
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Ted Dunning
- Tim Harford's “More or Less'' Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
- Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard on how businesses can help our collective environmental mess Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard set the standard for how a business can mitigate the ravages of capitalism on earth’s environment. At 81 years old, he’s just getting started.
- All about models
- London Review of Books
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Logistic curves in market disruption From DollarsPerBBL, about logistic or S-curves as models of product take-up rather than exponentials, with notes on EVs
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- John Cook's reasons to use Bayesian inference
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- What If
- The Keeling Curve: its history History of the Keeling Curve and Charles David Keeling
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Prediction vs Forecasting: Knaub “Unfortunately, ‘prediction,’ such as used in model-based survey estimation, is a term that is often subsumed under the term ‘forecasting,’ but here we show why it is important not to confuse these two terms.”
- Beautiful Weeds of New York City
- Flettner Rotor Bruce Yeany introduces the Flettner Rotor and related science
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- Carl Safina's blog One of the wisest on Earth
- Higgs from AIR describing NAO and EA Stephanie Higgs from AIR Worldwide gives a nice description of NAO and EA in the context of discussing “The Geographic Impact of Climate Signals on European Winter Storms”
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- AP Statistics: Sampling, by Michael Porinchak Twin City Schools
- Professor David Draper
- Dominic Cummings blog Chief advisor to the PM, United Kingdom
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Mrooijer's Numbers R 4Us
- Karl Broman
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Gavin Simpson
- American Statistical Association
- The Mermaid's Tale A conversation about biological complexity and evolution, and the societal aspects of science
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- "The Expert"
- Team Andrew Weinberg Walking September 8th for the Jimmy Fund!
- distributed solar and matching location to need
- All about ENSO, and lunar tides (Paul Pukite) Historically, ENSO has been explained in terms of winds. But recently — and Dr Paul Pukite has insisted upon this for a long time — the oscillation of ENSO has been explained as a large-scale slosh due to lunar tidal forcing.
- All about Sankey diagrams
- "Talking Politics" podcast David Runciman, Helen Thompson
- Gabriel's staircase
- Brendon Brewer on Overfitting Important and insightful presentation by Brendon Brewer on overfitting
- OOI Data Nuggets OOI Ocean Data Lab: The Data Nuggets
- Label Noise
- Slice Sampling
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model Five Thirty Eight’s take on why pandemic modeling is so difficult
climate change
- Klaus Lackner (ASU), Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) Capturing CO2 from air at scale
- “The discovery of global warming'' (American Institute of Physics)
- Warming slowdown discussion
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- HotWhopper: It's excellent. Global warming and climate change. Eavesdropping on the deniosphere, its weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy whoppers.
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 1 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. In two parts.
- The beach boondoggle Prof Rob Young on how owners of beach property are socializing their risks at costs to all of us, not the least being it seems coastal damage is less than it actually is
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index report The annual assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the radiative forcing from constituent atmospheric greenhouse gases
- "Warming Slowdown?" (part 2 of 2) The idea of a global warming slowdown or hiatus is critically examined, emphasizing the literature, the datasets, and means and methods for telling such. The second part.
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Social Cost of Carbon
- Earth System Models
- Skeptical Science
- AIP's history of global warming science: impacts The American Institute of Physics has a fine history of the science of climate change. This link summarizes the history of impacts of climate change.
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- David Appell's early climate science
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Anti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
- Climate at a glance Current state of the climate, from NOAA
- Isaac Held's blog In the spirit of Ray Pierrehumbert’s “big ideas come from small models” in his textbook, PRINCIPLES OF PLANETARY CLIMATE, Dr Held presents quantitative essays regarding one feature or another of the Earth’s climate and weather system.
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Reanalyses.org
- Climate Change Denying Organizations
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- SolarLove
- Exxon-Mobil statement on UNFCCC COP21
- Climate model projections versus observations
- History of discovering Global Warming From the American Institute of Physics.
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- World Weather Attribution
- An open letter to Steve Levitt
- RealClimate
- "Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming" By Risbey, Lewandowsky, Hunter, Monselesan: Betting against climate change on durations of 15+ years is no longer a rational proposition.
