Eye popping footage here of a solar thermal site in the Chinese desert.
I’m not a fan of thermal, which can have the advantage of energy storage with molten salt add-ons. But the low price of battery tech will probably limit the number of these that get built.
Can Data Centers be Done Right? Is Michigan’s Stargate a Model?
I was able to tour the site of Oracle’s new Stargate Data Center in Saline Township, Michigan yesterday.
Couple of observations.
The site is big, but worth noting as the video above does, there is a thousand acres of land in this parcel, and the actual build is 250 acres. The rest is being left as is – some of which will continue to be farmed, I assume as rented land, and some will be left as wetland and wooded land.
“Leave it all as farmland” was not on the table here. The former owners of the site made it clear they were not going to continue farming. This area, close to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, and squarely in the southeast Michigan Detroit Metro area, is under immense development pressure, and sprawl is rampant. The other option would very likely be to become a subdivided landscape of boxy MacMansions and concrete, which very often put greater pressure on local services without a commensurate increase in revenues.
Stargate will be paying the full cost for the wires and substations that will connect it to the larger grid. In addition, the project will be purchasing 1.4 gigawatts of battery storage that will be sited around the state, operated by the major utility DTE, and belong to the system and the ratepayer. That spend will provide more than half of the 2500 MW of storage mandated in the State’s climate legislation.
The project will be connected to the grid. On average, systems like DTE’s are utilizing about half of their built generation resources on any given day – the rest is overhead, that ratepayers are paying for, but only maxed out a few hours of the year, generally during the peak times in the hottest days of August.
Bringing in big new users who will soak up that excess capacity during the rest of the year helps amortize the system, and can be a downward pressure on electric rates. DTE has committed to foregoing any new rate requests for at least 2 years.
Little Marco: Good News – the War is Over
No, the Strait is not open.
But their Navy is Destroyed.
But the Strait is not Open.
But they’re really losing.
And the War is Over I’m telling you.
Lewis Caroll would understand perfectly.
Comparing the 1973 Oil Shock vs Today
10 minutes. Worth a listen.
“Dustbowl” 2.0 Developing in Breadbasket
“70 degree days in January, with 70 to 80 mph winds, has blown soil all over the place.”
Sobering Farm Journal report from Nebraska.
KEARNEY — Recent rainfall struggled to make a dent in the long-entrenched drought conditions across the state, per the U.S. Drought Monitor’s most recent update on Thursday, May 28.
The update does not account for the rainfall that parts of the region saw over the weekend.
Hall, Adams and most of Buffalo County are under severe drought, D2, conditions. Kearney and a swath to the south and west and north central Nebraska are under extreme drought, D3, conditions.
A pocket of exceptional drought, D4, conditions still exist in northern Gosper County into the southern half of Frontier County. As of the last update, 8.2 percent of the state is under D4 conditions.
Looking statewide, 95 percent are under some type of drought conditions.
“By mid-week, much above-normal temperatures had returned to the Plains, with daily maximum temperatures climbing into the upper 90s in some locations,” per U.S. Drought Monitor.
Is Fusion Ready?
Purportedly, not a science project anymore – an actual plan with a deadline.
I’m putting this in the same category as a colony on Mars. Do-able, I guess, but you’ll have to show me.
That said, the video above is very well done and informative.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is looking to join a power grid that is operated by PJM Interconnection and provides 182,000 megawatts of power to more than 67 million people living in 13 states and Washington, D.C. But technical hurdles to bringing fusion online remain—one major obstacle is actually producing a stable fusion reaction that generates more energy than it consumes.
The application process requires a potential energy provider to provide extensive technical information to the grid operator, including descriptions of the planned fuel type. In Commonwealth’s case, the company is developing a tokamak reactor design that uses powerful magnetic fields to create and insulate a highly energetic cloud of particles called a plasma until it’s hot enough for those particles to fuse. It’s a process that mimics the nuclear reactions in the sun, including the particles involved: isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. The promise of the device is that a fusion reaction could feasibly generate limitless clean energy. That energy, in the form of heat, is used to boil water into steam, which then pushes a turbine to produce electricity.*
Continue reading “Is Fusion Ready?”Comedian Clobbers Trump on Clean Energy
Description:
Comedians Christopher Titus and Rachel Bradley go scorched earth on the ongoing debate surrounding renewable energy. This clip dives into the absurd claims about wind power and the critical role of solar energy in our future, also highlighting the importance of batteries in modern electricity grids. It’s a blistering commentary on the intersection of technology, politics, and climate change.
In Ann Arbor, a First of a Kind Utility
Rather than replacing the privately-owned utility that serves Ann Arbor, the plan is for this city agency to run in tandem, offering a supplemental service that residents can opt into.
If they do, they’ll stay connected to the regular grid, but will be outfitted with solar panels, battery backup systems, or other infrastructure, drawing on that power for their home use and opening up the prospect of selling any excess. The city, meanwhile, would pay for the installation and maintenance of these systems, which Ann Arbor would continue to own — a vision of energy generation and storage distributed across the city.
The plan begins in the coming months in Bryant, a 1970s-era community with about 260 homes, many of which are officially considered “energy burdened.” A quarter of residents pay more than a third of their incomes on utilities, in a neighborhood that is one of Ann Arbor’s only areas of unsubsidized affordable housing, according to Derrick Miller, Community Action Network’s executive director.
Continue reading “In Ann Arbor, a First of a Kind Utility”CEOs in Agreement, Oil Supplies Critical, Red Line Near
Shit’s getting real, and Big Dogs in Trump’s sponsoring industry are speaking up.
I posted the remarks by Chevron’s CEO earlier.
The Exxon official’s comments are below.
How Heavier Rain Makes Dryer Soil
“New” research confirming what Kevin Trenberth (above) and others were telling me 10 years ago.
I find its good to review these Q and As from time to time as I pick up on more insights that I might not have heard at the time.
Worth considering as we head into an El Niño summer.
Another one for the weird science file.
New research shows that although the world is seeing more rain overall, it’s also getting drier at the same time.
How can that be? In simple terms, the world’s rainfall is increasingly packed into bigger storms with longer dry spells in between. And a lot of rain all at once causes problems for overwhelmed soil.
The findings say the study is the first to demonstrate that a year’s worth of rainfall packed into bigger and wetter storms means less water for aquifers and ecosystems, even if total precipitation increases. Because soil can absorb only so much water at once, what is not soaked up collects on the surface where it’s more readily evaporated.
Study lead author Corey Lesk, who led the study while a fellow at Dartmouth College, explained it in an email to USA TODAY: “Regardless of how much precipitation falls, when rain and snow come in stronger bursts separated by longer dry spells, less water tends to remain on the land (in soils, lakes, and groundwater) for use by people and nature.”