Above, clean up in Highmore, South Dakota.
Is this just the opening shot?
Below, YouTube Meteorologist Max Velocity discusses the storm, and the setup for coming days as a giant heat dome settles over the Eastern US.
Below, more on “Ring of Fire” configuration.
Continue reading “Clean up After Violent South Dakota Storm, and Coming Ring of Fire”
Insane maybe, but not unexpected.
130 mph winds would be a Cat 4 Hurricane, FYI.
THIS IS INSANE! 130 MPH winds destroyed windmills in South Dakota this morning. This is very rare. We hardly ever see windmills take this much damage from straight-line damaging winds. But when you push over 110 MPH winds, it becomes a lot easier for the windmills to crumble. Photos via Storm Chaser Jakob McMillin
More reports of widespread damage from tornado-force straight line winds below.
Continue reading “131 mph Straight Line Winds Knock Down Wind Turbines, Silos, Barns in S. Dakota”Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:
There are several major concerns people have about Data Centers – the first, of course, is that AI becomes self aware, “Terminator” style, and decides human beings are inconvenient.
Let the record show that I am against sentient killer robots, and in favor of comprehensive regulation of the technology, and the Billionaire Tech Bros that control it.
That said, given that all of us are increasingly dependent on Data Centers and AI, what are the major concerns about that physical infrastructure?
First is availability of power, and will Data Centers cause electric bills to rise?
The answer, according to a study from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, is “not necessarily”.
While Data Centers are associated with higher rates in some states, in a larger number of states, rates have gone down.
The biggest drivers of higher electric rates, they say, are the cost of upgrading decrepit grid infrastructure, the volatility of natural gas prices, and climate driven extreme weather.
Increased electric demand, even from Data Centers, is associated in many states with lower prices, since more customers can spread costs of infrastructure more widely.
Our grid is built to handle the peak loads that only occur a few dozen hours out of the year – most days we are only using 50 or 60 percent of capacity, and paying for a lot of unused generators. A big new user on the grid can help amortize those assets.
To handle those peak days, Data Centers can be required to reduce loads during those hours, liberating huge reserves of energy, according to Duke University research.
The lowdown – intelligently regulated Data Centers can be a downward pressure on rates.
Below, Calvin Butler, CEO of Exelon, a large multi-state utility in the Mid-Atlantic region, has a warning about needing new generation, in Financial Times.
Above, a few months ago, Butler told CNBC he would not consider building new nuclear, but would consider solar, combined cycle gas, and batteries. OK, two out of three ain’t bad.
Meanwhile, Jigar Shah weighed in with a short post this evening and some nuance.
The head of the US’s largest utility has warned that the nation could face blackouts as soon as 2027 due to the strain AI has put on the grid, saying electricity bill increases are needed to fund new infrastructure. Calvin Butler, chief executive of Exelon, the largest US utility by customer count, told the FT that Americans could “absolutely” lose power next year, due to a shortage of power plants in the north-east and Midwest.
“We came very close, this past winter, to having to curtail power for about 400,000 customers on some of the coldest days of the year,” he said. “And it’s only getting worse.” Butler’s warning comes as utilities and policymakers grapple with balancing the electricity needs of the AI boom with keeping the lights on and prices low amid rising inflation.
US electricity demand is expected to grow by 39 per cent by 2035, according to data from consultancy ICF. Electrical grid operator PJM, which operates across the north-east and Midwest has predicted that it will face a 60-gigawatt power supply shortfall over the next decade. At its last auction in December, the grid operator reported a 6.5-gigawatt deficit.
Electricity prices have risen by 7 per cent nationally since last year, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, with several large markets Exelon serves seeing even sharper increases: 17 per cent in New Jersey; 16 per cent in Maryland; 13 per cent in Pennsylvania.
Have weather forecasts seemed less accurate lately? There’s a major contributing factor: nearly half the morning weather balloons in the Lower 48 are “missing.”
This is an ongoing crisis that is degrading critical severe weather forecasts that we all rely on. It’s having real, tangible impacts on degrading forecast quality.
If you work in transportation, agriculture or commerce, this should matter to you.
Regardless of the causes, this negatively affects people of ALL political backgrounds. Weather affects everyone. And it’s impacting ALL of us negatively.
We can’t look at weather balloon data that doesn’t exist. We can’t pump nonexistent data into models. We can’t rely as heavily on models that don’t “know” what’s happening above our heads.
This is especially concerning for severe weather forecasts. We can’t go 18 hours without ascertaining how the atmosphere is layered, how much storm fuel has built up and if severe thunderstorms are going to erupt. The Storm Prediction Center has even acknowledged forecasting frustrations in at least one public bulletin.
This month’s hellish heat wave in Europe, and the one coming in the US, are just the slightest taste of what’s coming.
In Other News:
Reuters News Agency is launching a new climate tool, the Reuters Climate Monitor, that will create visualizations to document the unprecedented conditions.
Michael Leibreich is well known in the energy space as founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, one of the most reliable resources for information on the clean energy space.
In a recent address to investment group Modo Energy, he had some much needed level setting on key topics. Number one, Energy Secretary Chris Wright is so far beyond the extreme fringe of opinion on solar energy as to be, not even wrong, but flat out delusional.
Some examples on this page of why that is so.
Below, also, Liebrich’s much needed fresh air take on Data Center madness.
Here, some pushback on Wright’s delusions about solar.
SunRun executive manages to remind viewers that extreme weather events are an additional argument for new approaches.
4 months ago, the same executive was on Fox in a report on the continuing explosion of solar energy.
If you wonder why the Trump administration, and Energy Secretary and grifting Frack Baron Chris Wright have been so focused on sabotaging Wind Energy, this is why.
Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:
Natural gas’ share of electricity generation in the market run by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) fell to a record low on May 16, dropping to just 3.1% of total generation. That day was not an outlier either; from May 13-17, gas’ share of daily CAISO output was less than 10%.
In 2021, gas’ generation share never fell below 20% and was 40% or higher on 99 of those 135 days. In 2025, the number of high-market-share days (more than 40%) dropped sharply, to 56, but gas’ minimum daily share still never fell below 20%. This year has been a different story. There have been 68 days already when gas’ market share fell below 20%, and there has not been a single day when gas accounted for more than 50% of CAISO generation.
Sunrun, Tesla and Renew Home could deliver nearly 17 GW of distributed energy capacity to unlock headroom in an increasingly congested U.S. power grid, the companies said Wednesday.
The three companies say they can provide 16.8 GW of capacity across 12 million devices in 9 million U.S. homes. Sunrun and Tesla manage 7.8 GW of installed battery capacity and Renew Home has about 9 GW of HVAC capacity based on its smart thermostats’ one-hour peak load shift potential, the companies say.
In Texas, which Rauscher said is the country’s second largest data center market, the companies have 1.3 GW of HVAC capacity and 440 MW of battery capacity. They have nearly 1.1 GW of HVAC capacity and 3.6 GW of battery capacity in California, the country’s third largest data center market.
Power system experts have been talking for years about the “theoretical” potential for distributed resources to unlock headroom on the grid, but “I don’t think anyone realizes the scale of the resource available right now,” Ben Brown, Renew Home’s CEO, told Utility Dive in an interview.
In Virginia, home to one of the world’s largest commercial computing clusters, Sunrun, Tesla and Renew Home have 37 MW of batteries and 276 MW of HVAC capacity. They expect the combined capacity there to reach 500 MW by 2030.