- The Green Plate Effect Eli Rabett’s “The Green Plate Effect”
- "A field guide to the climate clowns"
- Model state level energy policy for New Englad Bob Massie’s proposed energy policy for Massachusetts, an admirable model for energy policy anywhere in New England
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Simple models of climate change
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- Paul Beckwith Professor Beckwith is, in my book, one of the most insightful and analytical observers on climate I know. I highly recommend his blog, and his other informational products.
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: business
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours
Why Americans and Britons work such long hours.
Posted in business, economics, labor, statistics
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“All of Monsanto’s problems just landed on Bayer” (by Chris Hughes at Bloomberg)
See Chris Hughes’ article. Monsanto has touted Roundup (also known as Glyphosate but more properly as ) as a safe remedy for weed control, often in the taming of so-called “invasive species”. It’s used on playfields where children are exposed … Continue reading
Posted in agroecology, an uncaring American public, business, corporate responsibility, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, environmental law, epidemiology, evidence, invasive species, open data, Peter del Tredici, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, risk, statistics, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, the right to know, Uncategorized, unreason, Westwood
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“Eon and RWE just killed the utility as we know it”
The story’s at Bloomberg.
Posted in Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, economics, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, grid defection, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, microgrids, nonlinear systems, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar power, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power
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`Insurance companies should collect a carbon levy`
From Anthony J Webster and Richard H Clarke in Nature, “Insurance companies should collect a carbon levy”: Governments juggle too many interests to drive global action on climate change. But the insurance industry is ideally placed. With annual premiums amounting … Continue reading
Posted in American Statistical Association, Anthropocene, attribution, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, business, capitalism, Carbon Tax, climate business, climate economics, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporations, Cult of Carbon, economics, energy levy, finance, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, insurance, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, moral leadership, statistics, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, transparency, zero carbon
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`Exxon Shareholders Approve Climate Resolution: 62% Vote for Disclosure’
Flash from InsideClimate News: ExxonMobil shareholders voted Wednesday to require the world’s largest oil and gas company to report on the impacts of climate change to its business—defying management, and marking a milestone in a 28-year effort by activist investors. … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, business, capitalism, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, corporations, destructive economic development, environmental law, extended supply chains, Exxon, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, Global Carbon Project, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, making money, Our Children's Trust, petroleum, pollution, rationality, reason, reasonableness, statistics, stranded assets, sustainability, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, zero carbon
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“Climate Change and the Post-Election Blues” (a reblog of a post by Meredith Fowlie at The Energy Institute, BerkeleyHAAS)
Re: Meredith Fowlie, “Climate change and the post-election blues”, from The Energy Institute, BerkeleyHAAS Some direction. My only comments regard Dr Fowlie’s LCoE analysis. While correct from its perspective, LCoE depends upon the viewpoint of the cost efficiency. For example, … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Anthropocene, Berkeley, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, business, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, engineering, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, solar democracy, solar energy, solar power, the energy of the people, the green century, wind energy, wind power
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Westwood Solar & Energy Fair
Today. Flyer. Position yourself to ride the Energy Revolution. Adapt to warming due to human-caused climate change in the Northeast U.S. by changing over your heating and cooling sources. Make Money. Increase the value of your home. Move towards your … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate economics, consumption, Debbie Dooley, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, education, efficiency, EIA, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, engineering, environment, Epcot, Equiterre, exponential growth, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, Green Tea Coalition, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, making money, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, New England, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, regime shifts, RevoluSun, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Solpad, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, SunPower, supply chains, sustainability, Tea Party, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, zero carbon
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An example of technology the future will bring … Solpad.
