Environmentalists: "climate change is the most important issue of the day and the public demands action" The public: look at these cute cats!

Probably about £200k per half hour – less than a penny per bill-payer. Over the next few months the final pieces of equipment (synchronous compensators; flywheels attached to motor/alternators) will be installed and we will be able to operate without gas when conditions allow

The number of people who've been like "see this has nothing to do with renewables" as soon as it didn't seem to be an inertia issue have... Puzzled me. Like ok, let's say inertia had nothing to do with it: this is still a huge example of why VRE has made grid management more complex and risky

Im getting props for my thread from the power engineers who support renewables 😁😂

Re: blackout. Focus on the reactive power capability of the thermals I have to say this is akin to blaming a fire that burned down the neighborhood because the fire hydrants were 30% low on pressure instead of the pile of combustibles one of the homes happened to leave next to the open pit bbq.

On Spain, I think Xiao has it right here, if not elsewhere in his response to @janrosenow.bsky.social. If the question is whether renewables-heavy grids are fundamentally unstable, then the answer is no. If the question is whether such grids require more rigorous management, the answer is yes.

Drew said it well

Friends can this be considered topology optimization as a GETS (except don't mess up)

Exactly as I said after the blackout: voltage regulation was issue, not a lack of spinning inertia, as so many quickly speculated (or asserted). It was an off peak spring day, plenty of cheap solar available, and the grid operator cut it too close, failed to commit sufficient voltage regulation.🔌💡

Poor renewable management confirmed

4% ELCC for solar in Texas h/t @xiaowang1984.bsky.social

Well speaking with hindsight all that focus on additionality in blue state REC portfolios seem to be a big self own. Should have locked up the nuclear on a PPA that was $10 more expensive than the gas plants than dally in all that offshore wind and BTM/community solar. Can't cry if someone took it.

This is stupid. I'm sorry. Buy electricity that you can use. Don't feed it in in an area that runs a bunch of nukes. www.utilitydive.com/news/cambrid...

This Tesla grid forming inverter whitepaper will probably give @worstcaseeng.bsky.social a heart attack lmao digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-conten...

Lmao! Proactive grid upgrades for capital costs on distribution shared by ratepayers at 250-$500+ per kw that only pencil because of additional state driven feed in subsidies. I specifically went to Eversource's talk at DTECH about this 😂.

Yo @sovacool.bsky.social I heard you had a paper that showed transmission costs come in under budget! Can I see the source dataset for this and which transmission projects were in this. Pretty curious in light of every single important AEMO tx project going over budget here!

In other news water is wet folks. 😂

If anyone wants a good laugh we can look at this poorly aged prediction from Synapse energy 8 years ago thinking that NE natty gas gen would be down 41% by now to try to argue that building a pipeline upgrade was a waste of money www.utilitydive.com/news/new-rep...

I want a diesel heater option for my EV car

SCE retreating slightly on their March to $1 a kwh. I guess this is good news!

I guess they tried to solicit bids without subsidies but that didn't work so we're back to subsidies. Lol. Gotta feed in on those negative prices and somehow get paid for it I guess! www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

All of these studies have been out there for years, but people always make it a political issue. I am 100% for more RE on the grid, but it's the largest manmade machine we are talking about, so let the unbiased e gineers also have a seat at the table. This blackout was a good wake up call....

Real time look at the solar curtailment in Spain h/t x.com/TheOriginalT...

A pipeline for offshore wind deal is a good thing LFG! And let's run that into New England while we're at it

My Energy Institute blog post on some proposals to reduce the rooftop solar cost shift. Conclusion: hard to make much progress in CA unless we drastically change rates to stop using them to pay for fixed costs of public policies and climate impacts. 💡🔌 energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/05/19/h...

Not the biggest fan of USA offshore wind but if NY wants to build it Trump shouldn't stop it for BS reasons www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/c...

Obama era DOE in 2016 wrote an excellent high level document on reactive power that goes beyond the "beer foam analogy". how it used to be freely provided by big thermal generators and how now the changing resource mix challenges the adequate provision. www.energy.gov/oe/articles/...

The framing in this article annoys the hell out of me. If you're $5 a MWh cheaper but your don't have the necessary stuff on your system to be safe to a wider range of contingencies, are you actually $5 a MWh cheaper or have you just pushed it to tail risk www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Damn my favorite high renewables penetration study, the MISO RIIA actually talked about power oscillation dampers and interarea oscillations. Respect cdn.misoenergy.org/RIIA%20Summa...

Isn't this just the climate version of Trump's tariff policy, where in the end it's the consumers (the car addicted California public) that pays?

Save 10b over 10 years with some to-be-explained mechanisms Meanwhile mass save funded for 4.5b over 3 years and they don't want to touch that 😂 www.wcvb.com/article/ener...

It looks to me like the second the nuclear came back online they bumped down the acceptable renewable level while maintaining the gas levels. Looks like more conservative posturing. Rest assured much technical basis for doing this.

Looks worrisome www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Update: EPRI nailed it. Well done.

Hot take here, if you don't know the importance of voltage management or fuse recloser coordination you probably should be measured about grid edge resilience too if you're arguing for greater renewable penetration

💯

No grid operators need a fuckload more visibility then they have into what is happening today and then let's add a ton more yes

Why was Jo Boaler put in charge of developing the California Math Framework to start with?

Looks like I found *the* paper for all the stuff that can go wrong dynamically in the high inverter based system. Definitely way more here than inertia 😂. 1000+ citations too. Good stuff ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/928...

Looks like the Massachusetts Docket search page got updated and now it doesn't work and you can't download documents 😡😡😡.

The world has gone crazy

MID’s rates are 18 to 21 cents per kilowatt hour. Unsurprisingly, they also have a far less generous NEM schedule than PG&E, and ended their unlimited retail rate reimbursement tariff in 2016-2017. www.mid.org/saving-energ...

The thing that I find concerning about the ERCOT solar market development is what I hear about out-of-ERCOT buyers being able to contract for solar PPAs at massive scale , which is something I intuitively would think is corrosive to system supply security in the medium-long term.

5x prices on single digit prices doesn't mean much. Just means who gave out more subsidies...

An interim report into the 28 April Iberia blackout from ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, adds a little detail about what happened but leaves many questions... 1/

Guess no one really takes it seriously unless something bad happens! 😭

Citizens of Massachusetts are starting to tie together how climate goals, utility regulations and ratepayer impacts tie together www.facebook.com/share/v/1YQU...

Banger