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solar energy

Jun 20
Love34
Image shows a graphic displaying CO2 with a down arrow down to plants and text "Ambient CO2 Scrubbing Grifters."

Ambient CO2 Scrubbing Grifters

By Energy Rant No Comments
The origin of this post is a spicy Zerohedge article, The Phony Climate Change Catastrophe, specifically, carbon capture from ambient air. That reminded me of an April article in The Wall Street Journal that referenced the same redonkulous effort by Occidental Petroleum to self-absolve its CO2 emission contributions by vacuuming CO2 from ambient air. If this sounds absurd, you have my company. Incidentally, chief investors in this technology include Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), the largest shareholder of Occidental stock, and Bill Gates. These grifters are always first in line with their golden tin cups when there is tax money available…
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May 24
Love31
Image shows electricity wires with text "Four Steps for Energy Transition"

Four Steps for Energy Transition

By Energy Rant No Comments
I spent last week in California, where the energy transition is being jammed at a breakneck pace like a square peg in a round hole. I’ll set the stage with just a few things. First, the duck curve, a feature of excessive solar generation that began overgenerating a year or two ago, is now the “canyon” curve. Overgeneration occurs around 10 GW of net load – the amount needed to keep hot resources spinning in case of a fault in the system. The image below shows the current and forecast net loads on CAISO as of Saturday, May 20, 2023.…
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Mar 28
Love21
illustration of the earth asking for help

Are You Serious About the Climate Apocalypse?

By Energy Rant, Featured Energy Rant No Comments
Washington Post headline last week: “World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says.” Wolf! Wolf! People aren’t serious about decarb, and this post will prove it, but I provide ways to get it done. Is Solar Plus Storage Competitive? Solar is nice, but the numbers are ugly. If solar and storage with batteries were a serious contender for a clean energy grid, electric utilities would be soiling themselves because solar and batteries would put them out of business as customers would install their own and cut the cord. Let’s look at some basic arithmetic. Lazard pegs…
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Dec 06
Love6

A Ten-Dimensional Demand Response Examination

By Energy Rant No Comments
This is the third installment of this series in demand response (DR) and load management. In the first post, Curing Net Zero described why net zero is not the answer: everyone over-generates with solar or wind simultaneously, and later, everyone needs power from something else simultaneously. The second post, Demand Response Primer, gave an overview of families and specific types of load management. This time we’re looking at my scorecard of these DR resources. Here is my report card, including critical factors for each DR resource, followed by discussions of what it means. What does this poppycock mean, Jeff? Peak…
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Oct 18
Love4

Safe Nuclear Power v Chernobyl

By Energy Rant No Comments
Green and climate change warriors – see how important nuclear power is to CO2 emissions in one chart, courtesy of the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). The closure of two nuclear plants wiped out more than twice the carbon-free electricity generated by all renewables in the state. Why is nuclear power overlooked or not an option? I can think of three reasons: 1) it’s scary, and people don’t understand it; 2) it’s too expensive; 3) radioactive waste. Accidents and Disasters Reason #1, it’s scary, is due to prejudice and ignorance. There has only been one nuclear power plant disaster…
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Jun 03
Love1

Turbulence, Tribes, and Climate Change

By Energy Rant No Comments
The topic of climate change is fascinating to me because I love to learn why people believe what they believe. I wrote last week that climate change policy is firmly and forever intertwined in political warfare. Does anyone stand alone on an island isolated from their tribe on anything?  Maybe five out of one hundred on an issue or two, but for the most part, no. This is where I come in – I love stirring the pot. A few months back, a friend forwarded a link to Global Warming for the Two Cultures, by Richard LIndzen, Professor of Meteorology,…
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Sep 12
Love0

Saving Energy, or Not: Mixing Breezes, Ice Blocks, and Toilet Paper

By Energy Rant One Comment
Four years ago, I wrote about a few home energy-saving tips in Refrigerator Sitcoms and Lethal Toaster Ovens. I said I would need to write a series because there are so many, mostly bad, energy saving tips to write about. With four years passing, it is more like a movie sequel than a TV series. Knowing the “why” behind anything helps it stick, like training. Here goes. The Ceiling Fan Famous advice for ceiling fans is to have them move air down (counterclockwise) in summer, and up in winter. A ceiling fan can do two things only. It can generate…
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Jun 08
Love0

Tesla Powerwall and the Disruption of Rational Thought

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
Howitzer Explosion Guy.  That was the nickname Wayne Campbell of Wayne’s World gave to Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s correspondent for the Gulf War in 1991.  “Sheeyeeaaah.  I’m so sure.”  “He just made it up for the war.”  Too bad Wayne isn’t still doing his show from his parents’ basement on community access channel 10 in Aurora, Illinois.  I would like his assessment of Elon Musk.  Pierre GQ Manly – like Larry Ellison, minus the useful products. One thing is for sure, solar panels of the photovoltaic type are certainly sexier than, oh, a fractionally expensive building surgery that provides equal quantity…
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Jun 14
Love0

Oh Behave

By Energy Efficiency 8 Comments
I swear we were introduced to the food pyramid when I was in grade school but a little web searching gives me just a couple – the one from 1992 and the new and improved one in 2005.The 1992 edition is shown in Figure 1.  If you can’t read it, good. The 2005 vertical colorful edition with the stickman and skewers for hands and feet is shown in Figure 2. For 2011 (Figure 3), the USDA has switched to this brilliant “plate” that looks like a pie chart developed by a group of kindergarteners employed by Microsoft, except I really…
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Feb 01
Love0

Galactically Stupid

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability 2 Comments
Some weeks I struggle a little to decide on a topic.  It isn’t for lack of topics for they are like natural gas reserves – at one time I wondered whether I’d be able to find a topic every week.  But like natural gas reserves, as I “worry” about running out of topics, the topic list is vastly outstripping demand.  This week it was easy. I watched the state of the union address last week, or I should say I started watching the state of the union.  It doesn’t matter who is president, from Reagan through Obama, I can only…
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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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