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SPI 2019 Day Zero Interview with Raghu Belur of Enphase Energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glSXghzDZcs&feature=youtu.be...

An NPR article on the topic: "Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy"

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste...

"...Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from — are a different story.

'The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value,' he said.

Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment — which costs money — to the landfill. ..."

"Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy"

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste...

FWIW, and this does involves battery, but it is an off grid power solution.

https://zolaelectric.com/

Bingo.

"Yo dawg, I heard you're thinking of a new way to make money...so I wrote a book about thinking of a new way to make money so you can think about a new way to make money while I make money from you thinking about my new way to think about making money."

I would strongly suggest perusing through the resources of Stephen Few over at Perceptual Edge.

Library: http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.php

You could do a lot worse than becoming familiar with Few's "Information Dashboard Design" book, and the Perceptual Edge blog contains a wealth of material, some of which ended up in his subsequent books.

Older posts on his blog also include reviews of different author's books, often having to do with cognition or analysis related topics which are also informative. Seems he has retired from his consultant business and now blogs at: http://www.stephen-few.com

Here's one of his whitepapers you may find helpful: https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/Whitepapers/Formatti...

How come when I posted this same link on Hacker News, HN flagged my post? Guess the same hive mind that runs Google runs the show at HN.

There's the formal definition of "exponential", and then there is "exponential" in the sense of completely disruptive and transformative as in the example Tony Seba gives. I am referring to the latter.

No, it has not taken off exponentially yet in the way the Tony Seba video demonstrates with a picture of 5th Ave in NYC in the year 1900 where there are lots of horses used for transportation, and only one car, compared with a picture of the same street in 1913, where the street is full of cars, and there is only one horse to be found.

We could be at the point where solar adoption takes off exponentially.

On a big picture view:

Tony Seba: Clean Disruption - Energy & Transportation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0

On a more micro level view:

Solar power solutions coming to places with no grid:

https://medium.com/zolaelectric/infinity-smart-grid-deliveri...

P.S. One of the companies in the solar space I follow closely is Enphase Energy.

https://enphase.com/en-us

There is a cool little demo a solar installer from Australia made to show Enphase's upcoming off-grid microinverter in action.

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/b3sgec/demo_clip_of_...

Also, an interesting talk from Sunnova Solar CEO dealing with future of the grid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2915&v=6Dx0U2y-Y...

Tony Seba has an interesting perspective on "Clean Disruption of Energy & Transportation", with one of the main takeaways being as options like solar become more viable, their takeoff could be exponential rather than moving up gradually in a straight line.

https://tonyseba.com/portfolio-item/clean-disruption-of-ener...

Also, more immediately interesting is how first world reliance on the grid could be changing. "Distributed Energy Poised for 'Explosive Growth' on the US Grid"

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/distributed-ene...

In third world countries, there could be a complete bypassing of the traditional grid; e.g., consider Zola Electric.

http://zolaelectric.com/blog/zola-electric-announces-infinit...

Windmills do have controversy surrounding them, and whatever the case may be, I would neither want to live by a coal plant nor a wind turbine.

Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3653647/

Does living near wind turbines negatively impact human health?

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-turbines-negatively-impact-hum...

Can Wind Turbines Make You Sick

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/can-wind-turbines-make...

Vermont Sets New Noise Rules for Wind Turbines

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/vermont-sets-ne...

Ok, thanks; not as many barriers to entry I suppose compared with larger health institutions.

Are you able to share any info regarding the type of customer (B2B or B2C), the number of customers, and the method of customer acquisition? Depending on the nature of the product offering, healthcare can be seriously difficult market to enter.

There is a problem with the materials the packaging industry uses. Are there any start-ups or big companies working on a solution?

> "It drives me crazy to think that some exec came up with SPA-ing everything as a sales pitch to clients" In other companies, I wonder if this is just as often due to: (a) developers getting tired of what works reasonably well and wanting to move to a different technology and/or (b) the voices in the tech evangelist community whose own jobs seems to hinge on pitching new and shiny, latest and greatest library/framework/whatever, instilling FOMO and insecurity in the developers who listen to them about not getting on board with the latest and greatest?

"As utilities fight distributed generation, electricity is getting less reliable"

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/01/03/as-utilities-fight-di...

Well, I'm aware of at least one company based in Texas trying to supply homes not just in Texas with solar.

https://www.sunnova.com/

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/sunnova#section-over...

I think that is about to change in the near future.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/08/20/enphase-going-einstei...

https://enphase.com/en-us/ensemble

"...a single component in an energy mix". And that mix relies on the grid? With nuclear or other centralized power source, yes.

Another factor to consider with nuclear is how it perpetuates complete dependence upon the grid, a single point of failure model. Perspective articulated here by Sunnova CEO John Berger.

https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922

In addition to the mind-numbing noise, there is also likely mind-numbing, soul-sucking television turned on nearly 24x7. Probably not a recipe for becoming the best version of yourself.

