February 18th, 2025
Via Texas Tribune, a look at how – as the state’s energy demand soars – a pilot program looks to bolster grid with “virtual power plants” fueled by people’s homes On sunny days in the Hill Country, Tom Cook taps open an app on his phone and watches the power generated from the solar panels […]
Read more »Residential Solar Is Becoming Residential Solar + Storage + VPP
November 13th, 2024
Via Volts, an interesting interview examining how residential solar is becoming residential solar + storage + VPP: Hello everyone, this is Volts for November 13, 2024. “Residential solar is becoming residential solar + storage + VPP.” I’m your host, David Roberts. Last month, I was in Brooklyn for the third annual DERvos conference celebrating distributed […]
Read more »September 25th, 2024
Via MIT Technology Review, an article on efforts to connect the U.S.’s grids: Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the Houston-based energy entrepreneur has worked to develop long-haul transmission lines to carry wind power across the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southwest, delivering clean electricity […]
Read more »What Happens When A Concrete Jungle Becomes A ‘Sponge City’
September 6th, 2024
Via High Country News, a look at how engineering for flood resilience can address storms heightened by climate change. The living roof of the H2 Hotel in Healdsburg, California, both cools the building and mitigates rainwater runoff.John D. Ivanko/Alamy Stock Photo In early February, meteorologists warned Southern Californians that a supercharged storm was headed their way, […]
Read more »September 3rd, 2024
Via The Economist, a report on grid-scale batteries: Decarbonising the world’s electricity supply will take more than solar panels and wind turbines, which rely on sunshine and a steady breeze to generate power. Grid-scale storage offers a solution to this intermittency problem, but there is too little of it about. The International Energy Agency (IEA), an […]
Read more »Using Market Power To Save Great Salt Lake
August 29th, 2024
Via PERC, a look at how water markets could be utilized to help rescue Great Salt Lake: When the sculptor Robert Smithson began laying down rocks at a place called Rozel Point, a nub of shoreline encircling the Great Salt Lake, he had no idea that one day his twisting, turning creation called Spiral […]
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