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Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

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Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#81

Post by t3f »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
spsgtn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some areas of TX have a capacity factor of 50% !

Underrated comment. Texas can't build transmission lines fast enough to export their wind power, and some utilities are giving power away for free at night because of it.

Living in Texas, while almost every provider has a free nights plan now most won't give you very aggressive daytime rates that make them worth it compared to other averaging plans (Unless you have on premis solar). Air-conditioning during the day still drives the bulk of residential consumption. I'm waiting on energy storage like zinc-bromide to mature and drop in price or something better to come along.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#82

Post by kevinthew »

electricity is a very liquid market, they're probably selling this generation into ercot, buying it in offset in whatever grid they operate on. they could have some sort of physical exchange in place to act as the offset (i.e. they sell power to a generation company in Texas, they buy same offsetting amount from same generation entity in California/MISO/wherever)

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#83

Post by sargun »

t3f wrote: post #81
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underrated comment. Texas can't build transmission lines fast enough to export their wind power, and some utilities are giving power away for free at night because of it.

Living in Texas, while almost every provider has a free nights plan now most won't give you very aggressive daytime rates that make them worth it compared to other averaging plans (Unless you have on premis solar). Air-conditioning during the day still drives the bulk of residential consumption. I'm waiting on energy storage like zinc-bromide to mature and drop in price or something better to come along.

There is a datacenter in AZ that takes advantage of low cost night power. They have giant underground tanks full of a proprietary solution that they cool down at night, and then during the day the use it to keep the DC cool. My guess is it's just antifreeze and water, mineral oil, or something similarly boring.

It turns out this is pretty cost effective.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#84

Post by sargun »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #60
dave_sullivan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Citizenship: 1) They setup an offshore corporation for you in a low tax jurisdiction and give you payment processors to take checks and credit cards over the internet. Every few years, they move all of these corps en masse to lower tax jurisdictions, if any. More efficient competition among tax regimes. Amazon will file all pertinent taxes and paperwork and connects to your quickbooks to make that even easier.…

Bring on the Snow Crash-esque future.

I'm surprised we don't have that happening in places like China or Saudi Arabia. I wonder what the Huawei compound would look like.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#85

Post by WalterBright »

kevan wrote: post #79
0verD0ses wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is true, but why go backwards?

Because the current van and truck experience for me is a tracking update at 6am saying "Your package is out for delivery" and then it actually gets delivered sometime in the next 12 hours. As a customer that's a crappy experience. Hopefully flex will push everyone to up their game with regards to delivery experience. If vans and trucks are more efficient then they should win out in the long run because they can opera…

> sometime in the next 12 hours [...] a crappy experience

How perspective changes. I remember when ordering anything meant "4-6 weeks for delivery".

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#86

Post by SEJeff »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #54
peteretep wrote: post #26

In 20 years I'm looking forward to buying Amazon Citizenship.

Amazon Citizenship: 1) They setup an offshore corporation for you in a low tax jurisdiction and give you payment processors to take checks and credit cards over the internet. Every few years, they move all of these corps en masse to lower tax jurisdictions, if any. More efficient competition among tax regimes. Amazon will file all pertinent taxes and paperwork and connects to your quickbooks to make that even easier.…

Clearly the Presidential title would be: First Prime

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#87

Post by prewett »

mtmail wrote: post #11
dqv wrote: post #2

Stop trying to hoard the air! Serious question - as of right now, does Amazon have wind farms to reduce their own costs or do they plan on making a profit by selling the energy to consumers?

Lincoln Clean Energy owns and operates the wind farm. Amazon is in a long-term contract to purchase 90% of the energy produced. It's open what happens to the remaining 10%. I'd say Lincoln Clean Energy sells those and any energy Amazon doesn't need to the grid.

If this is true, the article is pretty disingenuous. It reads like Amazon is building the wind farm, look how dedicated we are to renewable energy, we're investing actual money. If someone else is building it with their own money, and Amazon is simply buying the energy they produce, that's kind of a big difference.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#88

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

sargun wrote: post #83
t3f wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Texas, while almost every provider has a free nights plan now most won't give you very aggressive daytime rates that make them worth it compared to other averaging plans (Unless you have on premis solar). Air-conditioning during the day still drives the bulk of residential consumption. I'm waiting on energy storage like zinc-bromide to mature and drop in price or something better to come along.

There is a datacenter in AZ that takes advantage of low cost night power. They have giant underground tanks full of a proprietary solution that they cool down at night, and then during the day the use it to keep the DC cool. My guess is it's just antifreeze and water, mineral oil, or something similarly boring. It turns out this is pretty cost effective.

It should be almost trivial for a refrigeration mechanic to build a home scale system like what you have described to take advantage of free / cheap night time electricity.

It's just a heat pump with the cooling side heat exchanger immersed in glycol & water,storwge tank and a pump. Maybe some insulation. Add a heat a set of heat exchanges fir a secondary loop in to the house.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#89

Post by gtremper »

WalterBright wrote: post #85
kevan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the current van and truck experience for me is a tracking update at 6am saying "Your package is out for delivery" and then it actually gets delivered sometime in the next 12 hours. As a customer that's a crappy experience. Hopefully flex will push everyone to up their game with regards to delivery experience. If vans and trucks are more efficient then they should win out in the long run because they can opera…

> sometime in the next 12 hours [...] a crappy experience How perspective changes. I remember when ordering anything meant "4-6 weeks for delivery".

The 12 hours here refers to the delivery window on the delivery day, not the time to ship the package. Though the total delivery time is certainly much less than 4-6 weeks.

Re: Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas

#90

Post by dave_sullivan »

monksy wrote: post #78
anexprogrammer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear Citizen, Due to too many searches and queries on your Citizen account recently your account has been closed with immediate effect. Your Citzenship is now revoked and your Amazon World Passport is no longer functional. The Embassy Help Request you opened five days ago has been closed. We're sorry for any difficulty caused, but we strive to keep costs low for all Amazon World Citizens. Please note this decision is…

PS All of your "digital property" is now gone. Goodbye.

To be fair, that can happen already given current citizenship schemes. And if the key service provided by a "citizenship provider" is filing paperwork and running PR for groups of interests, there's no reason to assume a monopoly. If governments competed to make their citizens lives materially better, that might be better than what we've got.

On a somewhat unrelated tangent, there's that famous kennedy quote, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." It's often cited as being this profound political statement. But it's not. It's basically the definition of an abusive relationship. A lot of people believe citizenship should not (or cannot) be a fluid concept directed by competition and self interest. I generally disagree. But I'm not talking about libertarianism; I don't think government needs to be abolished. It's more like, they need tangible goals and metrics and accountability.

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