France Decrees New Rooftops Must Be Covered In Plants Or Solar Panels 247
An anonymous reader writes: A law approved in France Thursday now requires all new rooftops in commercial zones to be covered in plants or solar panels. "Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favoring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say." The law was actually watered down from its original version — businesses only have to cover part of their roof.
In other solar power news, reader SpzToid notes that despite earlier worries, the European power grid handled the solar eclipse just fine
Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
A couple of hours of no power input from solar power is not, and never has been a problem for the European power grid. This sort of thing happens extremely regularly, every night. We're used to it, and can cope. Thanks for worrying about us, though; it really was extremely kind of you.
Re:Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)
This remind me of "sun sets, wind dies" billboards that get placed in coal mining towns. Only affective if you choose not believe in things like batteries and/or you have pushed the argument to full false dilemma status.
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Only affective if you choose not believe in things like batteries
You also have to not believe in markets. If the supply of electricity goes down, just raise the spot price, and marginal users drop off. My electric company (PG&E) gives me a 20% discount on my summer electricity bill for letting them put an automatic switch on my A/C compressor, so they can shave off demand peaks.
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My electric company (PG&E) gives me a 20% discount on my summer electricity bill for letting them put an automatic switch on my A/C compressor, so they can shave off demand peaks.
And the same thing can be done with electric cars. It's possible to make the charging software smart, and have it look at the spot price graph, user desired charge levels, and determine whether to charge the battery, wait, or even sell some power back to the grid.
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but solar wind lives forever!!! :)
you will always need a backup power source just in case of extreme outage cases for solar and wind... nuclear?
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You can calculate risk of extreme outages, and aim for an acceptable value.
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"you will always need a backup power source just in case of extreme outage cases for solar and wind... nuclear?"
No, nuclear is out in the winter because the river is frozen and in summer it's because there's not enough cooling water in it.
Nukes got hit by climate change as well. During those times, France has to rely on the coastal reactors alone.
But the wind blows day and night.
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In Arizona, the heat sink for nuclear is dry desert air, not water. This would also work in other dry parts of the world, such as Australia or Chile.
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Nuclear has a poor ramp time. You can't just turn up the power output when the wind stops. It takes days to adjust. Same for goal.
If you're looking for non-renewable power source that can be turned on an off as demand changes, you want gas. It's quite expensive, but it's also very quick to change power output, so it's commonly used to meet demand peaks.
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Batteries aren't really cost effective for storing the amount of energy that we'd need to power the electrical grid from sunset to sunrise [wikipedia.org].
That said, even if we we ignore the possibility of storing energy or transporting it long distances to handle the moving (east to west) peak sunlight hours ... even if we can can only get half of our energy from the sun, that's still half of our energy that we didn't have to burn fossil fuels for.
We don't need batteries for that to be a false dilemma.
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Any power that renewable tech generates is good, so long as the grid can supply power when:
1. The wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining
2. You need more energy in one place than sun and wind can provide. This doesn't just mean steel mills; it also means high-rise apartment buildings with small roof areas.
3. The renewable tech in your area is not one of the forms favored by Greens, so your dam or tidal lagoon got canceled.
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That's the false dilemma. Why the hell do you have to get rid of all fossil fuels? Why does using one mean you can't use the other?
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If we don't stop using fossil fuels at the rate we currently are, then CO2 will just keep building up in the air.
Either Climate Change is a man made problem or it isn't. 500 PPM CO2 is a problem or it isn't.
If it isn't, then why bother changing anything?
If it is, then we have to take drastic measures to avoid it, and that includes shutting down most fossil fuel power plants.
It is a not a problem that lends itself to half way solutions.
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If we don't stop using fossil fuels at the rate we currently are, then CO2 will just keep building up in the air.
I'm curious... say we wanted to keep the level of CO2 in the atmosphere constant at its current level. What level of carbon emissions would we need to have? (Or, to put it another way, what is the natural "Carbon sink rate" of the Earth?)
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I'm curious... say we wanted to keep the level of CO2 in the atmosphere constant at its current level. What level of carbon emissions would we need to have? (Or, to put it another way, what is the natural "Carbon sink rate" of the Earth?)
From what I have read, we would have to cut our emission by half to hold at current levels, and that assumes that the trees and oceans can continue to absorb at the rate they have been, which is questionable.
If you wanted a margin for error, I'd suggest cutting by 75% to be safe.
So SOME fossil fuels could be used, but they would largely all be oil since we won't replace all the cars in the world for a long time, even if we wanted to. And a few classic cars could still be driven in small numbers.
