News & Blog

Heating:  Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution? Burning carbon-based fuels is not a good idea if we want to avoid emissions of carbon dioxide. Despite this, Europe (as an example) is burning a lot of fossil fuel in order to provide heat. Approximately 25 % of final energy use in the EU-28 goes…

Northeast China Power Grid Northeast Interconnections or power grid covers the northeast part of China, which includes Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces and East Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, with a total installed capacity of 147 GW and 120 million people served. The maximum generation of Northeast Grid is 70 GW; the all-time peak load is…

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is the system operator for most of Texas. The ERCOT Interconnection is an electric island grid with limited Direct Current (DC) Tie connections to the Mexican and Eastern US Interconnections. ERCOT today has more than 22 GW of installed wind and roughly 2 GW of utility-scale solar and…

Early proponents of the hydrogen economy encountered an intractable two-part problem: The cheapest source of hydrogen is natural gas, which leaves a carbon footprint larger than using natural gas directly; and Producing hydrogen from electricity is expensive and not terribly efficient. These points are made in Joseph Romm’s book The Hype About Hydrogen (2005) and are probably responsible for the trope: “Hydrogen…

The importance of flexibility As the power system continues to evolve, with wind and solar generation playing an ever-greater role, we hear more and more about the importance of increasing its flexibility. The IEA considers flexibility a global priority, and addressed its May, 2019 report on the status of the power system on policy and…