Tag Archives: Clean Energy

New Poll on US Voters Thinking on Energy

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A poll commissioned by the Center for American Progress on US citizen’s thought about energy has been released. The key findings are:

  • Promoting the development of renewable energy sources is a leading item
    on the public’s energy agenda, and five in nine voters want the federal
    government to do more than it currently is to promote sources such as wind
    and solar power.
  • While voters support increased reliance on natural gas in the coming years, by a two-to-one margin they put a higher priority on protecting public lands
    and natural places from overdevelopment than on opportunities for oil and
    natural gas drilling on public lands.
  • Two frames for setting energy policy have strong resonance with the public:
  • A BALANCED energy policy that addresses energy independence while
    better protecting public health, public lands, and clean drinking water;
    and
  • A CLEAN energy policy that promotes innovation and manufacturing
    jobs while spending the transition to cleaner renewable forms of energy.
    Both of these frames have stronger appeal than an “ALL OF THE ABOVE”
    energy frame
  • In addition to renewable energy, large majorities support other progressive policy initiatives, including:
    • Strengthening protections against pollution of drinking water and clean
      air; and
    • Permanently protecting special public lands for future generations.
  • Conversely, majorities strongly oppose key initiatives that the new
    leadership in Congress is expected to push that would weaken protection for drinking water and clean air, sell off some national forests or other public
    lands, and allow drilling on highly valued recreation lands.
  • Americans strongly oppose lifting the restrictions on oil exports, both on an unaided basis and after hearing point-counterpoint arguments on the topic.
  • Focusing on ties to Big Oil and the Congress’s continued support for
    taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuel industries is a compelling frame against an
    anti-environment, fossil fuels agenda in Congress.

    • Voters want the federal government to do more to promote both energy independence and renewable energy (keep in mind that for the most part, renewable energy leads to more independence): Continue reading New Poll on US Voters Thinking on Energy →

    Saint Paul Saints Building With Solar Power

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    You all know about the Saint Paul Aints. No, wait, I mean Saint Paul Saints. This is a local baseball team here in the Twin Cities. They are building a new stadium (much needed) right in the middle of Saint Paul to replace their old stadium out by the railroad tracks.

    What you may not know is that the Saints Stadium is going to be one of the greener sports stadiums built. Other people building stadiums should take note. From MPR News:

    St. Paul Saints stadium builders aim to make it a ‘green’ field

    … When the $62 million stadium opens in May, the home of the city’s minor league baseball team will take a major step forward as an environmentally friendly sports facility.

    A canopy of photovoltaic solar panels next to the baseball field will generate 103 kilowatts of power for Minnesota’s newest sports complex, a 7,000-seat facility owned by the city of St. Paul.

    “We think it’s going to be the third largest solar array at a sports facility in the U.S,” project manager Paul Johnson said.

    That’s only about a tenth of the power needed to run the lights and meet the energy needs for the rest of the stadium. But it will be a high-profile alternative to conventional electric power. The baseball scoreboard is expected to tout the solar power generated along with the score. Its panels also will shade a group dining area.

    Other features will include a storm water filtration system that will take drainage from the nearby Metro Transit maintenance facility roof and use it to irrigate the turf at CHS Field. Rain water also will be diverted to flush 10 percent of the toilets in the restrooms.

    …

    Making the stadium environmentally friendly came with a cost. The solar project added an additional $600,000 to the project, and the storm water system added an estimated $450,000. But grants are covering the extra cost.

    Still, the price tag on the solar project has drawn skepticism even from some environmentalists.

    Eric Jensen, senior energy associate for the Izaak Walton League of the Midwest, is encouraged that solar energy will receive such a high-profile installation and that more people will see a practical use for it. But he said the funding from Xcel Energy would have gone further on other projects.

    “This is the highest dollar per watt,” Jensen said. “It’s the most expensive dollar per watt project.”

    But Gerken, the project architect, thinks even seasonal use of environmentally-friendly facilities can inspire the public to think differently. He cites light rail service at Target Field.

    “Many people’s first experience with Metro Transit and the light rail was ‘hey, let’s go to a Twins Game,'” he said. “And now they’re used to it, they know about it. … It’s an option to go to the airport; it’s an option to go to the Mall of America.”