Electricity
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If it is, then we have to take drastic measures to avoid it, and that includes shutting down most fossil fuel power plants.
800 ppm is a bigger problem than 700 ppm, and 700 ppm is a bigger problem than 600, 500 or 400. Obviously, we can't stop using fossil fuel right now. The best we can do is use less of it. That'll buy us some more time to work on the new challenges.
If it isn't, then why bother changing anything?
Even if CO2 is not a problem, fossil fuels are going to peak in production. After the peak, we'll be forced to reduce consumption.
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800 ppm is a bigger problem than 700 ppm, and 700 ppm is a bigger problem than 600, 500 or 400. Obviously, we can't stop using fossil fuel right now. The best we can do is use less of it. That'll buy us some more time to work on the new challenges.
While that is all true, I would question if it makes any difference beyond a given point...
Does it matter if the freight train hits your car doing 30 mph instead of 60 mph?
If you've ever followed my posts, you'll know I'm a climate change skeptic, I'm not convinced that we are the problem. But I'm also willing to be wrong in that viewpoint, I do not hold the exclusive right to be correct in my views.
If I am wrong, then we need to do a 90 degree turn and take drastic action.
Can we start cutting our fossil f
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We already are starting to cut CO2 emissions. The installation of wind power is doubling every 1-3 years. Already it's a few percent of total energy per year, imagine how big it will be in ten years. The emissions didn't grow this year, that's probably mostly wind power, next year, emissions will probably start to come down.
So no, I don't necessarily think it will take international commitments, it will take people not blocking wind power. Wind is about the cheapest source of energy there is, that can be ve
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Perhaps that's why so many places are trying to encourage development of non fossil fuel energy.
To use your train analogy, when you think a train MIGHT be coming, do you sleep on the tracks anyway and hope the adrenaline surge will let you leap fast enough to only have it chop your feet off if it comes or do you start moving off the tracks?
This is France rolling up it's sleeping bag.
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That's how you know there isn't really a problem. In all the political solutions offered to date, not one of them has actually created a task force devoted specifically to developing technology to make that possible. Instead, they go with the concept
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And so rather than recognize that there might be a middle ground, you flop over to the other half of the false dilemma.
He also didn't say get rid of NONE of the fossil fuel use.
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And this widely held belief is the reason why many people who *know that man-made climate change is real* deny it anyway.
Drastic action may or may not be a good idea, and the advantages need to be carefully weighed against the disadvantages. Modern industry *runs* on fossil fuels, and we can't just shut that off. Remember - food production at a scale that can actually feed everyone is o
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So the plan is to install enough batteries to power the world all night long
Only half the world.
I suppose either is technically possible, I just don't think either is likely to happen.
Instead of relying on one either/or solution, it would be smarter to combine all of them, including using existing forms of power generation such as gas, coal or nuclear.
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If CO2 is the problem that it is made out to be, then we need to stop using coal and natural gas.
If it isn't, then it doesn't matter how much we burn.
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If CO2 is the problem that it is made out to be, then we need to stop using coal and natural gas.
We can have a phased solution with different transitions to new energy mixes. This isn't something we can fix in a day.
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We can have a phased solution with different transitions to new energy mixes. This isn't something we can fix in a day.
No, it isn't... but from what I understand, it also isn't something we can take 100 years to fix either, it will be too late by that point...
We need to fix it this generation, and we aren't even close to making that happen.
Re:Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious... (Score:5, Informative)
So the plan is to install enough batteries to power the world all night long, and then for a week or two when the weather is bad?
Or is it to put solar all over the Earth and have a massive world wide power grid to move power to where it is needed?
I suppose either is technically possible, I just don't think either is likely to happen.
Read up on baseload power plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
Essentially solar energy activists aren't out to throw away all coal or fossil fuel plants - just to increase the diversity of power (with a gradual push towards renewables as battery technology and solar extraction improve). Some solar proponents also even support properly implemented nuclear (me!) - anything to get us off the coal crack-pipe.
btw, an industrial scale solar molten salt facility does have a built-in battery - take a look here - its not like this is unfamiliar territory - it's been implemented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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Essentially solar energy activists aren't out to throw away all coal or fossil fuel plants
They should be... if you believe that CO2 is a problem, if man made climate change is a real threat, then we need to stop using coal and natural gas.
Of course if you don't think that CO2 is a real problem, then burn away...
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Essentially solar energy activists aren't out to throw away all coal or fossil fuel plants
Perhaps the small minority of rational math literate ones, but that hasn't been my general experience.
Re:Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
So the plan is to install enough batteries to power the world all night long, and then for a week or two when the weather is bad?
