Michigan, Wisconsin in Flooding Crisis

Above: One small dam has already failed in Northern Michigan, several larger more dangerous dams are in critical risk.
Video Description:
“A small private dam in Alcona County failed as heavy rain and snowmelt continue pushing rivers and impoundments beyond capacity in northern Michigan. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) said it was notified Monday night, April 13 that Bucks Pond Dam near Barton City failed. Luke Trumble, chief of EGLE’s Dam Safety Unit, said the dam is a low-hazard, privately-owned homeowners association dam with limited downstream risk.”

Flood alerts as of Wednesday afternoon, April 15, , 4:44 pm

MLive:

Michigan today continues to be in the grip of an extremely unusual weather pattern that has the entire state under a Flood Watch. Heavy rains and storms are staying in the forecast as floodwaters already have swamped areas across Northern Michigan.

The dangerously rising waters have prompted evacuations in some residential areas, triggered the failure of small dams, and has state and local officials closely monitoring larger dams near populated areas as high water threatens to overtop them and flood areas downstream. A handful of communities are on alert with evacuation plans in place.

Detroit Free Press:

Concerns have mounted for dams across Michigan as melting snow and rain stress their infrastructure, including in Bellaire where residents and businesses on the Intermediate River downstream of the Bellaire Dam were preparing to evacuate Wednesday.

The water level at the Cheboygan Lock and Dam was 6.72 inches below the top as of noon Wednesday, a drop of 0.12 inches from 9 a.m.

Northwest Michigan officials have declared a local state of emergency as they work to stabilize Benzie County’s Homestead Dam.

The Homestead Dam, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources-owned dam on the Betsie River, is at risk for overflowing as severe thunderstorms and snowmelt raise water levels, according to the Benzie County Office of Emergency Management and National Weather Service forecasts.

The Cheboygan County Sheriff’s Office is strongly urging residents of the Black Lake area to begin preparing for a potential rise in water levels. 

Residents should secure any valuables, outdoor items or debris that could be damaged or carried away by water. 

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Polluters are War’s Big Winners

You say War is Good for Nothin’?
This war is great for all the swell people and cool kids.
All you wimps and Nervous Nellies STFU and back to work.

Guardian:

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from leading intelligence provider Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.

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With Hormuz Shut – Solar, Wind Picking up the Slack

Well, hit my head and call me shorty.
This seems like Good news.

Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air:

Global power generation from fossil fuels fell in the first month since the start of the Hormuz closure, with the fall in gas-fired generation offset by large increases in solar and wind power, rather than coal.

The power generation dataset prepared for this analysis covers countries that disclose near-real-time data. The dataset covers 87% of global coal power generation and over 60% of gas-fired power generation.

Total power generation from fossil fuels in countries with near-real-time data fell 1% year-on-year, with coal-fired generation flat and gas-fired generation falling 4%. The dataset covers the world’s largest power markets: China, the U.S., the EU, and India, among others.

Seaborne coal transport volumes fell 3%, to the lowest levels since 2021. The data contradicts widespread expectations that coal power generation would rise in response to the crisis.

Deniers Panicking ahead of Clean Energy Tidal Wave

The industry must have added some supplemental funding for Bjorn Lomborg, the cynical soft-denial specialist from Denmark. He’s accelerated his output of fudged and distorted talking points, focusing on disinformation about clean energy.
The above graph purports to show some kind of suspiciously abrupt and steep change in “voltage exceedances” on European grids, which he ties to solar energy deployment. Which would beg the question, ‘Did Europe suddenly deploy several thousand percent more solar fields in a 6 month time span?”
Fortunately, fact based watch dogs are following.

Nicholas Fulghum on X:

I can’t believe this is coming up again. This trend is famously a reporting artefact, and not the result of higher solar penetration.

The big spike in 2024 comes from a monitoring system change for over-voltage in NORDIC regions, not a sudden spike across Europe from solar.

Side note: if you ever see a graph with a spike like this that looks like it can’t possibly be true, it likely isn’t!

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Without Action on Grids, a Tsunami is Coming

As the graph below shows, around 2028, the projected demand outstrips the available generation – in large part due to Trump administration blocks on new renewable generation.


