Skip to main content
search
Tag

hydrogen

Aug 19
Love97

The Energy Transition Grind

By Energy Rant No Comments
Longtime Rant readers know I keep both feet on planet Earth, capturing all sides (typically two) and explaining, yes, but (fill in the blank). For the next case study, I was recently presented with a slide deck from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), The Cleantech Revolution, It's Exponential, Disruptive, and Now. There are many brilliant people at RMI. Amory Lovins, its cofounder, is one such brilliant revolutionary. Amory's famous home in the Rockies can grow bananas in winter. That's great, but is it scalable? It is 4,000 square feet and was completed in 1984 for $500,000, which would be over…
Read More
May 06
Love79

Resonating Fugitive Radical Renegades and GHGs

By Energy Rant No Comments
Think you're a climate change genius? Strap in and prepare for whiplash.  To close out last week's post, I referenced a Forbes article, Green Hydrogen's Hype Hits Some Very Expensive Hurdles, which seeded the roots for this week's Energy Rant. It referenced a Cornell University paper claiming carbon capture from the manufacture of blue hydrogen "is energy intensive and leads to even more climate pollution than if CO2 just wafted into the air."  Whoa, ho, Nellie! Does carbon capture result in more emissions and energy consumption than free release of combustion products? The latter isn't surprising, but more emissions are a headliner. I…
Read More
Apr 29
Love79

Theory #2 For Batteries Increasing Emissions

By Energy Rant No Comments
As a glutton for punishment (I look forward to getting past sciatica so I can run marathons again), I tasked myself with getting to the technical bottom of this article from Utility Dive: Energy storage for grid reliability can increase carbon emissions: University of Michigan study. The article doesn't get into the details, so I dived into the source document sponsored by the University of Michigan – a brutal read – like the last miles of a marathon, maybe Heartbreak Hill or Central Park. I spare readers the pain so they can follow along from their La-Z-Boys.  I know enough about wholesale electricity markets to use terminology and…
Read More
Apr 01
Love76

Colors and Costs of Hydrogen vs. Natural Gas

By Energy Rant No Comments
This post features a lot of refined hydrogen content you can't find online. But before I get to hydrogen, here's an update: I always get a little excited to lead news cycles. After publishing Electricity Shortages and What to Do About It last Tuesday evening, The Wall Street Journal published The Coming Electricity Crisis  on Thursday, including the following common threads: I wrote, "In one year (2023 v 2022), the forecast peak load growth for 2028 doubled…" The WSJ wrote, "Projections for U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from a year ago." I wrote, "Growth projections in Georgia,…
Read More
Oct 23
Love51

Micro Rant Harvest

By Energy Rant No Comments
It’s fall, and that means it’s harvest season. So, this week, we’re providing a cornucopia of micro rants and information. I’m Alexa, and I’m Here to Help This headline caught my eye, ‘Alexa, I’m cold’: Government teams up with Amazon for energy saving campaign. The world’s fifth largest company, dominant retailer, data center behemoth, and tech giant partners with the government to use its in-home listening device. What could possibly go wrong? I recommend 1984, the book. EV Repair Black Market The Wall Street Journal reported, via email, that totaled Teslas from Western nations are being shipped to Ukraine and a…
Read More
Apr 05
Love1

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…
Read More
Nov 11
Love0
MISO Graph

Good, Perfect, and Real Carbon Targets – Finale

By Energy Rant No Comments
In this week's Energy Rant, we're covering the final segment of good, perfect, and real carbon targets.There are two sources of carbon-free energy. First, we have the category of renewable with wind, solar, hydro, and some geothermal. Second, we have nuclear. Oops – third, we have efficiency and demand management. The electricity market is bizarre to me. Last week I crudely explained how the regional transmission authorities (RTO) and their twins, independent system operators (ISO), balance the grid in real-time. Power supplied must match demand with very tight tolerances of voltage and frequency at all times. The chart below shows…
Read More
Oct 28
Love0
construction cost

Good, Perfect, and Real Carbon Targets – Part 2

By Energy Rant No Comments
In this week's Energy Rant, we're covering part two of good, perfect, and real carbon targets.Last week we looked at grid-scale energy storage options for a couple of them, namely hydrogen and flywheels; I asked, “What could go wrong?” To be fair, my comment on hydrogen was its use as a buoyant gas to float the Hindenburg. Hydrogen, while very light, is explosively combustible, so putting it in a blimp was crazy. I always like to throw factoids in for budding STEM enthusiasts. Take a helium (non-combustible) balloon on a string, hold it by the string in a moving vehicle.…
Read More
Oct 21
Love0
Gas Turbine Generator

Good, Perfect, and Real Carbon Targets

By Energy Rant No Comments
I recently delivered an electrification presentation for Wisconsin Public Utility Institute’s Energy Utility Basics course. While introducing myself, I said, "I’m an engineer, and I can’t help it." I also said the answer to the question, “Can we ___?” is always, “Yes, it’s just a matter of money.” That led me to briefly discuss politicians, with no background in the subject, declare that “we” (state, city, etc.) will be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2050. The universe is between here and there. When I hear that renewable electricity is cost-competitive with conventional sources like combined-cycle natural gas or even…
Read More
Jul 20
Love0

A Frivolous Novelty

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Stimulus, Sustainability 9 Comments
For this week’s publication, I was trying to think of an expensive, short-lived, duplicative, inconvenient, limited use, frivolous novelty.  Did I mention expensive?  After a half-hour of wonderment, the best I could do is a Homer Simpson bottle opener.   But really the Homer Simpson bottle opener will last longer and at least be useful (note, I didn’t say serve it’s purpose, which is to make people laugh) probably for a far longer period than the electric car. Twenty years ago “they” were talking about developing electric cars, I guess to save us from carbon dioxide, but I don’t recall the…
Read More

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.

Subscribe for Expert Insights
Close Menu