Good Clean Energy Fun
Some Onion-style updates on AI, Tariffs, Waymo, and VPPs.
I’ve been waking up at night worrying about stuff recently (the obvious stuff). To relax and get back to sleep, I started writing clean energy parody headlines in my head (a la The Onion) to crack myself up. It was my wife’s idea, and it’s been working. Here’s a few of my first attempts, plus some real news too:
Microsoft To Power AI With Peloton Partnership
The frantic, desperate race to power AI is on.
This week, Microsoft announced a huge, multi-billion dollar deal to resurrect a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to provide clean power for its AI data centers. This was a surprise, because 1) TMI is associated with one of the worlds worst nuclear disasters, and 2) resurrecting old nuclear reactors is not particularly cost efficient compared to building new clean renewables and storage.
People are freaking out about surging electricity demands from AI, though it could be a false alarm: AI chips are getting more energy efficient quickly. Utilities are using this as an excuse to built lots more gas plants (large profits + methane emissions). And AI giants like Microsoft are casting around for anything they can call green to power all these new data centers. Stay tuned for more surprises, even if networking Peloton bikes isn’t among them.
Related: ‘AI’s Grid Impact Not Causing Teen Anxiety, Says Surgeon General’
U.S. Launches Tariffs Against Chinese Cupholders
Will tariffs help us catch up, or just fall further behind?
The U.S. recently erected steep tariffs against Chinese EVs (and as of this week, Chinese EV software), in advance of the coming onslaught of cheap, high quality Chinese EVs. And the Europeans are doing the same. This is a great political move, given the political power of autoworkers, and growing populist antipathy against the Chinese.
But will putting up these walls really help us keep pace with China in the race to master these key technologies (which have military applications as well)? I doubt it. Rather than buying western automakers time to catch up, I think it might just buy more time to be complacent and move slowly. While also depriving domestic consumers of a competitive market for EVs.
Related: ‘Man Uses Local Fast Charging Station Without Incident’
Waymo Riders Miss Hearing Driver Talk To Random Cousin
Autonomy is scaling; is that good for electrification?
If you drive into San Francisco these days, you’ll notice that driverless Waymo taxis are everywhere - it’s very strange. The company recently said they’re providing 100,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S. Apparently people really like robotaxis, because they’re intellectually fascinating, quiet and peaceful, and you can do almost anything you want in them. One woman’s even making money off a live cam of a Waymo parking lot.
So I guess autonomy is actually going to scale, much sooner than I thought. Some combo of Lidar getting cheaper and better, and effective coordination with local authorities like fire departments has won the day. Will this mean that EV share-of-rides grows faster than expected, since all the Waymos are electric? How many fossil-fueled Ubers are those 100,000 rides a week replacing? I’d love to see that data.
Related: ‘Autonomous Solar Panels Can Now Drive Themselves To Sunny Spots’
Geothermal Project Strikes Gold, Disappointing Investors Who Wanted Hot Water
Actually, there’s gold in the water.
I wrote in detail about geothermal in March, but there’s been a big breakthrough since that’s worth mentioning. Fervo Energy’s recently completed Cape Station project in Utah is apparently producing flows of hot water at three times the output of the company’s other wells, and at levels that industry experts didn’t expect would be possible until 2035.
This is great news, given that lots of other clean energy stuff (EVs, grid interconnections, wind) is going slower than hoped for. Enhanced geothermal power will likely require less land than solar or wind, thus enabling clean electricity generation closer to demand centers and loads, and avoiding transmission bottlenecks and delays.
Related: ‘Squirrels Challenge Power Line Undergrounding In Court’
Painting of Virtual Power Plant Sells For $5 At Auction
VPPs have huge potential, but American utilities aren’t bidding.
Virtual power plants (VPPs) get talked up constantly by climate tech insiders and the media. The pitch is this: they could provide a lot of the peak demand power the grid needs, without us having to build lots of new power plants.
In plain English, VPPs just mean a software-coordinated system where batteries and solar panels in homes and business can feed power back to the grid when it’s most needed. But there’s a problem: most American utilities view VPPs as competition, and don’t want to bid very much (or at all) to buy VPP power. They want to keep building centralized power plants, which they can ring the cash register on.
But the days of this foot-dragging may be numbered. Pressure is building, even in conservative states like Texas, to move faster on VPPs. Great news… for more info, see these articles in Bloomberg, Utility Dive, PV Magazine, and FT.
Related: ‘Electric School Buses Power Teachers Room During Outage’
That’s all for now, folks. Thanks for humoring my humor.