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Mar 26
Love72

Electricity Shortages and What to Do About It

By Energy Rant No Comments
Some folks pin excessive weight on the federal government’s influence over our efficiency and load management industries. Even though billions/trillions of dollars are allocated through the “Inflation Reduction Act” and “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” those funds are fleeting. What’s more enduring? Rising electricity prices and load-balancing authorities are pushing for more baseload generation and transmission-line construction – things that are always met with stiff resistance by state and local governments and stakeholder groups. Utility Dive recently reported that electricity prices outpaced the broader U.S. consumer price index. Well, gee, why would this happen? Have fuel prices increased? No. You’d think electricity prices…
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Dec 12
Love59

Decarbonize and Reduce Costs with Dynamic Pricing

By Energy Rant No Comments
Market Prices Continuing from last week, how do we cost-effectively decarbonize the grid at a continental scale? Start with baseload nuclear power and, from there, load management. To achieve optimal load management to keep electricity costs low for customers, customers must see market prices in short-term forecasts, like weekly, day-ahead, or even near-real-time pricing. Tariffs, or rates today, are relics of the analog days when utilities deployed armies of people in pickup trucks to run around and manually read meters. When I was a kid, my dad tasked me with reading meters on building sites away from the home site.…
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Nov 20
Love56

Case Studies in Decarbed Electricity

By Energy Rant No Comments
A colleague recommended a podcast, The Diary of a CEO, with Steven Bartlett. I especially resonated with the message from the “Savings Expert” episode dated November 6, 2023. The guest is an author who said, “I write for an audience of one, and that is me.” He calls it selfish writing. “I don’t write for this person or that person or group. I write what I’m interested in and in a way that I think is interesting. I try to solve my own problems. If it will help me, maybe it will help somebody else.” He said the traditional writing…
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Nov 14
Love54

Freeze on Nuclear Power is Thawing

By Energy Rant No Comments
It seems the laggards are finally realizing the planned energy transition to renewables and battery storage – maybe even throwing in a few million miles of 345 kV transmission lines – will not deliver reliable, affordable power. Miami Herald headline: Half of US at risk of losing power in winter due to strains on power grid. The article notes that “half” is up from a quarter just a year ago. It also reports that during last year’s Christmas Cliffhanger known as Elliot, natural gas generators (the bridge to nowhere) broke down or couldn’t get fuel. I called this shot reverse…
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Mar 13
Love18
Image shows text, "The Anxious Leader and Li-Ion Batteries," along with 2 graphics of electric bicycles.

The Anxious Leader and Li-Ion Batteries

By Energy Rant No Comments
One of the nasty results of the Covid lockdowns was the meteoric growth of electric bikes. I thought, great. Let’s take the only means of exercise for some people and power it with a battery and motor to take away physical propulsion via the human body. Would you like to see a graphical representation of exponential growth? The following chart satisfies your craving to show e-bike fires in New York City alone. In an article published by The Wall Street Journal last week, New York Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh is quoted, “These are incredibly dangerous devices if they are unregulated…
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Feb 28
Love17

1,500 Pages of Deregulation

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I mentioned genuine intelligence over artificial happy-talk intelligence. Want to know what the latter looks like? See this Forbes article in which data solves all problems, including heating and cooling buildings. “There is an opportunity to build the foundations of a long-term digital strategy for buildings in all industries, to achieve decarbonization goals, reduce energy use and running costs, and boost resiliency and competitiveness.” How many Btus of energy are in a terabyte anyway? Harnessing data, plus actionable analytics, which is rare, can help shave 10% or even 20% off energy costs. Still, it must be integrated with…
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Nov 15
Love4

COP27, Elites, and Engineers

By Energy Rant No Comments
I have run enough marathons to have lost count, most of them in the last ten years, with the total approaching 20. Why would you do that, Jeff? I like the grind, double, especially when I can run negative splits and pass people the entire race rather than being passed the whole race. I’ve done both about equally. I guessed that winning marathon times had not changed much in forty years. Wikipedia confirms this with finishing times at the NYC marathon. Americans Bill Rogers and Alberto Salazar finished with the same times back in the 1970s and early 1980s as…
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Oct 11
Love4

Phony Avoided Cost Models in a Free-Agent Market

By Energy Rant No Comments
The last two posts, Nuclear Power over the White Rabbit and the Clean Power Plan Corpse, demonstrated the fruits of an undiversified baseload fleet of power generation. Electricity prices, which were so low during most of my career that few cared about them, are soaring as natural gas - the basket in which all eggs lie - has become a global fuel. I predicted this as recently as 2017; Reverse Diversification Coming to a Utility Near You. Solar, wind, and storage will never compete with thermal baseload power generation in our lifetimes. I’m covering three things in this post due…
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Jul 25
Love2

Electrification at Scale

By Energy Rant No Comments
Two weeks ago, I wrote the “electric storage industry that is grabbing all they can before someone figures out that will never be the answer to bridging gaps of intermittent renewables.” Time’s up. Utility Dive last week quoted a North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) spokesman: “Batteries aren’t going to do it, and we’re going to need a backup fuel for wind and solar. So this is important to invest in.” The rest of this post includes a dive into consumer choice and what things might look like at scale. Consumer News In fresh news from Holman Jenkins of The…
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Aug 27
Love0
energy

Soaked to Crisp Threats and 100% Renewable Energy

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I attended the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference, IEPEC, which I had affectionately dubbed the Energy Program Evaluation Asylum, EPEA, six years ago. Back then, I called it the Asylum because it included annual scrums over subjects such as net-to-gross (NTG) studies, free ridership, and so on. The Family Feud is Dead You’ll never believe this, but the industry seems to have moved on. The only time I heard “NTG” was during the opening-night entertainment exercise – a gameshow wannabee modeled after the Family Feud. “One hundred evaluators were surveyed. The top six answers are on the board.…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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