

For every buyer, there is a seller. How does money go "into" the stock market? You buy my shares: Your money went into the market. My money went out of the market. It's a wash.

It's clear the party is ending in China: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/24/asia/gallery/china-funeral-stripper/?iid=ob_article_footer_expansion&iref=obnetwork No more fun at wakes?

That one is visible from the Lake Powell recreation area, which is too bad because otherwise you just have natural beauty on the horizon. Australian electricity generation is 80% powered from coal. And they have a lot of sunshine. The other half of their extracted coal is exported. There's a country that is going to be difficult to reform given the huge revenue they derive from their coal exports.

It only has to be large enough to handle the drop in solar power until they can get a natural gas turbine fired up and online. So it might not actually be all that much stored power. I dunno.

Got it. I agree that if you're comparing solar to other investments then the return to you is tax advantaged. For folks who are in middle income brackets and thinking about this as "solar vs. utility" the calculus is different, and I think the taxes are not as big of a factor. Also: The utility charges them less for their power because they don't use as much power. For example, they don't have swimming pools (running the pool pump uses a lot of power). Or in theory their homes are smaller and require less air conditioning and lighting. My utility has a tiered rate structure where the price goes up if you use more. They start off charging something like only 9 cents per kWh for basic home needs (cooking/lighting) and if you use more than that they ramp it up to 40+ cents per kWh. So solar panels might only yield 9 cents per kWh for some people who invest in them. However mine would yield at least 30 cents. So if you are on a Tiered system, the payoff is better if you are an energy "pig".

For example: I don't need a coal fired power plant running 24/7 at my house to handle a possible blackout or brown-out without interruption. I merely need a Tesla home battery in my garage. When/if the battery nears depletion, I could at that point start a generator. My electric utility could follow the same line of reasoning here instead of running a coal plant 24/7 to handle the possibility of clouds (which is similar to a brown-out from their perspective).

I have a hard time swallowing this argument because the utilities could simply green this up with utility-scale battery storage. Only run the natural gas and coal generators during peak load times or when the sun doesn't shine (night time). Charge the batteries during those hours. Deplete the stored energy in the batteries when clouds pass overhead and solar production drops. This eliminates the need to have wasted coal energy running 24/7 in the background. You can fire up the natural gas/coal generators when it looks like the batteries are nearing depletion of their charge.

Actually, if I invested it securely in Treasury bonds I would need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Treasuries in order to generate enough after-tax income to pay my solar bill. Or, much more favorable, I just invest $20,000 in solar panels. Solar is "capital light" in this regard. Compared to a 30 yr treasury yield, I think solar panels require 1/10th the amount of capital investment to generate the same return.

IMO, there's a reason much bigger than social status -- taxation. It's just as efficient for me to generate rooftop solar energy at a cost of 20 cents per kWh than it is to buy it from my local utility for 15 cents per kWh if the tax rate is 25%. This is because the electricity generated from a rooftop solar installation is imputed income -- it offsets a bill that I otherwise must pay with after-tax dollars. In California your income tax rate could be as high as 50%. Paying 20 cents per kWh for rooftop solar is equivalent to buying electricity from the utility at just 10 cents per kWh -- if your tax rate is 50%. So purely looking at economics, rooftop solar potentially is far more economically effective (for the consumer) than buying electricity from the grid/utility. You have to consider tax rates in any of these decisions. Solar generates tax-free imputed income. I can't stress enough how much this affects my thinking on this issue when I approach the cost/benefit of solar for my own home. Hi Eric- Can you explain this a bit more? My thinking is that the tax impact is not what you describe. Specifically, imagine you buy (not lease/PPA) a system for cash. This purchase uses after tax dollars. So a 5 kW system purchased @ $4 / kW would cost you $20k after tax, or $40k pre-tax @ 50% marginal tax rate. This means that your "avoided cost" rate for kWh, which is not tax affected, is created using a higher investment, which means your ROI is not as high as (I think) you're describing. Would love your thoughts on what I'm missing... Separately, is there a website that shows when brownouts are scheduled? Thanks, Matt I don't have earned income. In other words, I approach this strictly as an investor would. Scenario A: I could invest $20,000 in solar panels and reduce my utility bill. Scenario B: I could instead invest $20,000 in taxable bonds or equities and harvest gains to pay the utility bill. Scenario A: no taxation (inputed income offsetting the energy bill) Scenario B: after-tax investment income pays the utility bill The higher the tax rate, the more capital I need to invest under Scenario B. Once the tax rate is high enough, I might need $25,000 or $30,000 to generate enough after-tax income to pay the utility bill. Maybe $40,000. I don't know, it depends on the tax rate. The tax rate is key.