Ah, but without the 24x7 hype cycle, the media cannot feed addiction to media.

From the World Health Organization:

> "Although aircraft cabins are pressurized, cabin air pressure at cruising altitude is lower than air pressure at sea level. At typical cruising altitudes in the range 11 000–12 200 m (36 000–40 000 feet), air pressure in the cabin is equivalent to the outside air pressure at 1800–2400 m (6000–8000 feet) above sea level. As a consequence, less oxygen is taken up by the blood (hypoxia) and gases within the body expand. The effects of reduced cabin air pressure are usually well tolerated by healthy passengers."

http://www.who.int/ith/mode_of_travel/cab/en/

While the NY Times blog link earlier in this chain of comments had a recommendation about reducing cabin air pressure to 6,000 ft, I question how useful that is, since for those susceptible to altitude sickness, 6,000 feet is going to be enough to trigger symptoms for many.

These next two articles are not devoted to airline travel per se, but about high altitude related sickness.

From "Preparing for Safe Travel to High Altitude", by Paul Anderson, M.D.

> "High Altitude Illnesses (HAI) include Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE), and High-Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). The symptoms of AMS are typically felt by most people when they arrive at a new altitude, but the symptoms are usually self limiting (e.g. 1st 3-5 days at high altitude). The exact mechanisms of AMS remain unclear, however symptoms tend to be the most prevalent 1-2 days after arrival at elevation. The most common symptoms include a headache, gastrointestinal upset, feelings of fatigue, dizziness, and sleep disruption. ..."

http://www.mayo.edu/research/documents/preparing-for-safe-tr...

From "Altitude-Related Illnesses", Mayo Clinic Preceedings:

> "... An estimated 30 million people are at risk for altitude related illnesses in the western United States annually. Many cases are unrecognized by the victims and by their physicians who may attribute symptoms to viral illness, “hangover,” or fatigue. In addition, commercial airline travel exposes passengers to a cabin pressure equivalent of 2,500 m and allows them to travel rapidly to high altitude destinations such as Aspen or Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where they may be exposed to even greater altitudes.

... The rate of ascent and a prior history of altitude illness are the major determinants of a person's susceptibility to altitude illness. Aerobic fitness does not correlate with the likelihood of acquiring AMS."

(See especially the symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness in this article.)

http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)6...

1. Has anyone done investigative work on the passengers of this flight and their subsequent health status? How many visited a doctor with symptoms similar to the crew? Were there any fatalities among the passengers in the weeks following the flight?

2. How many years away would you estimate the the commercial aviation industry is from avoiding this type of toxic air problem? Are newer aircraft still susceptible to air quality issues like this? Does a radically new approach such as solar powered flight reduce these issues?

> "Healthcare providers will be using our platform to gain access to next-gen diagnostic algorithms"

And what is the nature of these "next-gen diagnostic algorithms"? Are they the research results of medical experts published to medical journals using limited data sets on limited populations that promise to magically cure each and every malady of any patient population, or rather, is a more realistic example of a "next-gen diagnostic algorithm" something not useless, but less grandiose, such as algorithm that tries to address the likelihood of a narrow problem like sepsis occurring in the ICU?

When there are competing algorithms/research papers around the same topic, how do you decide which algorithm is best? And how "actionable" is the algorithm's prediction?

All this reminds me a little of IBM Watson marketing and MD Anderson Cancer Center, where the hype machine generated high expectations, and the results did not match the hype.

"IBM pitched its Watson supercomputer as a revolution in cancer care. It’s nowhere close": https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/05/watson-ibm-cancer/

"MD Anderson Cancer Center’s IBM Watson project fails, and so did the journalism related to it": https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/02/md-anderson-cancer-...

Google's DeepMind Health also seems worth mentioning in this context: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/alphabet-...

Still, DeepMind said a commercial product using AI is a ways off. Streams, the only product DeepMind has actually deployed, uses no AI. While DeepMind originally set out to use machine learning to improve an existing NHS algorithm to detect AKI, it said it never carried out that research. When DeepMind visited the Royal Free, it found the existing algorithm— which wasn’t half bad— was the least of the problem. Of far more concern were antiquated technology and Byzantine workflows that meant it took too long for doctors and nurses to act on blood test results. The real problems in medicine “are much more gritty and practical,” Suleyman said.

P.S. The buzzwords in the article include, among others: blockchain, artificial intelligence, token sale, revolutionize, deep learning algorithms... Maybe the only missing buzzword term is "quantum computing"?

And the St. Francis quote? A decent quote, yet if you have ever read any works on Francis such as the Little Flowers, it does not sound quite like him, and googling on the origin confirms doubts about the quote source.