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electrification

Decarbonizing District Steam and Chilled Water Plants

By Energy Rant No Comments
Let's begin with Oxford Dictionary's definition of decarbonization. Noun: reduction or elimination of carbon dioxide emissions from a process such as manufacturing or the production of energy. Last week, I introduced central or district plants that serve multiple buildings with steam, chilled water, and, in many cases, electricity. District plants serve colleges, healthcare, manufacturing campuses, and, in some cases, entire sections of cities. This week, I describe issues and strategies to save energy and decarbonize these plants. As I learned early in my energy efficiency career, it is essential to understand the design logic behind the system before recommending modifications. Steam moves…
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Electric Vehicle Plans With the End in Mind

By Energy Rant No Comments
This week I’m repackaging recent news on electric vehicle (EV) developments – market, technical, and utility impacts. I like to look at scale (macro) rather than ubiquitous siloed micro thinking. Is it realistic to scale rare earth mineral mining, battery manufacturing, and battery disposal? What about charging logistics, third-world labor, and grid impacts? Breaking the Grid? Let’s start with the revelation that force, in the form of mandates, will break things. An aeronautical engineer’s piece in Energy Central, says EVs, at scale, will break the grid. He notes that the Biden regime is developing restrictions requiring the market share of…
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Electric Utility 2050

By Energy Rant No Comments
As we prepare to take our energy storage solutions to market, I gathered recent news reports, analyzed them all, and came to some conclusions. I concluded that utilities, and especially regulators, need to think differently. What got us here – constant load growth and earning returns on conventional rate base by building power plants, transmission, and distribution systems – will not get us there (the energy transition) without turmoil and upheaval. Sign up for AESP’s decarb course to learn more details. Public service commissions get 50% off. Why? Because they must know this stuff. Nothing Lasts Forever Like everything, the…
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Decarb Warriors

By Energy Rant No Comments
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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Decarbonization Strategies for Manufacturing

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week a Yahoo News reporter headlined an article, Biden Administration Seeks to Lower Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions-and-That-Won't Be Easy. My first reaction: It won’t be easy to decarbonize any sector: residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation, although I did see that, like wind energy, the passenger blimp is making a comeback (say whaaat?). Will it replace passenger jets? I don’t think so. I focus on the above-linked article and industrial electrification and decarbonization in this post. The Yahoo author references the chart below for shares of GHG emissions. I assume that emissions from electricity generation are not double counted into…
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Profiles in Decarb – I Call Ham

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When I started at Michaels millennia ago, we had a brilliant walking encyclopedia of knowledge and engineering know-how. His name was Dave Hamilton, or Ham for short. He was probably 30 years older than me. My boss at the time said Ham knew the answer to any problem. Younger engineers would spend a few weeks to prove he was right. Scaling Electrification A couple of weeks ago, in the final of a series on electrification prompted by the EPRI conference in Charlotte, I wrote in Electrification at Scale that decarb fans need to 1) brace for consequences such as 9,000…
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Rant Revelations Unleashed

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This week in concert with critical thought prompted by the EPRI electrification conference, I introduce Rant Revelations. Some are not new, but it is time to start a list. Profit Rules Decarbonization can only happen if it is profitable. That is how we decarbonized to current levels. Whether it’s production tax credits for wind energy that make coal not competitive or high natural gas prices that make coal competitive, profit wins. In time the piper will be paid as intermittent and subsidized renewable energy will run out its string of lowering energy prices requiring new thermal generation to avoid grid…
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Energy Inflation and Resetting the Dislocated Shoulder

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As of last week, year-to-date energy prices are up 58% for NYMEX crude oil, 91% for NYMEX gasoline, and only 39% for retail gasoline. Retail prices seem to have a long way to climb as the high NYMEX prices make their way to the local gasoline pump. This week we look at how inflation is hitting our industry of efficiency and electrification and what might lie ahead. Let’s start with one-year price changes for a basket of commodities and roll forward with that. Diesel Fuel is Food Diesel fuel is used to transport seed, chemicals, fertilizers, and equipment to the…
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Importing Illusions & Exporting Pollution

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I had to go to my well of topics and found this interesting article from Clean Technica from last summer, A Realistic US Transport Electrification Plan - The Challenges We Can't Ignore. That is a catchy title because I am the woodchipper of grand ideas. Norway’s EV etc. Policies As Will Ferrell instructed us during last year’s Super Bowl, Norway crushes the United States in electric vehicle adoption. Clean Technica says 85% of new vehicle sales in Norway are electric and then complains about the lack of policy in the United States to support EVs. It makes a difference. For…
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A Franchise Organization for Decarb

By Energy Rant No Comments
About every six months, while participating in a strategic planning, leadership, marketing, or business development meeting, I hear “we should be doing decarb,” or “we’ve been talking about decarb for years, and that’s all we do is talk about it.” “We’ll be right back here talking about it a year from now.” Whoa! First, what is decarb? My guess is most people would say reducing the consumption of hydrocarbons in a catalytic process with airborne oxygen to produce heat which may be used for heating, power generation, or locomotion – while producing coproducts of gaseous water, carbon dioxide, and minuscule…
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