    Ann Hunt, environmental policy director for the city of St. Paul, said the innovative stadium features aren’t just demonstration projects but part of a larger effort across the city’s public sector. Another example of the city’s environmental focus, she said, is the solar hot water system for the RiverCentre convention center. Hunt said it’s one of the biggest in the Midwest.

    “This installation heats hot water to help heat the RiverCentre complex and the Xcel Energy complex and provide domestic hot water for that facility,” she said.

    Saline Church Uses Solar For The Majority Of Electric Needs

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    Saline is a small town in Michigan, just under 9,000 people. As the name might suggest, it is the site of a natural salt source used by Native Americans, later explorers and traders. Today the big industry there is auto parts, but the University of Michigan provides many jobs there as well.

    The First Presbyterian Church of Saline has covered much of their roof with a big solar array capable of covering well over half of their electricity needs.

    From the Saline Reporter:

    In early August, a 15 kilowatt, 56-panel system was installed… Officials recently received their first utility bill from DTE, which showed more than a 70 percent savings, said Chip Manchester, founding member of the church’s Environmental Stewardship group.

    During the September billing period, the panels generated 2,160 kilowatt hours, which is more than 70 percent of the energy needed to power the 2,800 square-foot building for the month. The electricity bill at the church went from $350 to $75, he said.

    “It (the bill) was definitely a pleasant surprise, it’s one thing to have it promised but it’s another thing to have it realized,” said Kurt Leutheuser, finance elder with the church.

    The $45,000 system is projected to fund about two thirds of the church’s electrical use throughout the year, last 25 years and pay for itself in 13 years. It was financed by the nearly 300-person congregation with the average contribution being close to $1,000, Manchester said.

    Small town getting a good way off the carbon-based grid

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    Geneseo, Illinois is a small town with fewer than 7,000 people. They plan to meet about half their electricity needs, on a good day (windy, sunny) with clean energy, after the installation of some new cool technology.

    From the Dispatch Argus:

    City officials have been notified of a $1 million grant for a one-megawatt solar energy array from the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation.

    Total cost of the project is expected to be $2 to $2.5 million. Under the project, renewable energy would provide about half the city’s daily nine-megawatt appetite for power — enough for about 220 homes — between the one-megawatt solar system and the three megawatts from the city’s two wind turbines on an ideal day.

    The council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize Mayor Nadine Palmgren to sign an agreement with the foundation for the grant. Ald. Howard Beck, 3rd Ward, was absent.

    Council approval also will be needed for funding, seeking bids and awarding the project, according to electric superintendent Lewis Opsal.

    Geneseo’s solar array would be located on five acres now a soybean field at the foot of the city’s wind turbines, where it would connect to an existing substation.

    “It would be great for reducing our transmission costs,” said Mr. Opsal. “There is a long line of people very interested in that grant. It’s a perfect project for Geneseo.”

    Kathy Allen, of Geneseo, questioned if the project would lower power bills in the city. Mr. Opsal said, hopefully, the city would be able to hold costs steady. He noted a large utility recently raised rates 23 percent and U.S. power rates could double in the future because of the closure of high-emission plants.

    Giant Batteries in Chicago

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    An example of Clean Energy marching forward:

    Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc., better known as RES Americas, said Tuesday it will build two of the largest commercial-sized energy storage projects in North America.

    RES, a wind farm developer based in Broomfield, Colorado, said the two projects will be built outside of Chicago, and once completed in 2015, will be capable of storing a total of 19.8 megawatts of power to support the local Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) electricity grid.

    These batteries will be on line, or should I say, inserted into the back of Chicago behind a giant plastic plate held in by a huge screw (I assume). by August 2015, and they will operate for ten years.

    Details here.

    Kansas Governor’s Race and Clean Energy

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    Climate change and clean energy seem to be playing a role in the Kansas Governor’s race. Ari Phillips at ThinkProgress has a post on the race. The issue is preservation vs. abrogation of the Kansas Renewable Portfolio Standard, a state law that requires a certain amount of Kansas energy to be “renewable.” The Koch’s have spent considerable effort and money to have the law repealed. Democratic candidate Paul Davis says he will veto any effort to repeal the law. Brownback formerly supported the law but his support apparently has shifted under the Pressure that Refreshes (Koch).

