The NEC is not for the occupant, it’s for the architects, general contractors, and electricians. Unless you’re doing construction in your house you don’t need to worry about it at all.

What I’m arguing and what those in the link I shared above argue though is that if a homeowner finds that their new PC setup is drawing more than a 15 Aac circuit breaker allows, then they have two choices: 1) downgrade the PC, or 2) upgrade the building wiring. And if they choose the latter, then they can either 1) do the upgrades themselves or 2) have those architects, general contractors, and electricians do it for them.

While I would want to think that homeowners would prefer qualified personnel do installations on their premises because such personnel understand the hazards and code requirements, I don’t think that ends up happening in many instances. If a homeowner wants to upsize their 15 Aac circuit to 20 Aac, they have now crossed the line from electricity “user” to electricity “installer”, hence activating the NEC.

If an installer knows that they’re going to install a 20 Aac breaker, then they must follow the portions of the NEC code limiting the load on that breaker to 80%. For the homeowner, they know which loads they want to hang, so this automatically means they can’t load more than 16 Aac. If instead the homeowner were to contract an electrician to do the work, it would be up to the homeowner to not disclose what kind of load they wish to place on this circuit to the electrician so there isn’t established any grounds for code violation. Bear in mind that like you say even if you run more than 16 Aac on a 20 Aac breaker it’s going to work; what we’re discussing is code violation and grounds for revoking licenses of practicing electricians, architects, engineers, etc. - and you may argue that if a homeowner does the install then they have no license to revoke, in which case should they have done the install to begin with? We run into a circle.

or worst case start a fire if your stuff wasn’t installed well.

I would wager to say that there are many competent and incompetent electricians and inspectors out in the world, and as much as we wish for good intent, I still believe greed and convenience exist to counteract that.

If you live in an older house/apartment that was built before the 1970s/1980s, perhaps a good rule of thumb would be to derate your circuits given the uncertainty surrounding those installations. If after, or if your building has undergone electrical renovations specific to the circuit you wish to load with your beast of a PC, perhaps homeowners/apartment dwellers can be more confident that they’ll be safe.

As an engineer myself, I tend to lean on the safer side of things by virtue of not knowing the unknown (and to save my own ass), but I recognize that that virtue isn’t respected by everyone. Just be safe people!

You could make the argument that people with 5090s do run their PCs longer than 3 hours since those folk are more prone to longer bouts of gaming to feel like they’re returning on their expensive investment. And as the capabilities of our PCs become more and more robust, it will likely mean that people will more and more need to consider whether the circuit they’re plugging into will take the load they’re giving it.

Doesn’t hurt to plan for the future regarding building wiring, since most tech folk do so regarding their PC builds.

But, up on further inspection… I may be inclined to agree with you. See this thread from licensed and qualified professionals in the space.

It seems that homeowners are given a special class of immunity when it comes to manifesting hazards associated with their use of electricity. Whether or not that immunity should be granted, given that improper use of electrical equipment in a household can lead to fires and cause undue harm to the community at large, I think is up for debate.

Actually the National Electric Code (NEC) limits loads for 15 Aac receptacles to 12 Aac, and for 20 Aac receptacles 16 Aac iirc because those are the breaker ratings and you size those at 125% of the load (conversely, 1/125% = 80% where loads should be 80% of the break ratings).

So with a 15 Aac outlet and a 1000 Wac load at minimum 95% power factor, you’re drawing 8.8 Aac which is ~73% of the capacity of the outlet (8.8/12). For a 20 Aac outlet, 8.8 Aac is ~55%% capacity (8.8/16).

Nonetheless, you’re totally right. We’re not approaching the limit of the technology unlike electric car chargers.

A given group of people are not a monolith. While we do share a lot of similarities, we also all have the potential to be a little different from one another.

I hope you get a chance to find someone that will allow you to be open like that again. Sharing those emotions and having someone their to empathetically receive them is one of the most gratifying things as a human.

