Skip to main content
Tag

water heaters

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…
Read More

Demand Response Primer

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I described how net zero sounds grand, it’s easy to do, but it doesn’t work to support the transition to a clean-energy grid. The reason is that everyone, whether utilities or customers, overproduces simultaneously, and then later, customers all need energy from thermal power plants simultaneously. We have an exploding deficit of customers to take that overproduction and shift load or store it for use when intermittent renewable supplies shut down. In Renewables at Scale, I described how renewable supply and batteries would never be sufficient. The gaps in intermittent renewable supply are too big for batteries to…
Read More

Bounteous Savings at Home

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Continuing on from the surface scratch delivered in Refrigerator Sitcoms and Lethal Toaster Ovens, this post provides more fact, fiction, and maybe some things you’ve never considered for saving energy. First, I came across some interesting data while reviewing evaluation reports for a major Midwest utility last week.  Recall in Bait and Switch, and again backed by ACEEE as explained just last week, regulatory agencies need to stop stopping fuel switching from dumb uses of electricity to smart uses of natural gas.  The specific item is the electricity guzzling clothes dryer.  As it turns out, the saturation of electric clothes…
Read More