Energy Rant
This is a satirical and at times humorous but critical commentary on energy efficiency issues of the day.
“Keep up the good work! I like the variety of topics; never boring. It's like a Box of Energy Chocolates.... you never know what you're gonna get!”
Mike MernickSenior Vice President, ICF
Are You Serious About the Climate Apocalypse?
Washington Post headline last week: “World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says.” Wolf! Wolf! People…
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PSA I thought of making some wisecracks about the trial balloon that the Chinese Communist Party drifted over the United States. Whatever the intent, it’s no good. The thing that gave me a chill is that these balloons are a top ‘delivery platform’ for a nuclear EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack. These balloons “can fly up to 200,000 feet, evade detection, and carry a small nuclear bomb that, if exploded in the atmosphere, would shut down the grid and wipe out electronics in a many-state-wide area.” I mentioned this last week and wrote an entire post on this threat five years…
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In this year’s twelve-pack of predictions for 2023, I forecast that the attacks on the U.S. power grid would continue, and the media would desperately attempt to blame their ideological opponents as extremists. Yawn. The attacks certainly risk public welfare, safety, and security, but what’s behind them? I took a couple of hours to investigate. Terrorism The Time article I referenced includes a quote, “’ Domestic terror groups understand that citizens losing power from gunfire or sabotage is an easy way to receive media attention, which they crave,’ says Brian Harrell, a former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the…
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As undergraduate mechanical engineering students, we took materials science courses and studied phase diagrams like the one below from “Metallurgy for Dummies.” Does that appear to be dummy-grade to you? It gave me a chuckle. A phase diagram for water (below) is decidedly simpler. The above diagram shows only liquid and solid phases of carbon steel, while the water diagram shows its three phases, solid (ice), liquid, and vapor (steam). The author writes, “Freezing Point: At a temperature of 0 °C and a pressure of 1.00 atm, this is the point at which water (liquid) freezes into ice (a solid).”…
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Last week I read a statement from a retail energy provider. It said, “100% green rates, always.” It doesn’t work that way. An aggregation of power sources, including renewable, nuclear, coal, and natural gas, are supplying the grid at any given time. The little electrons aren’t tagged by source and routed to any given customer(s). Second, even if that were impossible, er, I mean, possible, it’s shoving more hydrocarbon electricity onto someone else. In this way, it’s the same as the net zero con. Cheap but Unreliable Generating renewable power is easy and inexpensive, but as described in the net-zero…
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A Twelve-Pack for 2023 Last year Las Vegas booked my predictions at 1:1.5 odds. This year I’m being more aggressive and expect something closer to a 3:1 weighted average. Below, I include my estimates for each forecast. Ukraine War I’ll get the tough stuff out of the way first. The Ukraine war will not end peacefully with a desirable outcome as long as the bipartisan U.S. congress keeps laundering money through the military-industrial complex (and others) in this proxy war with Russia. (Odds: 1:2) There is no exit strategy. Thirty billion here. Forty billion there. When that runs out, we’ll…
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This post features the results of my Lucky 7 predictions I made a year ago, a grade for each omen, and a little sass here and there. Coal Record Prediction: Annual worldwide coal consumption will pass the all-time high set in 2014. Result: The Internation Energy Agency, on 16 December, reported, “Global coal use is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time and eclipsing the previous record set in 2013(sic), according to Coal 2022, the IEA’s latest annual market report on the sector.” This is remarkable, considering “For…
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With most people off this week, it is a good time to probe the mysteries of life that I have accumulated in recent years. Food Let’s start with a great food mystery; the hamburger. Every other burger has the key ingredient in the name: turkey burger, walnut burger, pork burger. Ham? What would a burger made of ham be called? Next up: Grapes, grape nuts, and grapefruit. What is the common denominator? Orange, lemon, lime, tangerine… Fruit namer: “I’m tired. To hell with it. We’ll call this largest citrus fruit a grapefruit and call it a day.” Steel-cut oats. What…
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Just before last week’s finale on permanent peak demand reduction went to press, news dropped that nuclear fusion was successfully pulled off in the Livermore Laboratory in California. A controlled fusion reaction “produced more energy than it consumed,” according to The Wall Street Journal and many other outlets. Before reading anything, my first reaction to the headline was 1) yawn and 2) they broke the second law of thermodynamics. Later, I realized that they may have broken the first law of thermodynamics as well. Fusion Highlights What is fusion? It is the slamming together of two hydrogen atoms to create…
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The last few posts featured an overview and complete report card on load management to get beyond net zero to real zero, a term I discovered last week. As promised, I will describe some permanent peak load reduction opportunities this week. Like many efficiency solutions, blocking and tackling approaches are the most effective. Peak Load Reduction – New Construction I’m going to stick with some big hitters. A person could write forever on this topic. Home Envelope Single-family homes must be super-insulated to minimize heating loads in cool/cold climates. The cartoon below provides a nice example of super-insulated versus code…
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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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