Amazing. I know what my next board game purchase is, if this is still sold that is.

Including bike lanes and bikeways!

Yep disabled Internet and I cast video from my phone to the TV so I can control what appears on the screen.

Good.

At that point? It wasn’t when they expelled Palestinians from their homes in 1948?

Gold

You’re right. Not 100% failsafe is failproof.

Another way to put it is 100% failproof is failsafe, by definition.

Bro, THE FUCKING BACKUP DIESEL GENERATORS FOR THE PLANT WERE BELOW SEA LEVEL.

Make it make sense. If those generators had been above sea level, well probably above 100-year tsunami levels, we likely would not have seen the plant catastrophically fail.

Lol and the commenter above you is forgetting about the aluminum of the PV module’s frame, as well as stainless steel used for the racking. Those things are super easy to recycle.

Solar panels are glass and rare elements that we can’t recycle properly yet.

NREL’s Solar PV fact sheet on circularity says that conventional solar PV panels have recovery rates of 80-95% given existing recycling infrastructure.

We know how to recycle these things. The fact that we maybe don’t do so in a widespread way is because it’s still cheaper to throw shit in a landfill or incinerator.

Can’t wait to see enhanced geothermal take off tbh. I know that the drilling tech couldn’t really get us to the depth we need to see the right energy gains, but you are right that there are companies out there looking to make strides.

If you’re trying to maximize energy collection then yes you’ll want to face the fence rows NS.

But there are also some benefits for making use of vertical bifacial panels oriented EW. You get a bimodal energy plot: one in the morning and one in the evening when the sun’s direct rays shine near horizontal (something NS panels can’t collect).

I’d actually be interested in reading the literature on mixing these types of panel orientations to see what the resulting production yields would look like, and if stakeholders like utilities would find any benefit in them to help better manage grid demand in those peripheral times of the day.

Something to note about your link to solar fences is that one of the cons mentioned is that panels can’t produce power for half of the day because they’ll be facing away from the sun.

Bifacial panels exist and can collect energy from both faces of the module. We in the utility-scale space use these all the time. You’d want these over monofacial panels for fence applications

Just because those panels will need to be replaced in decades time doesn’t mean they won’t have value then.

NREL estimates that PV 80-95% of modules’ materials can be recovered through recycling, and there is constant academic work on refining the EoL process to better delaminate panels so they can be better sorted and their materials better reused.

I can’t find the figure, but I believe the IPCC found in their 6th Assessment Report that the cost to deploy renewables + battery storage, and manage the grid more intelligently on the backend, absolutely demonstrate lower costs than it takes to build new nuclear. I want to say that that finding still out value on our existing nuclear fleet, so we definitely don’t want to shut any existing plants down if we don’t have to.

I don’t think fission nuclear will get our energy systems off of fossil fuels. Fusion nuclear has the potential to do this, but by the time that technology reaches commercial operation, renewables alone will likely be in the multiples of TW of generation capacity.

Nuclear should be part of the future if modularity and MSRs/thorium reactors can breakthrough. Until then, solar/wind + storage baby

Something to note about this chart is that ground-mount silicon solar PV isn’t considered for sharing land use with activities such as farming in comparison to how onshore wind is (i.e. agrivoltaics).

NREL in the US estimates that there are currently ~10.1 GW of agrivoltaics projects spread across ~62,400 acres (or ~7 m^2 / MW).

Even this being said, I think brownfield or existing structures for new PV is the way of the future for solar PV. There is so much real estate that could be used and has the potential to offset grid demand growth while providing greater reliability for consumers. You’ll need the big players to help with industrial loads, but even then, the growth of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) has the potential to balance loads at the same scale as the big players for the prosumer market.

Edit: I’ll also make mention of floatovoltaics, or the installation of solar PV on bodies of water, either natural or artificial. This is a burgeoning side of the industry, but this is another area that could present net zero or even negative land use per unit of energy.