    Davis said the RPS repeal is being championed by a very narrow group of far right special interests with heavy investments in the oil industry. He said this is despite the fact that the policy remains incredibly popular among everyday Kansans and public and private sector leaders who understand the importance of diversifying the state’s energy portfolio. In fact, Kansas’ RPS — which requires investor-owned utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020 — is almost entirely fulfilled several years ahead of schedule.

    “Frankly, the RPS has become controversial because those who want to repeal the RPS have poured millions into Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign, which has caused him to suddenly change his position,” said Davis.

    Phillips points out an interesting irony. Kansas, the state, is named after a Native American tribe whose name translates roughly as “People of the Wind.” And, we all know about the famous Tornadoes in Kansas that are capable of whisking a young girls and their dogs to far away lands!

    See Phillips post for a lot more information on the popular and business based support of the renewable energy law that the GOP is now being paid to get rid of.

    Checking Real Clear Politics, the race is at present close, following a period of wild swings in polling results:

    Kansas_Governor_Davis_Brownback_Polls

    Since an earlier attempt to repeal the law failed, the Koch’s have pulled support away from the GOP incumbent. This pattern has apparently played out at the level of state legislative elections as well.

    So, we have a business-friendly and popular law, equivocal support or lack thereof by the GOP incumbent, a Democrat who supports the pro-clean energy law running against the incumbent, and a tight election. It may be the case that if Paul Davis wins, it will be an election where Climate Change and Clean Energy mattered.

    Should you buy a hybrid car?

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    Last summer we were driving up north, in our Prius, and one of those coal rollers tailgated us for a while, then passed us. On the right. On the median. Jerk.

    When we were trying to decide whether or not to buy a Prius, last winter, I looked into the usual things one looks into. I learned from the internet and various people that we’d never recover the extra cost of buying a Prius, because they were so expensive. So I got a little information together and called a dealer.

    “I’m thinking of buying either a Subaru Forester to replace our old and beat up Forester, or a Prius. But I’ve been told we won’t recover the costs with the mileage savings,etc., so I thought I’d give you a chance to convince me that is wrong.”

    “A Subaru Forester costs a few thousand dollars more than a Prius, so by buying a cheaper car, you will recover the costs on day one. Then, you’ll use half the gas forever. So yes, come on in!”

    I double checked and he was right. Plus, there are additional advantages to driving a Prius. Like the coal rollers. We can be amused by coal rollers.

    Anyway, there is a new study out and a great blog post about that study. The blog post is so good I won’t bother spending much time on this other than to point you to it (below). But first I wanted to show you this graph I made, based on the data provided in that study:

    Price of gas goes up, more people buying hybrids. You can't explain that!
    Price of gas goes up, more people buying hybrids. You can’t explain that!

    Anyway, the blog post about the study is: Prius pushback: Hybrid inspires some hatred

    I think someone should make an all electric car (plugin) with a small biodiesel generator. And a solar pane on the roof that runs a small ventilation system for when you are parked in the sun. I want that to be my next car. Made in America by union workers would be nice.

    Thinking Big About Clean Energy

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    I want to put a solar panel on my roof so that I am releasing less greenhouse gas into the environment. But then I hear that manufacturing solar panels causes the release of greenhouse gasses, so I have to subtract that from the good I think I’m doing. But then I realize that the people who are making the solar panels have to change their method so they release less greenhouse gas into the environment.

    We hear this argument all the time (for example, here). You think you are doing something “green” but it really isn’t green because yadayadayada. I am suspicious of these arguments because they often (though not always) come from people who want us all to keep using fossil Carbon based fuels, for some (unsupportable) reason or another. One might think that these arguments have to be addressed in order to do a rational and well thought out analysis of the decisions you make.

    But that is simply not true for three reasons.

    Reason One: So what? Nobody tells me I have to make a rational decision about buying the 72 inch wide TV to replace my 64 inch wide TV, but suddenly I’m a bad person if I don’t do a detailed Carbon-based cost benefit analysis when I want to do something EVEN COOLER than having a bigger TV, like putting a freakin’ cool solar panel on my roof? Excuse me, but STFU with our rational argument yammering.

    Reason Two: You can’t count. If I put a solar panel on my roof, almost no one is going to discount the value of my house because it gets some free electricity, but a significant number of people are going to pay more for it when I sell it because it is cool. See reason one.

