second law of thermodynamics

Time flies even during pandemics. Two years ago, I found the quote, “Casual observers are often wrong” by Charles Bayless with Public Utilities Fortnightly. Back then, the Rant topic was that battery storage increases carbon emissions – because “Batteries, or any storage, only swap dispatchable, conventional resources; never renewable resources. Result: increased emissions.” Whenever energy is converted from electricity to battery and back to electricity, the nasty second law of thermodynamics intervenes to steal some energy. The result is more source energy consumption and more GHG emissions. That introduction leads to today’s edition of “casual observers are often wrong.” This…