In a recent interview, Professor Tony Seba of Stanford University predicted that solar+storage was going to achieve parity with average grid transmission costs by 2022. This is what he called “god parity”, because even if utilities generated at zero cents … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, business, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, marginal energy sources, microgrids, networks, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Solpad, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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“BlackRock Investment Fund will include climate change as risk factor for portfolio”
BlackRock, the world’s largest private investment fund, has announced that it will include climate change as an important factor in how it assigns risks to its investment portfolio … BlackRock is not your average investment fund. With $4.9 trillion in … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, Anthropocene, Bloomberg, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, Buckminster Fuller, business, Carbon Worshipers, central banks, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, consumption, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, distributed generation, Ecology Action, economics, electricity markets, environment, Equiterre, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, green tech, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, liberal climate deniers, Mark Jacobson, meteorology, Our Children's Trust, Principles of Planetary Climate, quantitative ecology, Sankey diagram, science, science denier, Science magazine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, shorelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, Stanford University, stranded assets, supply chains, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, transparency, UNFCCC, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
Tagged climate choices, investing
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“Holy crap – an actual book!”
You’ll find links to Cathy O’Neil’s important book in the Blogroll here, as well as a link to reviews of it. I have not read it yet. While I have pre-ordered it, it’s not available. I have read the reviews, … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, complex systems, confirmation bias, data science, data streams, deep recurrent neural networks, denial, economics, education, engineering, ethics, evidence, Internet, investing, life purpose, machine learning, mathematical publishing, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, obfuscating data, organizational failures, politics, population biology, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, Schnabel census, smart data, sociology, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists
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Three stories of solar energy domination: Which outcome would YOU prefer?
(Updated, 2016-07-14) See Shayle Kann’s great piece at GreenTech media. The choices: “Version one: Aimless transformation” “Version two: The balkanized grid” “Version three: Embracing the transformation” In addition to solar PV, wind energy of all forms (especially underutilized local wind … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, biofuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, Chris Goodall, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, Ecology Action, economics, efficiency, electricity, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Hyper Anthropocene, Internet, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, microgrids, public utility commissions, PUCs, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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synopsis of NY-REV
What New York State is doing, and Massachusetts, apparently not. Cheap supplies of domestic natural gas have driven the New England power plant market toward that fuel and away from the more expensive coal, oil and nuclear material. Limited capacity … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, causal diagrams, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate justice, coastal communities, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, disruption, distributed generation, ecology, economics, efficiency, electricity markets, energy, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, environment, extended supply chains, feed-in tariff, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, marginal energy sources, meteorology, microgrids, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, temporal myopia, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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“Solar power is contagious. These maps show how it spreads.” (from Vox)
Brad Plumer at Vox writes on take-up patterns of rooftop solar based upon a large dataset from SolarCity. The full article is available at the SolarCity site. Mr Plumer combines it with a report on other studies of solar adoption … Continue reading
Posted in Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, business, clean disruption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, diffusion, diffusion processes, disruption, distributed generation, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy utilities, exponential growth, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, local generation, Peter Diggle, point pattern analysis, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, regulatory capture, sociology, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastics, the energy of the people, the green century, utility company death spiral, zero carbon
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This is what the future looks like, for towns and villages — and utilities
Welcome to Minster, Ohio. (Hat tip to Clean Technica.) Check One: A 4.3 MW solar array. Check Two: A history of being supportive to local residents, and a plan for making them more efficient and reducing their electrical energy needs. … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, business, clean disruption, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, destructive economic development, distributed generation, economics, electricity markets, energy, energy reduction, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, grid defection, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, local generation, microgrids, politics, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reasonableness, regime shifts, regulatory capture, risk, Sankey diagram, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Spaceship Earth, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, zero carbon
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Tony Seba’s latest. Yes, there’s new stuff.
Posted in Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, business, decentralized electric power generation, disruption, distributed generation, economics, energy storage, exponential growth, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, investing, Mark Jacobson, Sankey diagram, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Stanford University, supply chains, Tony Seba
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patents disincentivize progress
Very interesting.
Not too shabby: “What’s warming the world” (Bloomberg Business), and “The siege of Miami” (The New Yorker)
What’s warming the world Infographic allowing the visitor to overlay time series of candidate causes for global warming, and thereby permitting them to draw their own conclusions. And Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker, brings home the contradictions and … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, business, climate change, climate data, climate zombies, complex systems, critical slowing down, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, evidence, fossil fuels, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, mitigation, model comparison, time series
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