Google will guesstimate how much solar power your roof could provide. Now available for most Indiana houses.
Just plan 2 starters for each Reds game. I really like this idea. The Reds need to evaluate a lot of young rotation arms and their bullpen is a dumpster fire.
The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold, 2014
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of pumping water and chemicals down an oil/gas well to crack the shale rock formation many miles underground. The cracks in the shale then release the fossil fuels, which flow up the well and are collected and pipelined to markets. This book does a good job of explaining the process, the market, the opportunity, and the risks of fracking. It is relatively unbiased and has in-depth looks at Chesapeake Energy and efforts at detecting unsuitable cement well-walls that may be leaking gas.
The book was published in 2014, so it does not contain reference to the oil/gas prices drops of the last ~12 months. I think that companies have been in too much of a rush to pump the oil/gas from fracking as fast as possible, and the glut of product into the market has killed the economic benefit of the new reserves. Many of the fracking rigs are now idle, as the lower market price of gas/oil is not enough to justify drilling. The rush has also led to many environmental issues. I’m of the opinion that fracking seems to be an acceptable process overall, but it has been badly planned out by the energy companies and poorly regulated by the government.
“The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” And the fossil fuel age will hopefully end before we run out of carbon sources, as we are really good at finding new sources and their cumulative effect on the planet is not good.
Source: SIREN
Updated abstract for my work with Kyle Cattani and Owen Wu:
Traditionally, energy demand-side management techniques, such as energy efficiency and demand response, are each evaluated in isolation. In this paper, we examine the interactions between long-term energy efficiency upgrades and daily demand response participation at an industrial firm. We find that energy efficiency and demand response act as substitutes in terms of reduction of peak electricity demand, and the long-studied energy efficiency gap between firm-optimal and societal-optimal levels of energy efficiency is smaller when demand response is considered. Using a representative model of the firm’s production and the society’s energy generation, we derive insights into the optimal choices of energy efficiency installation and demand response participation from both the firm’s and societal perspectives. We suggest three approaches to reducing the energy efficiency gap, including an original suggestion that relies upon the interactions between energy efficiency and demand response.
Interesting talk at the Bloomington Data Collective Meetup last night by Zach Dwiel of Plot Watt. Plot Watt uses energy sensors in households and restaurants to find opportunities to save energy. In restaurants, the use cases might be
-discovering that the restaurant’s outdoor lights stay on all night despite the restaurant closing at 10pm
-noticing when the fryer is left on after closing and alerting management
-realizing that the appliances in use are much less energy efficient than similar appliances at other locations
-determining poor installs that are costing energy
-finding poorly specified defaults on the HVAC or refrigeration units.
Zach is part of the software team that is in charge of dis-entangling the differnet signals in the electric load to determine when specific appliances/lights/HVAC are clicking on/off. This is a very difficult problem, and the academic literature has been limited by solid “truth” examples from which to learn/train. Zach discussed how Plot Watt is using machine learning to try to get at the problem. They may have the most data on this problem of anyone.
Related: It looks like a startup may be trying to automate this approach and bring it to more households.
Thanks to Crisson for the invite to the meetup.
Energy Revolution: The Physics and the Promise of Efficient Technologies
by Mara Prentiss, 2015
Written by a professor of physics at Harvard, this book goes headfirst into the physics of generating electricity. The present state of fossil fuel burning is compared to a future powered by renewables. Using back of the envelope math, the author shows that it would be possible to provide 100% of the U.S.’s average energy use from either wind or solar power. This includes the energy used in transportation. The difficulties arise in the intermittency of these resources. With vast advances in energy storage or electricity transmission (to create a larger network to pool active renewables), the future could be powered entirely by affordable renewable power. This blog post provides a version of that argument.
This book is interesting, but a harder read than most of the energy books I’ve read lately. It would have benefited from some more editing to fix the occasional typo and to strengthen and consolidate important sections. One thing I really like, however, is the fact that the arguments of the book are made actionable in Appendix C: “Recommended Steps toward a Renewable Future”.