All along the East Coast, residents are being asked to conserve energy during the extreme heat. Today is only going to be hotter. The climate crisis is here and we need a grid that can handle it. That means better transmission planning and an independent FERC.

Update: this will be covered more in meeting 3. That wilp be in late May, no exact date yet.

Lots of talk about Nc SB261 on this call. Duke reassuring folks that you can’t wait until 2048 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. True, but also, the driver of climate change is cumulative GHG. Earlier reductions are a big big deal. #energysky #climatesky

Duke Energy starting their first NC Carbon Plan stakeholder meeting today. Slides posted yesterday show this will mostly be an overview of the IRP process and topics for next meetings. I imagine the April 28 meeting on load forecast will be quite popular. www.duke-energy.com/our-company/...

Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility Ratepayers Are Paying for Big Tech’s Power My new paper with Eliza Martin uncovers how utilities are forcing ratepayers to fund discounted rates for data centers 🔌💡 eelp.law.harvard.edu/extracting-p...

On a stakeholder call hosted by two utilities, and one of the utilities just dropped off because they lost power. Not a good look.

My maiden name is Surface. While in college as physics major, I told my advisor I was going to name one of my kids Gaussian. He fell out of his chair laughing. Best reaction to a joke I ever got.

So TVA could add between 2,000 MW or 20,000 MW of solar over the next 10 years. I whole order of magnitude range. I understand that IRPs can't be prescriptive, but this is just a fake exercise.

#EnergySky friends, we are releasing a set of papers today outlining how #SurplusInterconnection can unlock GW of new resources. Surplus is a way to plug wind and solar into existing thermal plants. Check out our papers, along with a cool interactive dashboard, here: www.scarcitytosurplus.com

Me: An integration cost for renewables is absurd. Are Alabama Power's engineers are dumb? Alabama Power: Our team had another look and realized we don't actually want to charge this fee now. Fun tidbit though... the fee would have only applied to non-Alabama Power QF projects. Anti-trust anyone?

Bringing this 2022 chestnut over here. Hey, it's still true! Whispers: There's a commission in your state of 3 - 5 people who can shut down all the fossil plants and pipelines and replace them with clean electricity, and SCOTUS can't stop them.

TVA Board meeting starting soon, watch here. They will vote on a new Chair, discuss federal funding for transmission, and other items www.tva.com/about-tva/ou...

Which will be faster? Building a commercial fusion project or getting through TVA's interconnection process? Could go either way really. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

Biden: You need to be net zero by 2035. TVA: We’re not subject to this order. You can’t make me. Trump: You can discriminate and be racist again! TVA: Woohoo! We deleted any half-assed commitments we had. This EO we like so we are definitely subject to it!

BREAKING NEWS: Georgia Power just filed its latest long-term plan. Reliance on fossil fuels undermines the utility's commitment to transition to a low-carbon future & will continue to force Georgians to foot the bill for these fossil fuel infrastructures. ow.ly/4v5c50URtZV

You may run into people who say that renewable energy is expensive. Here is an explanation of why that's not the case and how it actually saves the economy money. www.theclimatebrink....

Wait a minute. You mean to say that we don’t need to blanket the earth with data centers and coal & gas plants to maybe arrive at a future where we can wave a magical AGI wand to make all of the consequences of that go away? Yes. This is a false trade off. Let that sink in. 16/

Join SACE Research Director Maggie Shober and other energy experts as they discuss ways Congress can modernize TVA's governance to ensure reliable power for 10 million customers in the Southeast @themacrogrid.bsky.social 🔌💡 🗓 When: Jan. 30 📍Where: virtual 🔗 RSVP: ow.ly/261s50ULnPr

Well this is rough news from EIA. Natural gas prices may close to double over the next couple years as we start exporting LNG? Who knew? Who possibly could've predicted this? Did we make our own "national energy emergency"? 🔌💡 www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

As opposed to TVA that imported 20% of its peak while asking schools across the region to close to conserve energy.

Well, apparently TVA asked local schools to close to conserve power. Big yikes! “officials saying the decision to close schools was due to an appeal from TVA and EPB that the community voluntarily reduce power usage between 6:00 and 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday.” www.chattanoogan.com/2025/1/22/49...

TVA with a 7.3 GW delta between demand and net generation, OMG. Lights stayed on though, thank you probably to MISO and that we are precipitation free. Check out the flat line at the top of the curve on the second photo. Probably some nice DR there.

7.3 GW of imports. Thanks MISO for keeping my lights on!

A lesson for southeast utilities here

Excel: the original ghoster

Come help us try to get proactive, comprehensive transmission planning in the Southeast! Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is hiring some to work on transmission and transmission planning to enable clean energy in the Southeast. www.cleanenergy.org/blog/transmi...

SERTP holding its first stakeholder webinar on FERC Order 1920. So far just an overview of SERTP and the Order. We’re unlikely to hear any hints of how they’re thinking about compliance until at least the January meeting.

I spent the last few months channeling all my election anxiety into a giant sprawling spreadsheet tracking all 109 (i think) Project 2025 orgs, their top funders, staff, networks they belong to, + tax status and whether they appear to be violating it. Go wild: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Yes, an IRP can’t be too prescriptive, but TVA’s last IRP was so broad it was essentially useless. We want TVA’s next IRP to be more specific and limit how much the federal utility can expand fossil fuels in the future. nashvillebanner.com/2024/11/25/t... Submit a comment to TVA by Dec 11.

We're just waiting for the funding to do this! Anyone want to chip in a grant or gift, DM me. Seriously. 2025 could be the year for this. We need a GUI + a cloud based solver implementation and we can make GenX+Sienna & PyPSA easy for all to use and access. Both are already best in class models.

Energy Exemplar has blocked all TU Berlin students from academic licences for their energy modelling tool PLEXOS because competitor PyPSA is developed here. While deeply shocked, we believe in turning the other cheek. So we are offering all Energy Exemplar employees a free licence for PyPSA.

Much anticipated study from the US Dept of Energy is likely to find that U.S. LNG shipments drive up domestic prices and are worse for the climate than coal www.eenews.net/articles/doe...

Watts Bar aerial yesterday with one unit operating

At a conference where TVA is presenting on their draft IRP. They are continuing the argument that they don’t model solar+storage because it’s an either/or option. But most if not all IRPs I’ve seen in the last 5 years model 3 resource options: standalone solar, standalone storage, solar+storage.