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- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
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- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
Tag Archives: electric grid
Skyscrapers: A bad idea as energy declines
Preface. One reason Paris is such a lovely city is that it was built to human scale, with buildings of five stories or less, because that was about as high as people were willing to climb, so not surprisingly, rents … Continue reading
Posted in Blackouts, Concrete, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Infrastructure & Collapse, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, North Korea
Tagged concrete, electric grid, elevator, high-rise, North Korea, peak oil, skyscraper
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Review of Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you
Preface. My books and energyskeptic.com explain why the electric grid can’t stay up. This is a book review of Makansi’s “Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you”. He explains why the grid is … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid, Energy Books
Tagged blackouts, electric grid, electricity, how it works, stability
1 Comment
How the grid works, why a distributed grid won’t work
Preface. This is a book review of Angwin’s 2020 “Shorting the Grid. The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid”. It is a good primer on how the grid works, especially why Volt-Ampere Reactives (VARs) are important and why renewables don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Grid instability
Tagged Angwin, blackouts, distributed generation, electric grid, solar, wind
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Will Artificial Intelligence destroy us?
Preface. When it comes to artificial intelligence, most articles assume it will happen, so discussions range around when and how it will happen. Often speculation that a general AI may use its ability to find patterns in data will allow … Continue reading
The Texas electric grid outage
Preface. In February of 2021, millions of Texans and Mexicans lost electric power in a hard freeze. Oxer (2021) on the March 2 Power Hungry podcast, said that if the Texas grid had blacked out, it would have taken until … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Grid instability, Pedro Prieto
Tagged electric grid, Prieto, stability, wind
2 Comments
Wanted: Math geniuses and power engineers to make a renewable grid possible
Figure 1. OPF solution of original seven-bus system with generator at bus 4 Preface. The U.S. electric grid produced 64% of electricity in 2019 with finite fossil fuels, and another 20% from nuclear power. Since fossil fuels and uranium are … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Grid instability, Renewable Integration, Smart Grid
Tagged electric grid, electricity, math, renewable integration, solar, stability, wind
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Why wind and solar will cause more blackouts
Preface. Clearly fossil fuel plants need to be replaced with energy storage — batteries, pumped hydro, or compressed air. Many hours of backup power will be needed since, unfortunately, over two-thirds of total wind power in the U.S. happens outside … Continue reading
Posted in Blackouts, Grid instability, National Super Grid
Tagged blackouts, electric grid, energy storage, solar
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The Next Big Thing: Distributed Generation & Microgrids
Preface. Last updated 2022-9-5 The first article below explains what microgrids will look like in the future. But first a brief look at what a microgrid is, as Angwin explains in her book “Shorting the Grid. The Hidden Fragility … Continue reading
Interdependencies & supply chain failures in the News
Preface. Joseph Tainter, explains in his famous book “The collapse of complex societies” how complexity causes civilizations to collapse. Fossil fuels have created the most complex society that has ever, or will ever exist, using fossil energy that can’t be … Continue reading
Posted in Interdependencies, Microchips and computers, Supply Chains
Tagged autos, electric grid, ford, interdependency, microchip, plastic, supply chain
2 Comments
Microchip fabrication plants need electricity 24 x 7 for four months
Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for months to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Intermittent power … Continue reading