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A dam with a pumped hydro storage reservoir in Pennsylvania. (credit: Army Corps of Engineers)

The two fastest growing sources of renewable energy, wind and solar, are intermittent—they don't always generate power when you need them to. The obvious solution is to add storage, like batteries, to shift some of the electricity to when demand is highest. Elon Musk is betting a Gigafactory that consumers are going to be interested in doing this, while California has mandated that 1.3 gigawatts of storage be added to the power grid before the decade is out.

But there are a number of different types of storage, each of which has distinctive properties: how fast electrons can be shuffled in and out, how easy it is to expand the storage capacity, and so on. All of these have different costs, and figuring out what storage is most economically viable is a serious challenge.

Three academics from MIT have decided to take up that challenge. They've tried to calculate when it makes economic sense to add storage to renewable projects in three different locations in the US. Their analysis indicates the finances among options are similar right now, but only for options other than batteries.

(credit: Diliff)

In 1836, Anthony Panizzi, who later became principal librarian of the British Museum, gave evidence before a parliamentary select committee. At that time, he was only first assistant librarian, but even then he had an ambitious vision for what would one day became the British Library. He told the committee:

I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom, as far as books go, and I contend that the government is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect.

He went some way to achieving that goal of providing general access to human knowledge. In 1856, after 20 years of labor as Keeper of Printed Books, he had helped boost the British Museum's collection to over half a million books, making it the largest library in the world at the time. But there was a serious problem: to enjoy the benefits of those volumes, visitors needed to go to the British Museum in London.

Imagine, for a moment, if it were possible to provide access not just to those books, but to all knowledge for everyone, everywhere—the ultimate realisation of Panizzi's dream. In fact, we don't have to imagine: it is possible today, thanks to the combined technologies of digital texts and the Internet. The former means that we can make as many copies of a work as we want for vanishingly small cost; the latter provides a way to distribute those copies to anyone with an Internet connection. The global rise of low-cost smartphones means that "anyone with an Internet connection" will soon include even the poorest members of society in every country.

Grab the latest build of VLC and you'll see a "Render Output" option in the "Tools" menu.

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Streaming online content to a Chromecast is fast and easy, but what if you have local files on your desktop that you want to get on the big screen? There are a few niche apps out there that will serve, but one of the biggest media players, VLC, is working on built-in support for Google's Chromecast. Recently the nightly build servers started pumping out early, unstable builds of VLC with Chromecast support, so I gave it a try.

You won't find the familiar "cast" button that you see in many apps in this VLC build. Instead, the "Tools" menu has a new option called "Render Output"—this screen is for playing media on something other than the computer screen in front of you. It will detect and display Chromecasts on your local network, and the detection process seems to work great. You just pick the device you want to use and hit "OK."

If you're playing media you'll need to stop it, and then once you hit play the casting process should start. I got an "unknown certificate" error at first, but, after accepting it, the usual Chromecast stuff started to happen. My TV turned on and switched to the right input. A Chromecast logo appeared, the loading bar popped up—and then it failed.

(credit: Getty Images | Digital-Saint)

Google Fiber's new terms add a clause familiar to subscribers of other large Internet service providers: customers who want to sue the company must now instead submit to arbitration.

The Google Fiber terms were updated last week with a note that they now "require the use of binding arbitration to resolve disputes rather than jury trials or class actions." While the clause allows cases in small claims court, it otherwise forces customers to waive the right to bring legal actions against the ISP. Arbitration must be sought on an individual basis, as the clause also prevents class arbitration.

The previous terms of service did not have the binding arbitration clause, though they did limit Google Fiber's liability to the amount customers pay to use the services. (The Consumerist published an article on the change yesterday.)