on 29-Apr-2021 (Thu)

A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee (user) to pay the lessor (owner) for use of an asset

The lessor is the legal owner of the asset, while the lessee obtains the right to use the asset in return for regular rental payments

Enfranchisement is the obtaining of the landlord's title and is most commonly negotiated with the landlord where a tenant pays only a ground rent.

Many organizations and companies use lease financing for the acquisition and use of many types of equipment, including manufacturing and mining machinery, vessels and containers, construction and off-road equipment, medical technology and equipment, agricultural equipment, aircraft, rail cars and rolling stock, trucks and transportation equipment, business, retail and office equipment, IT equipment and software.

Perhaps the most common element of distributed generation projects is that they are located on-site.

Connection to the grid “at the meter” is still important for the site host, though, because of the need to access electricity supply when the distributed generation facility is not generating or is not capable of meeting the full needs of the site host

For distributed generation solar photovoltaic (“PV”) installations, the on-site nature of the project is typically a far larger complicating factor than the intermittent nature of its output. Unlike larger utility-scale projects, distributed generation solar PV may be located in either urban or rural areas, on rooftops or on the ground, on larger structures or on smaller structures, with clear solar access or in congested areas. In addition, the site host may or may not be the power purchaser. Consequently, there is a significant potential for strongly conflicting interests between the passive host with a limited interest in the project and the power purchaser that wants the project output, in regard to what each is willing to accept as reasonable risk allocations with the project developer.

Every distributed generation solar project requires at least two fundamental commitments from the site host and/or the offtaker.

Every project needs site rights sufficient to allow the developer to build, operate, and maintain the solar installation on the site and an agreement for the purchase and sale of the power generated from the solar installation.

While bounded learning is based on a fixed curriculum with specific educational outcomes, unbounded learning embraces the never-ending cycle of personal growth generated by continuous education. It is based on strategies and tools that avoid unnecessary direction and restriction, that foster curiosity, and that reward exploring adjacent questions.

As Judy Nagy and Chris Bigum write in the Online Journal of Distance Education: “The advent of computing and communication technologies provides knowledge workers and the consumers of their products with alternative means of production and distribution, thereby directly challenging the role of publishers. Publishing on the Internet significantly reduces the time it takes for a consumer to obtain a product. The use of the Internet in this way highlights the role of publishers as essentially the middleman in the knowledge production and dissemination of knowledge products.”

Another advantage is serendipity: you may never know what doors a specific research path may lead you to. By allowing your education to branch off in virtually any direction, you may discover new areas of knowledge you could not predict when you started your learning journey.

Study the source material. Whenever you read an interesting article or a book, check the references to access the original source of knowledge. Then, check the references of these sources. You can go many levels deeper by exploring sources both horizontally and vertically. You can even paste the source into Connected Papers to generate a map of reference papers to explore further.

Mix and match the content to fit your needs. Don’t stick to just one course or one book to study a topic. Try different platforms, formats, and educators and keep the ones that work best for you. You could listen to a podcast from an expert, read a book by another, follow the tweets of a fellow student, and practice with tutorials you found on the web.

Use thinking tools for unbounded learning. While some note-taking tools are designed for linear thinking, others offer features that support the emergence of new patterns of thought. For instance, Roam is one such tool, but there are many alternatives you can explore. Look for features such as bi-directional links and a knowledge graph to explore and connect ideas across several domains of study.

Learn in public. One of the easiest ways to unbound your education is to learn with others. Whether you have a study buddy or a Twitter account, document your learning journey and ask questions along the way. Learned a new way to code a feature for your app, or a new psychological theory that may be helpful to marketers? Write a short tutorial and publish it online. Struggling with a concept? Post a tweet to see if someone can help clarify. You will discover fresh ways of thinking, and even maybe make some new friends.

Practice self-reflection. Make sure to avoid falling into the trap of linear learning, where we mindlessly climb the education ladder without questioning our processes. Metacognition is an essential skill for unbounded learning. It could take the form of journaling or a weekly review, or even regular brainstorming sessions with another self-taught student. Fail like a scientist by learning from your mistakes and by expanding your knowledge with continuous experiments.

success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn.

To facilitate the pass-through of tax benefits and available subsidies, the project owner/seller in a distributed generation solar PV project will almost always be a limited liability company.

Depending on the particular forms of subsidy (such as state tax credits, state cash subsidy payments, or solar carve-outs in state renewable portfolio standards designating the amount of generation local utilities must derive from renewable sources by certain benchmarks), the project owner may have more or less interest in actually owning the facility after the tax credit recapture and direct subsidy period has ended (though there are other tax considerations relating to the “profit motive” test that may require the project owner/seller to maintain longer-term ownership of the installation).