    So when I put these together, my personal cost benefit analysis leans towards doing it more than the nay sayers might say. But still, if putting up a solar panel kills more polar bears than not putting up a solar panel, because the manufacturers of solar panels use thousand of tons of coal per square inch of solar panel, I’ve got to consider not doing it. Except for reason three.

    Reason Three: If we all refuse to act until everyone else acts than we will not act. I will buy whatever solar panel I want, and the people who make solar panels can compete for my business by getting the energy to make their solar panels from … solar panels! Or not. Eventually they will because we ALL have to stop using ALL of the Carbon. Driving an electric car in a region where more coal is used to make electricity, would have to be MUCH less efficient than not driving the electric car (in terms of carbon release) to make me think twice about it. I’ll drive my electric car and at the same time we’ll watch the electricity companies make more and more of their electricity from wind and solar, and they will have a bigger market to sell that in because we are locally replacing gas with electricity. Of course, I will need the electric car to get cheaper before I can get one, but if I had one, that is what I would be thinking.

    I’ve had conversations about this issue with a lot of people and these conversations have made me realize that the structural argument against clean energy is wrong for the reasons stated above. It turns out that A. Siegel has had similar arguments and he has had similar thought. It is possible that he and I have even talked about this and are pretty much on the same page. Go read To solar carport or not to carport, that is the (or at least a) question … and see what you think!

    The naysayers want you to think small, but they make it look like thinking big. Instead of just calculating the immediate costs, consider also the distant polar bears crushed by the wheels of industry because you want a solar panel, they advise! But no, think even bigger. Think not only along dimensions of production and supply, but also, time and socioeconomic change. In order to address the climate crisis, we have to keep the Carbon in the ground. In order to keep the Carbon in the ground, everybody has to do everything they can do all the time, and not sit on their hands waiting for some other guy to change a value in our spreadsheet. Think big.

    No Coal in Minnesota

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    Governor Mark Dayton has called for the elimination of coal as a source of energy in Minnesota. Doing so is, clearly, essential. Having a governor call for it is a new thing; we are only seeing this sort of policy being developed recently.

    From MPR News, Dayton said to a group of energy policy ad business leaders:

    “Tell us what a timeline would look like, what has to happen for that timeline to be met and what kind of incentives or inducements do we need to provide to make that happen,” …

    Dayton’s comments came during the state’s first-ever Clean Energy Economy Summit. He said converting coal plants to users of natural gas should continue, along with investments in renewable energy.

    Only 46% of the state’s electricity is currently generated by coal, and alternative energy sources have been growing in their contribution. Over 14,000 Minnesotans are employed in the clean energy business, much of that in the area of energy efficiency.

    Refocusing on clean energy is good business sense.

    David Mortenson, president of Mortenson Construction, said his company and others are embracing renewable energy as a cost-competitive solution. He said the cost of wind and solar has dropped while coal and natural gas markets become increasingly volatile.

    “And when you can guarantee the price of delivering a kilowatt 20 years from today, because that’s what you can do with solar and wind, you have a competitive advantage because coal, natural gas, they can’t tell you want the cost to produce power in six months will be,” he said

    Energy and Climate Change Items of Interest

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    Every one of these is a topic I’d like to write an entire blog post about but I don’t have time right now. So, YOU write the blog post!

    In Michigan there is an emerging debate and discussion about using the Vast Forests in that state to provide energy. This is a good idea because it does not involve the release of fossil Carbon from fossil fuels. It is a bad idea because it involves the release of Carbon currently trapped in a medium term and important Carbon sink. It is interesting because it highlights a key feature of the whole energy and climate change thing. Sun makes burnable stuff, we burn it. This is just another version of this where we would be relying on trees, and on whatever level of efficiency forests provide. I assume we can build a better mousetrap than this.

    In Minnesota, Xcel Energy has broken a record:

    MINNEAPOLIS — Xcel Energy issued a press release Wednesday declaring that it had achieved a milestone when 46 percent of customers’ electricity needs in the Upper Midwest were met by wind energy at 3 a.m. Sunday.

    That’s an all-time high for Xcel, which recently was named the nation’s top wind power provider for the 10th straight year. At the time of the record, 1,622 of 3,512 megawatts were being produced by wind turbines.

    It has been windy in Minnesota over the last few days! Anyway, details here.

