As I've commented on before, this report is incorrect and mixes up projected load with current load. They are not currently consuming that much - it's a few percent. The projection is very alarming, though.

www.zdnet.com/article/pale... I bought some of these, they work great. Expensive, but will eventually pay for themselves. Hate tossing AAs.

"Washington County bans solar on...land within five miles of an airport." WHAT? Do you know how much open, otherwise difficult-to-use space is near an airport? This is the Indianapolis airport.

"...nearly two-thirds of VA counties effectively prohibit utility-scale solar... legislation rocketing through the...General Assembly would help change that, preventing outright bans..while still allowing localities to reject...projects on an individual basis" www.canarymedia.com/articles/sol...

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202... Hair samples show dramatic decline - 100x - in lead exposure after regulations passed.

www.usatoday.com/story/cars/n... www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/n... Illegally withholding Congressionally approved infrastructure funding to states that didn't vote for you, even after losing a court case about it, is what "No Kings" was all about. (note: delaying these serves fossil interests)

thank you bad bunny for highlighting the importance of critical power distribution infrastructure bsky.app/profile/cost...

This, single transferable vote in multi-member districts is the most democratic structure, in that it tends to punish extremism and obstructionism, and produce representatives more closely hewing to the majority or median of their district.

Improved the fit of my home energy use model by changing the installation of a radiant barrier in my attic from a dummy variable to a variable scaled to HDD/CDD. Went from "saves 177kWh per month" to "saves 0.5kWh per C/H degree day" TLDR - Insulate your attic. #energysky

When I read about the paper, I was primarily thinking about the gas pipeline network death spiral for heating. But gas stations is interesting. The conversation could quickly go from "Cool EV, but where do you charge it? (everywhere)" to "Where are you going to get fuel for that clunker?"

A little surprised they didn't foresee this one. Is it a lot harder to make a self-closing door than a self-closing tailgate?

Hey, Fervo Energy is expanding its policy leadership team with a new role overseeing all state-level policy and strategy! Looking for: • policy advocacy leadership • power market expertise • political+commercial savvy • team mentorship Come build the future grid! fervoenergy.com/career/polic...

FUND THE TAX POLICE

it's funny how quiet all the people who crow about the need to "save civilization" are about this kind of stuff, losing the administrative capacity to effectively collect taxes is like civilizational collapse 101

Every time I put my kid on the bus, I think about how nice it will be when we are done with diesel.

heatmap.news/energy/antar... Everything you wanted to know about TRISO, the unmeltable billiard balls of high-temperature nuclear fuel being eyed by a number of nuclear projects.

www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/05/g... Global BESS surpasses pumped hydro in power capacity (I imagine not yet in energy capacity). 100 GW/280 GWh added in 2025, which is more than triple 2023.

Outright sabotage

The pettiness is astounding www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/c...

Guess which 2 years had the Inflation Reduction Act?

www.canarymedia.com/articles/sol... We've really got to stop the crank vetocracy.

fox59.com/indiana-news... Ill-conceived property tax "reform" wrecking local budgets throughout IN. If there's a silver lining, it might make IN counties more open to wind/solar. They also mention falling enrollment, but they are expanding the high school? @kevinverhoff.bsky.social

finance.yahoo.com/news/us-refi... The Venezuelan oil thing is not only criminal, but also stupid!

Ugh, bummer. Used this extensively in my high school world geography class.

ember-energy.org/latest-insig... Looking at the Ember report on how close you cab get to 24/7 solar for $104/MWh, and disappointed anyone notice that the Capex assumptions on both solar and batteries are nearly 50% lower than the going assumptions in the US?

indianaeconomicdigest.net/Content/Defa... Indiana is sort of taking another whack at preemption for wind and solar on ag land, but unfortunately it has been posioned by also including everything else (data centers, oil refineries, etc.)

Strange how much non-energy people have latched on to water use as their primary bugbear for AI when the electricity issue is a couple orders of magnitude larger. I think people THINK they have a better grasp of scale for water (they often don't), whereas electricity feels harder to quantify.

In our case, my wife's career is the primary one organizing our lives, and I can tell you WFH makes it so much easier to be a 2 career couple.

And most of the headlines you see about renewables lowering costs are just measuring wholesale. It's really, really hard to take cost out of the grid. Interestingly, if EV charging (or smart heat pumps) is done right, it's a huge opportunity to increase utilization and spread those costs around.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u... Siri, what happens when you kill the Chinese soybean market, end USAID food purchases, harass the labor pool, impose tariffs on inputs, kill ag research and support, and actively oppose wind and solar, which could offer farmers some financial diversification?

youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?... Bunch of people sharing this lately, and it is quite good. This is the version with the politics (which I agree with ,but not wveryone will) bit at the end. He mentions there's a version that stops short of that if you'd rather share that.

Made a pro wind/solar comment on this, and almost bot-like, multiple people replied saying some version of "solar and wind don't pay for themselves", as though concerned the for profit developers and commercial banks lending them money have made a terrible mistake www.facebook.com/share/p/1Adz...

interestingengineering.com/energy/batch... Well, I guess we still have drilling?

They're breaking the lawyers that haven't quit

www.ft.com/content/c831... China, US, Australia (crushing it per capita), Germany, and SAUDI ARABIA installed the most batteries last year, with Saudis putting in almost 3GW. They are targeting a 50% renewable grid by 2030. Insolation in Riyadh is about 70% higher than in Indianapolis.

www.consumerreports.org/appliances/h... I would pay $3 just to unlock this review if I couls, but I don't want to sign up for a subscription. In any case, I love to see CR reviewing heat pumps.

Amazing the amount of complaining they do about government overreach just to whine like little children at having to follow the fourth amendment.

Scaling for peak heating gives me the absolute willies, and we aren't going to get there without a multifront campaign on insulation, groundsource heat, district heating with direct geothermal or other clean heat sources, and large scale energy storage.

Given the ambient temperatures ranging from -20C to -30C in southern Ontario (where the bulk of the population lives), even with aggressive Cold-Cliamte designs, to do this heating via ASHP would need ~40GWe over and above the ~25GWe peak we had. This is on a system that averages ~16GWe now.

“congestion pricing by a number of measures is working as planned, a reality that may turn New York’s experiment into a blueprint for other US urban centers.” Cc: @metrolosangeles.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Shameless plug… that’s exactly what we found in this EV TOU pilot. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=... TOU with many large and flexible EV loads led to new shadow peaks that while manageable for the bulk system led to overloads on secondary transformers. Coordinated managed charging resolves it.

[Rockwell Free Speech Guy] I think things that I think are good should be legal

5 for 5

The thing where ICE parks masked men in school lots is something I would not have believed unless I saw it with my own two eyes. They do it constantly. It’s purely a terror tactic and they’ve done it to schools over the region. Our schools are collapsing - often at 50% attendance or less.

open.spotify.com/episode/4QD5... I wouldn't describe Marty Supreme as a "juggernaut of delight" as Conan does, so much as a "surprisingly compelling portrayal of a profound, borderline sociopathic, asshole"

And it looks like their coal use peaked domestically in 2024. Hope that keeps going - big slow down in solar in the second half of last year as market reforms were implemented www.reuters.com/markets/comm... www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I did enjoy this one, in part because I share some of the same gripes, but I appreciate that it was also broadly pro critical thinking.