Answer to Question 1
Anyone who owns a laptop would agree with this statement. This is too few
cycles to be commercially successful in all but automobile batteries. As the book suggests,
3000 cycles is much more attractive.
Answer to Question 2
Utilities have invested huge sums in building energy production facilities. The
economic justification was made by assigning a lifetime to the facility and amortizing the
cost over that time. After that time, the capital expenses have been paid off, the plant retired,
and a new plant built at great expense. If instead of closing a plant, spending a relatively
small amount of money will lead to many more years of production, the incremental cost of
production is very small, and the profits correspondingly large. There is an economic
incentive to extend the life of such plants.
Generally, older plants are greater polluters than newer plants. Adding years to a plant's life
can also add years of heightened emissions compared to today's state of the art generators.
To help even the playing field, the EPA instituted New Source Review, which
basically caught utilities making more expensive modifications and made them use some of
the renovation money to pay for pollution reduction when it exceeded a certain proportion
of the cost of a generator.
Given the economics of the situation, Ohio utilities attempted to evade the constraints
imposed by regulators. They hid expensive renovations as minor repairs, for example.
Ohioans and residents of other states paid a price in greater exposure to pollutants than they
would otherwise have had.
Sporic life cycles
Temperature cycles for 24 hours
Cycles of Air Temperature
The voltage-gated channel cycles during an action potential
Orbital Cycles
Milankovitch cycles interact over time