    When an oil spill or similar environmental disaster happens we are assured that new technologies will make such a thing much more unlikely in the future. Well, “New “Safer” Tank Cars Were Involved in Lynchburg, VA, Oil Train Fire.”

    And while we are speaking of accidents, “Accident Leads to Scrutiny of Oil Sand Production” and “Fracking disposal wells may cause quakes 30 miles away, researchers say“.

    Climate change and President Obama’s legacy:

    The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year.

    “It was a ‘Houston, we have a problem’ moment,” recalled White House counselor John D. Podesta, one of two aides who briefed the president that February day. Obama mentioned the images several times as he warned the governors that political leaders had no choice but to cope with global warming’s impact.

    Read Juliet Eilperin’s interesting essay in the Washington Post.

    Hydro power is “Carbon Free” but also can be environmentally destructive, and it only provides a small amount of our electricity. But, we could in theory get more. A “DOE study suggests America’s rivers are troves of vast untapped hydropower potential and developing many of them could help combat climate change by using renewable energy to reduce reliance on coal-fired power plants that emit climate-changing greenhouse gases.” Climate Central item is HERE.

    And finally, Some see proposed wind farm as a threat in Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge. I’ve been planning to write up a 10,000 Birds post updating this topic, so maybe that will be my next post there. In the mean time I want to make a proposal. Invent a wind turbine that is very visible to birds. It will be less efficient than other turbines. So what? We need the clean energy, we can pay more for some of it. Just invent the damn thing. I have a design in mind, if you are a serious engineers in the wind power area contact me and I’ll tell you how it works. We’ll share the patent.

    Clean Energy Tipping Point

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    Investment in and development of clean energy seems to be undergoing a transition, and this is reflected in a number of items that came across my desk this morning. Without attempting any serious analysis, here’s a brief summary.

    Clean Energy investments have fallen over the last couple of years, leading some to assert that the transition to non fossil sources of energy is in trouble. But there is an excellent argument that the exact opposite is true. What has really happened is that the cost of implementing new clean energy projects has dropped dramatically, so the cost of investment has dropped dramatically. Therefore, the absolute cost of investment can drop while the effective level of investment … in terms of units of energy … goes up.

    From an article in World Resources Institute’s blog, by Letha Tawney, Bharath Jairaj and Xuege (Cathy) Lu:

    The recent fall in clean tech investments is partly driven by the fact that renewable energy has become much cheaper in the past few years. You can buy more energy output for less cash than you could have two or four years ago. At the 2014 Future of Energy Summit earlier this month, Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), said that roughly 80 percent of the reduced investment in clean energy over the last two years is due to these price reductions. Solar module prices, for example, have declined by about 80 percent since 2008. Increased competition among wind energy suppliers has also reduced prices. Research from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) finds that wind energy prices could drop from 10-30 percent further in the medium to long-term.

    Meanwhile, from Scientific American’s ClimateWire, we learn that Solar Power Grows 200 Percent in Only 4 Years.

    Driven by an explosion in photovoltaics, the U.S. solar sector has emerged “from a relatively small contributor to the nation’s total electric capacity into a one of comparative significance,” the Energy Information Administration reported this week in its latest Electricity Monthly Update.

    Since 2010, EIA said, U.S. solar capacity increased 418 percent from 2,326 megawatts, accounting for 0.2 percent of total U.S. electric generation, to today’s 12,057 MW, or 1.13 percent of U.S. generation.

    Over half of this capacity increase has occured in home and businesses involved in utility net metering programs whereby excess production is sold to the utility at reasonable rates. A good deal of this has occurred in California (38% of the US total).

    It would make sense for Libertarian-leaning individuals, such as those who make up the Tea Party, to be on board with this sort of thing because it fits with their philosophy so well. One wonders, then, why the right wing is so opposed to even recognizing the importance of climate change, let alone doing something about it. But it turns out that the logic of home grown energy has not been entirely lost on that sector of society. According to an item in Slate by Josh Voorhees,

    Last week…klahoma lawmakers quietly voted to reverse a nearly four-decade-old law that had barred utility companies from charging customers who install solar panels on their homes more than those who don’t. The bill… would have effectively cleared the way for utilities in the Sooner State to force homeowners who install solar panels to pay for both the electricity they buy from the grid and for a portion of the electricity they sell back to it.