The chemical properties of an atom are mostly determined by the configuration of electrons that orbit the atom's heavy nucleus.

If the site host and the power purchaser are not the same (or closely affiliated), the site host may become a silent partner (or at least an ever-present consideration) in the negotiation of the PPA

Connected Papers is a tool for thought to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work in a visual way. You enter an origin paper, and they generate a graph. To achieve this, they analyse about 50,000 research papers, and select the ones with the strongest connections to the origin paper.

success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn. What’s more, those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it.

Most companies not only have tremendous difficulty addressing this learning dilemma; they aren’t even aware that it exists. The reason: they misunderstand what learning is and how to bring it about.

First, most people define learning too narrowly as mere “problem solving,” so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.

a thermostat that automatically turns on the heat whenever the temperature in a room drops below 68 degrees is a good example of single-loop learning. A thermostat that could ask, “Why am I set at 68 degrees?” and then explore whether or not some other temperature might more economically achieve the goal of heating the room would be engaging in double-loop learning.

because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure. So whenever their single-loop learning strategies go wrong, they become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.

But effective double-loop learning is not simply a function of how people feel. It is a reflection of how they think—that is, the cognitive rules or reasoning they use to design and implement their actions.

Companies can learn how to resolve the learning dilemma. What it takes is to make the ways managers and employees reason about their behavior a focus of organizational learning and continuous improvement programs. Teaching people how to reason about their behavior in new and more effective ways breaks down the defenses that block learning.

It’s not enough to talk candidly. Professionals can still find themselves talking past each other.

When you observe people’s behavior and try to come up with rules that would make sense of it, you discover a very different theory of action—what I call the individual’s “theory-in-use.” Put simply, people consistently act inconsistently, unaware of the contradiction between their espoused theory and their theory-in-use, between the way they think they are acting and the way they really act.

In one generation, the average job tenure has gone from ten years to less than three years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that “among workers ages 60 to 64, 54% had been employed for at least 10 years with their current employer in January 2020, compared with 10% of those ages 30 to 34.”

Instead of relying on pre-formatted curriculums, many adults are choosing to design their own personal learning environments. Whether by using a note-taking app, buying an e-reader, or joining learning communities, these self-directed students are crafting a custom space with the tools and content they need to optimise their learning experience.

Decide on your current learning goal. Your learning goals don’t have to be set in stone, but it’s usually helpful to focus on one or two goals at a time, especially if you’re not currently a full-time student and have other commitments in your life. Don’t be afraid of making it ambitious—you are making a commitment to learn, not to reach an imaginary finish line! In addition, your learning goals can be professional or personal. Whatever makes you feel curious makes for a great learning goal.

Map out your learning constraints. Once you have decided on a learning goal, you can start doing some research. What is available out there? Maybe you will find that your learning topic is quite niche, and there is only one online course covering it. Maybe it’s a popular topic, and you will have lots of options to choose from. What’s your budget? How much time can you commit? These are all important learning constraints which will determine how you design your learning environment.

Design your personal learning environment. You should now have a better idea of what is available to you in terms of content, budget, and time. Time to commit! Choose a course, a book, a tutor or any other way to work towards your learning goal. You can even combine different options based on your needs and challenges. Pick the tools you will be using, such as a note-taking app or a tablet. Depending on which strategy you picked to study your topic, you may need to get specific tools—an instrument, some ustensiles, some gear. It may be worth reading a couple of articles or watch a few videos to decide on what to buy, or flip through the summary of your books and courses to see if it includes some recommendations. Don’t spend too much time on designing your learning environment, as the most important step is to get started, and you will be able to tweak your set up in the future.

Practice metacognition. Once you have started learning, don’t just keep on repeating the same routine or using the same strategies. Practice metacognition to understand where improvements could be made. Journaling is a great way to reflect. You can use the Plus Minus Next method to perform a quick weekly review. Over time, the way you learn and your personal learning environment will incrementally get better. Bonus points if you learn in public by sharing your thoughts and challenges with the world.

Make it enjoyable. Don’t forget to have fun! Because you don’t have a fixed curriculum, you can mix and match different mediums to keep it interesting. It can also be more motivating to learn with others. Consider study groups, learning communities, or studying with a friend. And if after a while you really don’t enjoy a topic or find it irrelevant, good news: no teacher will force you to keep going. It’s absolutely fine to let go of a learning goal when it’s not a good fit anymore. You can just pick a new one. Just make sure you don’t switch goals every week.