But additionally, there is a lot of low hanging fruit available in optimizing the grid that we have.
That’s what Jigar Shah and his guest are discussing above. Grid optimization using VPP, Virtual Power Plants, but also reconductoring of existing lines to increase capacity, Dynamic Line Rating, which uses sensors and AI to maximize the usage of every power line (not every line is carrying its full capacity all the time) – and demand response.

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Business as Usual Will Not Solve AI Energy Woes

Jigar Shah and Arnab Pal in Utility Dive:

Across the country, a particular brand of conventional wisdom has set in: The only way to power the AI boom is a massive buildout of gas — both on the grid and “behind the meter” at data center campuses. The assumption is that anything else will be too slow, too risky or too complicated.

But “gas first” is simply a reflex, and it comes with two problems that are colliding with politics. First, it’s expensive. New generation and the upgrades to support it cost real money, and the utility model often pushes those costs onto ratepayers. Second, it’s slow, particularly where the grid is constrained. In many regions, equipment timelines are now measured in years rather than months.

If states respond with peak-driven planning — building the grid to serve the hottest hour of the year plus a reserve margin — customers will pay for infrastructure that sits underutilized most of the time. In our analysis, the grid is only 50% used throughout the year. There’s a better way: Build smarter before you build bigger.

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“Solar is the Cheapest form of Electricity”. We Knew That.

Energy analyst interviewed by Bloomberg news affirms what we know – Solar is the cheapest form of energy generation.
He points out that solar is intermittent, so has different characteristics than other generation. (all generators are intermittent, for different reasons and with a different frequency)
Below, graph compares California grid from 2022, top, to current, 2026.
The green line shows renewable generation, with the big solar bump during the day. In 2022, the purple wavy line, batteries, is not doing a whole lot – but much has changed.
This year, a new build of batteries is soaking up that solar during the day, and doling it out at night, especially during the peaky parts of the evening – but take a look, it’s providing energy all night long.
States like California and Texas with significant battery buildout are seeing a phase change in how the grids work.

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No Way Out: Hormuz is a Strait Jacket for Trump

Trump is trapped in a death spiral.
Iran can bring more pain and pressure than he can, unless of course, he goes into an end stage narcissistic collapse and tries to nuke his way out of this.
We are all along for the ride.

Politico:

President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and threatened to destroy “the little that is left of Iran” after peace talks in Islamabad fell apart overnight.

In a pair of Truth Social posts, Trump said the U.S. military would begin blockading ships entering or leaving the strait, and would also intercept any vessel that has paid tolls to Iran to transit it safely. He also said that any Iranian who fires on the U.S. military or other, peaceful vessels will be “BLOWN TO HELL” while the Navy works to de-mine the strait.

“THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION,” Trump wrote in one of the posts, “and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.”

The weekend talks, which were brokered by Pakistan and represented the highest level engagement between an American official and Iranians since the 1979 Islamic revolution, were aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and resuming the flow of roughly a fifth of the world’s oil through it. Reopening the strait has become an economic imperative for Trump, whose approval ratings have sagged amid spiking oil prices and growing anxiety about the war’s toll on an already turbulent global economy.

New Studies: Birds Avoid Offshore Wind Turbines

Tundra Swans near Sebawing Michigan, important stopover for migration

Birds are not dumb, turns out.

EuroNews:

Critics say wind turbines endanger birds but two new studies have now analysed the risk in more detail. What they have found could change the debate.

Two recent studies have re-examined the risk of birds entering in collision with rotor blades of wind turbines.

The energy company Vattenfall and the tech company Spoor have analysed the extent to which wind turbines endanger birds at the offshore wind farm in Aberdeen.
Over a period of 19 months – from June 2023 to December 2024 – video recordings of a wind turbine were made with the help of AI-supported analyses. A total of 2,007 bird flight paths near the monitored turbine were examined.

“By combining AI-powered detection and detailed expert analysis, we can replace assumptions with concrete observations and measure actual behaviour in the immediate vicinity of wind turbines,” says Ask Helseth, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Spoor.

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