Or is it to put solar all over the Earth and have a massive world wide power grid to move power to where it is needed?
I suppose either is technically possible, I just don't think either is likely to happen.
How about we build nitrogen fixation [google.com] factories near the baseload generation, keep the baseload on all the time, and make fertilizer during the times when the energy is otherwise not needed? Nitrogen fixation can be quickly started up and shut down without damage to the system, and requires an enormous amount of worldwide energy.
How about we build a smart grid, which incorporates electric vehicles on home charging systems? Charge the car during the day, then give back some of the stored energy at night when the car's in the garage.
How about we take recycled batteries from aging electric vehicles - batteries that can hold 80% of their original charge, but which are no longer good enough for electric vehicle operation - and stack them in warehouses to store and release energy as needed? Do batteries lose capacity at an exponential rate? If so, those 80% batteries should last a long time.
How about we mount the solar panels with a gap above the rooftops, so that the panels keep sunlight off of the roof, reducing [somewhat] the *need* for energy to be spent on air conditioning?
How about we look for solutions rather than assume that everything will be exactly like it is now, except with problems that cannot be solved?
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Nitrogen fixation can be quickly started up and shut down without damage to the system, and requires an enormous amount of worldwide energy.
You can do something similar with aluminum refining, which uses high power electrolysis. If we look around, I'm sure that other processes can be reorganized to make use of varying supply of electricity.
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Actually, several Dutch companies are trying to either move their company to Germany, OR build a long cable to draw power from Germany, precisely because of this point.
Right now it turns out that they were so succesful that Germany actually has a competitive advantage over its neighbours who don't have that nice clean and low-cost energy source between 9 and 5. I bet that half the reason France is doing this is because they're seeing the writing on the wall: clean energy is not just clean, it's also becomin
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The original means of refining Aluminum was with fire, then it later became electrolytic. Wikipedia has all the interesting details, credits the appropriate parties, and so on.
Some industrial processes can be run variably, some not. Obviously foundries need reliable power. It would be a shame to run out of power while you were casting your Aluminum billets, too.
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How about we look for solutions rather than assume that everything will be exactly like it is now
Because those solutions you suggested are not likely to happen given the current state of public opinion, money, and politics...
What will it take to change it? Honestly, I don't think anything will change, people don't like change and don't plan very far in the future...
I live in Texas, we get nearly 50% of our power from natural gas, about 1/3 from coal, about 15% from nuclear, and the rest from "other. That isn't likely to change any time soon.
This is not a technical problem, it is a political one.
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This is not a technical problem, it is a political one.
It's not even really a political one, it's an economic one. If we make things more expensive, someone has to pay and no one wants that hot potato.
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It's not even really a political one, it's an economic one. If we make things more expensive, someone has to pay and no one wants that hot potato.
Aren't they one and the same? :)
Then the only solution is to convince everyone that this is worth paying for.
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This is not a technical problem, it is a political one.
Political problems can be solved too. Germany has been very active with solar and wind, and France has plenty of nuclear plants, and now they are proposing this new law to increase use of solar.
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Some parts of the developed word need nitrogen fixation, some need aluminum refining, while others need desalinated water. Any of these can be used to absorb extra baseload energy that is being produced above market need at a given time. When New Zealand's largest renewable power project, Lake Manapouri, went online, it even paid to ship bauxite in from Australia to absorb the extra power.
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factories near the baseload generation, keep the baseload on all the time, ...
Base load is on all the time, running the plants around 90% of capacity, hence the name "base load"
That time does not exist
"Base load" is the amount of energy you _always_ feed into the grid, hence it's name.
However your idea would be suitable for "using" excess wind or solar energy.
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Cars are most often charged at home at night, when grid power costs the least, even if the same home can contribute solar to the same grid in the daytime. If parking lot power is available to cars during the day at office parks, this will help also.
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Name one instance in history where the weather has been bad over the entire area of either US grid (east or west) at the same time.
(Note: the Texas grid, which is separate, doesn't count because it could conceivably be entirely covered by a big-enough hurricane. I guess down there it's more than just your house that's pathologically bad. ; ) )
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Name one instance in history where the weather has been bad over the entire area of either US grid (east or west) at the same time.
Name one time electricity has been generated in Arizona and used in Maine.
Yeah, that superconducting backbone that runs along the Transcontinental Railroad ... maybe the Chinese can build that one too!
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Considering that you quoted it, I'm baffled about how you managed to miss the part where I mentioned "either US grid (east or west)." I'm well aware that power generated in Arizona doesn't get to Maine; however, power generated in somewhere like Ohio or Maryland perhaps could.