    The vote marked a rare victory for power companies in their quest to stymie the growth of the rooftop solar industry. It also represented a sharp departure from the wave of well-publicized, big-dollar federal and state efforts currently aimed at making solar energy cost competitive with more traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas…

    Then, on Tuesday, to the surprise of pretty much everyone involved, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Mary Fallin, issued an executive order largely undercutting the provision, dealing an unexpected defeat to major utilities and their deep-pocketed backers—a group that includes the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful national membership group for conservative state lawmakers.

    So, there you go.

    Calculating The Carbon Cost Of … well, anything.

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    There is currently a twitter argument happening, along with a bit of a blogging swarm, over a chimera of a remark made by John Stossle and Bjorn Lomborg. They made the claim that a million electric cars would have no benefit with resect to Carbon emissions. The crux of the argument is that there is a Carbon cost to manufacturing and running electric cars. When we manufacture anything, we emit Carbon, and when we make electricity to run the cars, we emit Carbon, etc. etc.

    Lomborg is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here I want to focus on one aspect of why he is wrong that applies generally to this sort of topic.

    My point is very simple, really. We can take any green and clean technology, such as making Ethanol from corn (to replace gasoline produced from fossil fuels), or building windmills, or running electric cars on juice produced in coal plants, and so on, and count the fossil Carbon released by the process against the savings of Carbon by the process. But that is wrong. The reason it is wrong is that we need to keep the Carbon in the ground. If there is fossil Carbon being released by a coal plant that is running, ultimately, electric cars (or buses or trains) than there is a savings for the simple reason that running vehicles with electricity is a) more inherently efficient than using countless tiny explosions of fossil fuel, and b) almost always uses a mix of non-fossil-carbon energy sources such as wind power, hydro, nuclear, and solar. But that is not the point. The point is that ultimately we have to change the energy source from coal and natural gas to other sources. When we see a variable in the Carbon savings for a given technology that involves releasing fossil carbon, we have to hunt down that source and change it to non-fossil energy production. We need to build the electric cars in plants that are run on non-fossil energy, and use materials that are obtained, shipped, and processed with non-fossil energy, and run the vehicles on electricity made with non-fossil sources.

    And increasingly, this is happening. If you have a plug in EV car now, there is an increasing number of places where you can plug the thing in and get non-fossil fuel juice to charge it up. This of course is developing too slowly. Every park and ride lot, the big giant parking lot at the mall, and your garage, should all have solar cells on the roof to provide at least some of the energy used to charge cars that plug in for some juice. Individual home owners should opt, where possible, to buy wind generated energy over fossil fuel generated energy. And so on.

    The argument that “you can’t do this thing to avoid using fossil fuels because the thing uses fossil fuels” is countered by the argument that “if you are using fossil fuels than you need to find a way to not use fossil fuels.” The entire argument that the use of fossil fuels is involved in the non-use of fossil fuels is real, but temporary, and is really nothing other than an argument to not use fossil fuels in ALL areas we are currently using them, eventually.

    I want my flying electric car! Forget the jet pack.

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    If we, Western Civilization, had started out with electric cars, and a century later someone came along with the idea of exploding little dollops of gasoline mixed with air to propel them, that person would be thought insane.

    Depending on price, the cost of energy to propel an electric car a given distance can be about 5% of the cost to propel a gas-explosion style car. The electricity to power the electric car can be produced in any number of ways, some icky some cleaner, but much more efficiently. Some of that energy can be generated where the car is parked, at home or work, under a Photoage, a structure with photo cells that serves as a garage. Since most cars just sit there for much of the day, this can be a significant amount. Meanwhile, the car’s batteries can be part of the smart grid, the top 15% or so being used by the grid to store/use electricity keeping supply and demand closer.

    I used to think the inefficiency of making all the volts in big giant plants and sending it out over wires obviated all of this but experts tell me this is not true. Also, as the grid becomes more and more localized, and it becomes more and more normal to fit homes or other buildings with solar and use batteries, etc., the source becomes closer to supply. But really, it may be the difference between generating a magnetic field from available electric potential vs. causing a series of explosions inside a big heavy metal thing that matters most.

    (This brief comment was prompted by Don Prothero‘s post of the image at the top of the post on Facebook.)