Utilities creating their own solar & battery-powered demise

Utilities are responding to reducing demand by increasing charges to maintain profits. Combined with reducing solar electric generation costs, this will encourage consumers to install more solar capacity.

And of course, the good news is more solar, less carbon. :)

The linked article is about the situation in Australia, but something similar is happening in other places around the world.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/8/18/smart-energy/utilities-creating-their-own-battery-powered-demise?utm_source=exact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=389810&utm_campaign=cs_daily&modapt= / death spiral AGL Austalian Gas Light staff Paul Simshauser Tim Nelson consumer consumer customer customers install solar undertake energy efficiency measures utility utilities respond raising rates similar level of profit receive received in the past your electricity bill poles wires competitive market regulated rate of return guaranteed guarantee government incumbents guarding old outdated business model affluent family purchasing solar panels avoiding 30-50% billable electricity usage using their solar generated power in house causes response distribution companies raising tariff remaining unit (kWh) electricity crossing grid recover difference and cover sunk costs cost raising disproportionately affects poor feedback causes addition cause caused domestic energy storage cover demand when the sun isn’t shining solar + energy storage product self consumption another increase in electricity rates electricity companies state government owners regulatory rules change impede energy revolution market revolution experienced type-writer manufacturers postal services monopoly telecommunications carriers all over the world power companies state government owners kWh usage charges higher fixed daily network service charges minimise minimize encourage energy efficiency instal installation more rooftop solar additional addition storage eliminate household demand critical poin enough production can occur from rooftops winter summer summertime time wintertime Victoria South Australia Tasmani desert grid wealthy first low income households doing it tough low usage gas wood heating short heating northern Australia, they’ll just tough it out usage will be less than 10kWh a day over winter residential sector reduce reduced reducing reduces demand drop decrease fall revenue AGL Origin Energy Australia media machines machine lobby groups economic modeling reports corridors parliament houses house /

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's Net traffic

Credit: GoSquared/ The Register

What does this say about how dependent on Google, the Net has become?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/17/google_outage/ / relax now near unprecedented near-unprecedented outage affect affected Google's services brief time Friday over event began 4:37pm Pacific Time lasted between one and five minutes Google Apps Dashboard services reported back online by 4:48pm incident apparently blacked out every service Mountain View simultaneously Google Search Gmail YouTube Google Drive technical difficulties it goes with the territory web analytics firm GoSquared worldwide Internet traffic dipped stunning 40 per cent graph data centre centers center centers /