The point is, I'm making a stronger claim than you think: not that there's never been a time where the weather was bad over the continental US, but rather that there's never been a time where the weather was bad over the whole eastern
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Arizona's excess power (renewable from Hoover and Glen Canyon, nuclear from Phoenix, coal from the Navajo reservation) is used in California, which won't generate its own electricity because that would be evil.
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Name one instance in history where the weather has been bad over the entire area of either US grid (east or west) at the same time.
The US power grid does not send power all over the US, most power is used locally.
Could it be changed to be a national power grid? Sure. Is that likely to happen? No.
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Sorry, but you are wrong. Power is bought and sold across state lines all the time. Ohio is on the same grid as Toronto, N.Y. and Memphis.
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Given that demand for electricity isn't perfectly inelastic (in fact, nothing is), your idea is actually very feasible.
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Coal power plants take days to change output, but gas turbines can do it in seconds. Though you're right about the issues of handling the short-term supply fluctuations in an almost-all-renewable grid, this would require some improvements in management technology.
Only the most hardcore greenies want to go pure solar/wind though. The more realistic ones recognise that you also need a steadier baseload component, like hydro or nuclear, and something you can ready for use on demand like gas for those rare time
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The expected problems had to do with the rate of change, which was 3 times as high as the normal maximum.
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A couple of hours of no power input from solar power is not, and never has been a problem for the European power grid. This sort of thing happens extremely regularly, every night. We're used to it, and can cope. Thanks for worrying about us, though; it really was extremely kind of you.
You did forget to mention the coal-fired and nuclear plants that feed that same grid at night, and don't ask about Eastern Europe. ;)
Part of their roof? (Score:5, Insightful)
It better be a minimum percentage of the roof otherwise the law will be useless.
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Re:Part of their roof? (Score:5, Funny)
Square acres? So your factory is 4-dimensional?
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We found the TARDIS factory!
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Hmm, is a square acre 4 dimensional or only 3 dimensional. Does squaring double the number of dimensions or only add one dimension? Maybe maybe make this cubic acres just to be sure we're in the head scratching realm.
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It doubles it. Consider 2^2 =4 4^2 = 16. So 2^2^2 = 2^4.
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And how do you define "covered in plants"? How much space between plants? Any kind of plant? What happens when your plants suddenly die?? Sounds like all the same nightmare as living in a homeowners association. "Your lawn is brown, here's a fine and it better be green next week!"
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"What if a business wants to have a pool on the roof? You know, for employee morale."
In France, when workers have low morale, they go on strike, 15 times a year or so.
It's their thing.
Also, _no_ business has a pool, roof or not, when the 7 hour workday is over, people go home.
Summer cooling? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's something I've been curious about. I would expect that if there's a between the solar panels and the roof, this would lead the attic to stay a lot cooler in the summer. Because the sun would be mostly heating up the panels and not the roof. Anyone know if that can significantly reduce the temperature of a home's living spaces?
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Sigh...
I would expect that if there's a gap between the solar panels and the roof, ...
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A-Hur-Hur! See what I did there?
The attic is the gap... (Score:2)
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How do you figure? A second cover isn't free, in fact it could be quite expensive. However, if the second cover is doing something else, like generating electricity, that offsets the cost. Then you have two benefits, electricity and a cooler house. My house was shaded by a large tree. When we lost the tree the second story was much hotter. That tree was our second cover, and it made a lot of difference.
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Oh, he's sighing at himself. That's fine then.
Re:Summer cooling? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Cost. Green roofs are heavy, so you have to build the structure (significantly) stronger to hold them up.
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Another negative would seem to be that it would be hard to find a material that could last for long periods of time with damp earth pressed against it... it's a lot harder to replace a roof with growing material on it.
It's much better protected against hail damage. Possibly there are potential mud-slide issues??!
One other strong negative consideration would be that grass-thatch roofs are known to carry diseases that can affect people living within. That's for primitive roofs with no underside though.
Re:Summer cooling? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually there's quite a lot of experience with this type of roof nowadays.
Standard roofs locally are covered with bitumen waterproof covering. THis is affected mostly by UV light, which is countered by layering it over with earth and having vegetation on top of it. This can double the lifespan of the waterproof covering.
The weight of a light covering with Sedum (very small, fatty ground-covering foliage that is very robust) will weigh between 50 and 60 kilograms per square meter. If your roof can't hold that, it will have serious trouble with a big snowlayer. Roofs are mandated to hold at least 100 kg/m^2 over 10m^2, and roofs meant to be used as terrace or walked upon for inspection have to be able to hold 250 kg/m^2.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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Solar Installer here.
