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Nov 20
Love56

Case Studies in Decarbed Electricity

By Energy Rant No Comments
A colleague recommended a podcast, The Diary of a CEO, with Steven Bartlett. I especially resonated with the message from the “Savings Expert” episode dated November 6, 2023. The guest is an author who said, “I write for an audience of one, and that is me.” He calls it selfish writing. “I don’t write for this person or that person or group. I write what I’m interested in and in a way that I think is interesting. I try to solve my own problems. If it will help me, maybe it will help somebody else.” He said the traditional writing…
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Nov 14
Love54

Freeze on Nuclear Power is Thawing

By Energy Rant No Comments
It seems the laggards are finally realizing the planned energy transition to renewables and battery storage – maybe even throwing in a few million miles of 345 kV transmission lines – will not deliver reliable, affordable power. Miami Herald headline: Half of US at risk of losing power in winter due to strains on power grid. The article notes that “half” is up from a quarter just a year ago. It also reports that during last year’s Christmas Cliffhanger known as Elliot, natural gas generators (the bridge to nowhere) broke down or couldn’t get fuel. I called this shot reverse…
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Apr 05
Love1

A Franchise Organization for Decarb

By Energy Rant No Comments
About every six months, while participating in a strategic planning, leadership, marketing, or business development meeting, I hear “we should be doing decarb,” or “we’ve been talking about decarb for years, and that’s all we do is talk about it.” “We’ll be right back here talking about it a year from now.” Whoa! First, what is decarb? My guess is most people would say reducing the consumption of hydrocarbons in a catalytic process with airborne oxygen to produce heat which may be used for heating, power generation, or locomotion – while producing coproducts of gaseous water, carbon dioxide, and minuscule…
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Mar 15
Love0

Resilience for a Power Grid Green Swan Event

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week’s Reckoning post featured findings from a Wall Street Journal article that demonstrated our power grid is becoming less reliable, and I added that this would accelerate in the wrong direction over the next ten years. Like the Texas fiasco of February 2021, the causes of unreliability are smeared over many stakeholders such as regulatory, state, and federal government agencies, power suppliers, and voters. Utilities can be stuck in the middle, attempting to keep prices low while maintaining profits and keeping the pitchforks and torches at bay. Talk of adding an efficient combined-cycle natural gas plant will draw pitchforks…
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Oct 26
Love0
Wild Energy Ride

Next Up: A Wild Energy Ride

By Energy Rant One Comment
It has been a frothy year for the energy industry, and it will continue well into next year and beyond. How far? Heh heh. Let’s start with coal. After plummeting 30% in 2020, consumption bounced back, gaining 35% in 2021. Doing the math, that doesn’t quite get coal back to 2019 consumption. Coal plants are still closing at a breakneck pace, so consumption in the United States is bound to decline in the long haul, but will load balancers and utilities be able to keep the lights on in 2030? This is a concern to me because no source of…
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Feb 24
Love0

Years of Dominos Fall in Texas

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week when the Rant “went to press,” which is to say, when I wrote it Saturday, the arctic blast was merely a cold shot of weather like I have experienced dozens of times. I didn’t start seeing the chaos in the south until Monday. It was an avoidable tragedy caused by many things over many years. Some places lost water supply and wastewater treatment. A colleague sent me the first picture below from a friend in the Dallas area. Here in the Midwest, we might think that’s an innovative way to keep beer cold at a house party. In…
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Aug 05
Love0
utilities

Are Electric Utilities in for a Taxi Ride?

By Energy Rant No Comments
I spent part of last week at the Smart Electric Power Alliance’s Grid Evolution Summit. In my notes I wrote, SEPA is out of the closet. They are full-throated in support of decarbonization of the grid. A carbon-free grid brings a limitless stream of what-ifs. This post features a few of those. Regulated Vertical Markets In regulated, vertically-integrated electricity markets, utilities drive decarbonization in collaboration with stakeholders across the board – cities, communities, industry, landowners, consumer advocates, regulators, legislators, and economic development authorities. I realized from Summit presentations that some utilities do better than others managing and lining up all…
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Apr 26
Love0

Cabbage Patch iPad

By Energy Efficiency, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
The thing that pushed me over the edge this week was a fine blog  post by Elisa Wood.  My comment was that Gavin Newsom’s list of jobs created by resources including coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and EE, does not include return on investment.  Only EE has return on investment for the end user.  All other sources cost the end user, not save the end user money.  But this is not the topic of the day. I am not a tech geek.  I just want things that are stable, reliable, and relatively fast and snappy.  I will pay for it.  I…
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Apr 20
Love0

Wind Energy and the Utility Business Model

By Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Utility Stuff One Comment
The masses want power on demand without interruption or failure.  They want it at a practically negligible cost and more so every year, they want it without emissions or other unpleasant byproducts. In the upper Midwest, energy without emissions means wind energy.  Wind energy sounds great.  It’s “free”.  No emissions.  But it comes with a load of drawbacks compared to conventional sources of coal, nuclear, and natural gas. First, utilities can’t count on it for peak load generation.  I searched a while for this and found nothing but the bottom line is there is no guarantee there will be any…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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