Solar Power

When someone installs solar panels, they use less power from the grid, meaning they spend less money on electricity. power companies are saying that when someone leaves the grid, it increases the price of electricity for those who stay on the grid. Well, doesn't that assume a fixed revenue?

This article takes the price hike to be a given:

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/solar-power-in-arizona-aps-in-fight-with-rooftop-solar-firms-over-rates




From page 2:
"She said utilities are worried about a vicious cycle -- more rooftop solar panels means they have to raise other users' prices, which drives even more people to solar. She also said the installations are more common in affluent areas, shifting costs to poorer customers."

For the first point, I have to say that there is nothing vicious about the cycle. But,if the price hike occurs, the second point is a genuine problem , since some people don't have the cash to install solar panels. So, what is necessary for everyone to benefit from the use of solar panels is free installation.

Alright, maybe not EVERYONE is going to benefit from that, or, at least, there will be some people, for example, power company employees, who will complain, even if the environmental impacts are good for them. But what if the rich people who can afford solar panels today do not reap the benefits of net metering. What if instead, they just get to save on the lower consumption of power company provided electricity due to their personal collection. Well, who would get the cash from selling the extra solar energy  to the power companies? Well, I propose that the money goes to installation of solar panels on the homes of people who cannot afford them. So power companies will be buying the products that are going to render their current product useless. But they would also, as a part of the deal, earn stock in the solar companies with which they ally. That way, power companies will willingly shut down their polluting power stations in favour of a predominantly localized and environmentally friendly energy solution, in which they have financial interest.

This vicious cycle of increased solar panel usage making solar panel usage increasingly popular sounds to me as good as cold fusion or any other perpetual energy solution.

Anyway, I think that the situation is a bit more complicated than I have portrayed it. Solar panel users do not generally leave the grid. Actually, in some situations they don't even use the energy from the solar panels on their roofs. They sell it all to the power company. Further, solar panels panels feed the grid at night. But in Arizona, AC must use more energy during the day.

One week from visa decision

Apparently, there are eligible voters, and voters that are on the voting list. Each election, people are sent to every home where there is an eligible voter. If there is someone at home, the eligible voter makes the voting list. So some of my friends, for example Gaelle and Fany, were unable to vote in this election, because they were not at home to receive the election employee. For them though, there is good news. Their dad had a stroke about 3.5 weeks ago. He came home from the hospital on Tuesday. I saw him yesterday. His movement was limited, but he seemed as lucid as anyone does when they are speaking a language I cannot understand.

No, my understanding is improving. I was able to catch a few conversational points Rado's mom made at lunch and another in the teacher's lounge yesterday. But each time, I was involved in an english conversation, which  was continued in Malagasy to another person. In that way, even getting only one word of an utterance was enoguh for me to guess the meaning. On the flipside, I am definitely learning something about English as I tried to teach. The thing that impresses me most though is how much people want to learn English. But I am a bit worried that I am compromising my English to make it easier to understand. People comment that I swallow the letter /t/ in certain words, especially when it occurs at the end. I don't think i completely swallow the sound, but I don't at an /s/ sound to the end of my /t/ sound so 'lot of' sounds more like 'lodov' than 'lots of'. And somewhere in the middle, I can now watch films subbed in french and films dubbed in French pretty comfortably. I am going to try an actual French movie one of these days.

I finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday, on Thursday November 7th. It is by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A married couple flee their town. The woman is afraid of inbreeding, but they were haunted by someone the man killed. They founded a new town. Gypsies visit. They have kids. A war breaks out. The kids have kids. The man and a gypsy study. The woman grows old, keeping order. The kids kids have kids. A train comes to the town. A banana company is founded in the town. The working conditions are not good. Their is at least one more generation. What is crazy is that the guys are all of two names. One wife is from a neighboring town. She has the habit of not calling things by their names. One of the original kids crafts some golden, jeweled fish, boils them, and restarts. The book is only annoying because it never calms down. The writer will tell a story in the past tense, and ends it by telling the end of another story. He proceeds to tell the story, but always from a seemingly unrelated starting point. It is only as he is about to end the next story that I remember what he is explaining. There is a lot of magic in the village, and people are unimpressed by technology. There is also a lot of talk of the circularity of time.