Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, there will not be an Energy Rant this week. Please check back next week for a new post. Have a great Thanksgiving!
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Mining the Energy Transition
A few weeks ago, we had a little snafu. A promotional email said the energy transition is failing. That hit a nerve with one state government official. This week, I’ll present some facts, and you can decide. Cobalt First, we have the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the energy transition. The following video from France’s AFP News describes the toil in Congo for cobalt, a key ingredient of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid-scale storage. The video states the scene shows “almost biblical toil.” No. It’s biblical. Seventy-two percent of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic…
Jeff IhnenSeptember 19, 2023


Innovations in Grid Flex
Last week, I was fortunate to see this article posted on EnergyCentral.com: Demand Flexibility Is No Longer Nice To Have. “ is increasingly becoming a “must have” as networks around the world are moving towards high levels of variable renewable generation resources. The increased variability of renewables, notably wind and solar, results in frequent episodes of feast and famine when supply exceeds demand and vice versa. The result is wide swings in wholesale prices, from near zero and negative to very high levels reflecting the imbalance in supply and demand. Storage and exporting/importing the surplus/deficit are invoked to the extent…


Electric Ratemaking Basics and Load Flex
In the last two Rant posts, we explored dated benefit-cost tests for energy efficiency and demand response programs and introduced flaws with dated ratemaking schemes. Both constructs are based on a century-old “cost of service” business model for monopolistic utilities. In a nutshell, the cost of service includes the debt and equity financing of generation, transmission, distribution, and operations and maintenance, which includes employees, fuel, storm damage repair, and arboriculture. Add up all those costs, including competitive investor returns on equity and debt, and then smear those costs as equitably as possible across the customer base. The sum of those…