There are two effects at work:
- 15-20% of the solar energy will be converted to electricity and not to heat.
- the air between the solar modules and the roof will transport most of the heat away. This depends on the distance module-roof and airflow.
The effect will be in most cases very noticeable. A first order approximitation is, that normally a roof is 20-30C hotter than the surounding air. With solar modules the roof will be almost the same temperature as the air. On u
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I live in Maryland where 90 degree sunny days would regularly see 140 and sometimes 150 degree temperatures in my attic. After I put solar panels on my house the highest temp recorded in the attic was 110 degrees. This reduced the summer cooling requirements by about 1/3. My results might be slightly higher than normal though since the air return for the house runs through the attic and only has a few inches of insulation on it.
News from TOMORROW! (Score:5, Funny)
2017-08-12 - A man fell to his death today while mowing the lawn on the roof of Les Olympiades. Witnesses claim to have heard him shout "Putain d'écureuils de bordel de merde!" while he fell down.
A New Market Opens (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to take broken / very old solar panels from all over, and sell them to businesses in France.
After all, the law didn't state the solar panels had to be hooked up to anything...
You probably don't want to know about my new plan to get ride of discarded trees and other vegetation.
Re:A New Market Opens (Score:4, Funny)
Have them run for President as the best bush candidate?
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Considering the cost of installation, it will probably be cheaper to get fully operational solar panels, and sell/use the electricity.
Let me tell you about my installation plan (Score:2)
It consists of spending about half an hour arranging loose dead solar panels on the roof in an artistic pattern.
Makes more sense than the law I proposed (Score:2)
That all new solar panels must have a house on them.
Plants? (Score:2)
Does moss count?
Freedom Roofs (Score:5, Funny)
Because the bible tells us the French are a bunch of devil worshiping socialists, our only recourse is mandated "Freedom Roofs", each with eternal flames fed by coal, used electronics, hippies, and any stray French we catch at the borders.
Better dead than green.
this is (Score:2)
Re:premiÃre publication (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet
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...that's only because everyone went to beta.
Sort of like how Windows took over workstations in the '90s.
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Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet
It's a funny line, but probably one of the most accurate looks at science fiction. Ships staffed by people who aren't very good at their jobs, using devices that are cheap and poorly designed, helmed by overlords (both Dark Helmet and President Scroob) who are as concerned about not looking like an idiot in front of their employees as they are about getting anything done.
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Do commercial buildings in France have pitched roofs, or are they flat like in the US?
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Most of them are flat.
The steel industry in France is gonna love this rule!
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I doubt it will have any impact on the load bearing designs of the roofs. They all are designed to carry heavy plant equipment anyway.
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Their firefighters are going to love that.
The good news is that if the structure is too unstable for them to enter, the roof will collapse a bunch of wet dirt and water laden plant mass onto the burning rubble. So it will be self extinguishing.
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"I was actually thinking more of the hazards of the solar panels:"
There's a large switch on the outside of the building that the firemen can reach with a special staff.
Just like the neon-sign covered buildings.
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"Their firefighters are going to love that."
A wet roof that will not gas out toxic fumes when burning? Sure!
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Did you miss the words "commercial zone"?
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People made the same comment when the gestapo came for the Roma, and then the Jews. People talk about the slippery slope because it's real. In the mean time, we'll welcome people who want to build out new manufacturing workspace.
Well done, Godwin.
"If you put this murder in jail now, next it'll be the Roma, then the Jews. Argle bargle ``Hitler!''"
Also, manufacturers won't likely be too upset by being required to put some solar panels up, which will eventually save them some money by the time they've depreciated to worthless. Then will continue saving them money on electrical and cooling costs.
Re:Decrees everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure are a lot of decrees coming from our masters who know what's best for us. Solar panels from the French. Regulated bullets, fracking, coal, networking, and healthcare policies here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
You're right. Companies should be able to polute the rivers, pump toxins in the soil, everyone should have 50 cal machine gun nests with armor piercing bullets, coal plants should spew as much sulphur as they want, and we should let people die in the street if they can't pay for healthcare.
Hyperbole is fun!
I'll explain it to you, and I'll use small words: We all have to live together on the same planet. So people (and companies) are not allowed to do things to hurt other people. We can disagree about where to draw the line, but some of the examples you gave were stupid.
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but some of the examples you gave were stupid.
ALL of the examples you gave were stupid.
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Here's something for Germany [bloomberg.com]
Looks like it was roughly an hour from the drop to things being back to normal, with a downswing of about 8GW and an upswing of about 13GW.
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It says commercial buildings.