It's also useful to mention that natural gas is very expensive in Germany (compared to the US), so it's less competitive versus coal: http://www.statista.com/statistics/253047/natural-gas-prices-in-selected-countries/ Germany chose to turn to coal instead of natural gas -- why?

We had our last "brown out" around 10 am -- it was in early October. The temperature was already in the 90s at that time (hit 100 that day and I'm less than a mile from the coast). So I think rooftop solar mitigated the impact of that brown-out. On that day the utility proved that they are incapable of providing reliable service and made the case that additional rooftop solar is necessary.

My utility is Southern California Edison. Their Time-of-Use rates are cheapest between 10pm and 8am. Presumably they begin charging more after 8 am because the cost of delivering electricity after that time begins to rise. The rate peaks after 2pm and continues at that super-peak rate for 6 more hours. There must be some generators that are idle during the night and only get switched on somewhere around 8am. Otherwise, what's the point of charging more after 8 am? Then you have more generators that are only needed after 2pm. The attempt of the utilities to charge merely "wholesale rates" should incorporate an attempt to take time-of-use-wholesale prices into account, but I didn't see that mentioned in the utilities' proposal. In spirit the current net metering arrangement is fair because the utilities previously argued that peak load pricing is higher due to the cost of underutilized capacity during other times. The time-of-use price of electricity at my utility triples after 8 am. This is either the utilities ripping people off, or electricity genuinely costs a heck of a lot more after 8 am. So if the electricity doesn't in fact cost 3x more to generate after 8 am, the utilities could solve their net metering problem by merely dropping their prices closer to the real cost (in other words, they could stop ripping us off).

IMO, there's a reason much bigger than social status -- taxation. It's just as efficient for me to generate rooftop solar energy at a cost of 20 cents per kWh than it is to buy it from my local utility for 15 cents per kWh if the tax rate is 25%. This is because the electricity generated from a rooftop solar installation is imputed income -- it offsets a bill that I otherwise must pay with after-tax dollars. In California your income tax rate could be as high as 50%. Paying 20 cents per kWh for rooftop solar is equivalent to buying electricity from the utility at just 10 cents per kWh -- if your tax rate is 50%. So purely looking at economics, rooftop solar potentially is far more economically effective (for the consumer) than buying electricity from the grid/utility. You have to consider tax rates in any of these decisions. Solar generates tax-free imputed income. I can't stress enough how much this affects my thinking on this issue when I approach the cost/benefit of solar for my own home.

I thought it was the opposite. Solar reduces the need for costly peak-load generators. (assuming the solar power is consumed on-site rather than sold back to the utility under net metering). Reasoning: Solar generates power during the time when all the air conditioners are turned on. This reduces the need for additional power plants that are utilized only during those times (peak demand load times). Therefore the net metering arrangment shouldn't be replaced with "wholesale pricing", but rather something far above that price to account for the fact that peak-load electricity costs more (due to these extra power plants that are idled the rest of the day and night, and only utilized during peak load). Bottom line is solar provides that peak-load electricity. Which is one reason why one can't just compare the cost of solar to the cost of coal/gas, apples-to-oranges. It needs to be compared to the cost of a peak load power plant.

Those Tesla home batteries will get cheaper over time -- and they're pretty cheap already. People with those batteries won't be selling their excess solar energy to the utility at "wholesale prices". Instead, they will consume that energy themselves, offsetting the purchase of electricity at far-above-wholesale rates. So the "harm" to the electric utilities from net metering is exaggerated, IMO. At best, net metering costs them the delta between daytime electric rates and nighttime electric rates -- if they differ. For customers with batteries, that is. And I expect those batteries would become rather commonplace if the utilities succeeded in eliminating net metering.

Hyperinsulinemia is what I'm referring to with regards to the sugar in the diet comment. Too much insulin blocks leptin, so your brain doesn't get the signal to stop eating, and the insulin drives your glucose into the fat cells which leaves you feeling energy depleted. And you get obese from this. Also the processed foods lack fiber which would normally suppress the insulin levels.

I don't think the article claimed to be an exhaustive list of all things that can lead to unhappiness. They also forgot to mention torture and malnutrition.. Or are you saying you are in poor health Eric? I hope not. The current high-sugar diet leads to obesity and those people don't feel energetic. This lack of energy makes them feel sort of shitty -- similar to how you feel if you skip breakfast and lunch. This lack of energy leads them to spend more time sitting on the couch and that leads to relatively lower achievement. It doesn't look like a recipe for life fulfillment.

Also, poor health == unhappiness. It likely gave the author a bit of an ego boost to put down an entire generation as less realistic (than presumably himself).