
Distributed Solar: The Democratizaton of Energy

Blogroll
- Leadership lessons from Lao Tzu
- Fear and Loathing in Data Science Cory Lesmeister’s savage journey to the heart of Big Data
- Awkward Botany
- Harvard's Project Implicit
- Why "naive Bayes" is not Bayesian Explains why the so-called “naive Bayes” classifier is not Bayesian. The setup is okay, but estimating probabilities by doing relative frequencies instead of using Dirichlet conjugate priors or integration strays from The Path.
- John Kruschke's "Dong Bayesian data analysis" blog Expanding and enhancing John’s book of same title (now in second edition!)
- SASB Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
- Rasmus Bååth's Research Blog Bayesian statistics and data analysis
- Healthy Home Healthy Planet
- The Plastic Pick-Up: Discovering new sources of marine plastic pollution
- 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
- All about Sankey diagrams
- ggplot2 and ggfortify Plotting State Space Time Series with ggplot2 and ggfortify
- Peter Congdon's Bayesian statistical modeling Peter Congdon’s collection of links pertaining to his several books on Bayesian modeling
- 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”
- Giant vertical monopolies for energy have stopped making sense
- Charlie Kufs' "Stats With Cats" blog “You took Statistics 101. Now what?”
- Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism (via Dan Satterfield) The science behind the GOP civil war
- Subsidies for wind and solar versus subsidies for fossil fuels
- "Perpetual Ocean" from NASA GSFC
- The Alliance for Securing Democracy dashboard
- Darren Wilkinson's introduction to ABC Darren Wilkinson’s introduction to approximate Bayesian computation (“ABC”). See also his post about summary statistics for ABC https://darrenjw.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/summary-stats-for-abc/
- Brian McGill's Dynamic Ecology blog Quantitative biology with pithy insights regarding applications of statistical methods
- Karl Broman
- Ives and Dakos techniques for regime changes in series
- Dr James Spall's SPSA
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Earth Family Beta MIchael Osborne’s blog on Science and the like
- Thaddeus Stevens quotes As I get older, I admire this guy more and more
- James' Empty Blog
- South Shore Recycling Cooperative Materials management, technical assistance and networking, town advocacy, public outreach
- All about models
- "Consider a Flat Pond" Invited talk introducing systems thinking, by Jan Galkowski, at First Parish in Needham, UU, via Zoom
- Tony Seba Solar energy, electric vehicle, energy storage, and business disruption professor and visionary
- Professor David Draper
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION Cathy O’Neil’s WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION,
- Dollars per BBL: Energy in Transition
- WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION, reviews Reviews of Cathy O’Neil’s new book
- Risk and Well-Being
- Quotes by Nikola Tesla Quotes by Nikola Tesla, including some of others he greatly liked.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
- Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation
- GeoEnergy Math Prof Paul Pukite’s Web site devoted to energy derived from geological and geophysical processes and categorized according to its originating source.
- What If
- Survey Methodology, Prof Ron Fricker http://faculty.nps.edu/rdfricke/
- 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
- Earle Wilson
- Mike Bloomberg, 2020 He can get progress on climate done, has the means and experts to counter the Trump and Republican digital disinformation machine, and has the experience, knowledge, and depth of experience to achieve and unify.
- Number Cruncher Politics
- NCAR AtmosNews
climate change
- Non-linear feedbacks in climate (discussion of Bloch-Johnson, Pierrehumbert, Abbot paper) Discussion of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2015GL064240/abstract
- Thriving on Low Carbon
- On Thomas Edison and Solar Electric Power
- Ray Pierrehumbert's site related to "Principles of Planetary Climate" THE book on climate science
- Updating the Climate Science: What path is the real world following? From Professors Makiko Sato & James Hansen of Columbia University
- Sir David King David King’s perspective on climate, and the next thousands of years for humanity
- Andy Zucker's "Climate Change and Psychology"
- 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
- “The Irrelevance of Saturation: Why Carbon Dioxide Matters'' (Bart Levenson)
- The Keeling Curve The first, and one of the best programs for creating a spatially significant long term time series of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Started amongst great obstacles by one, smart determined guy, Charles David Keeling.
- Tamino's Open Mind Open Mind: A statistical look at climate, its science, and at science denial
- Climate model projections versus observations
- "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.
- "Climate science is setttled enough"
- 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
- The HUMAN-caused greenhouse effect, in under 5 minutes, by Bill Nye
- US$165/tonne CO2: Sweden Sweden has a Carbon Dioxide tax of US$165 per tonne at present. CO2 tax was imposed in 1991. GDP has grown 60%.
- The great Michael Osborne's latest opinions Michael Osborne is a genius operative and champion of solar energy. I have learned never to disregard ANYTHING he says. He is mentor of Karl Ragabo, and the genius instigator of the Texas renewable energy miracle.
- Agendaists Eli Rabett’s coining of a phrase
- "Impacts of Green New Deal energy plans on grid stability, costs, jobs, health, and climate in 143 countries" (Jacobson, Delucchi, Cameron, et al) Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries.
- Climate impacts on retail and supply chains
- Équiterre Equiterre helps build a social movement by encouraging individuals, organizations and governments to make ecological and equitable choices, in a spirit of solidarity.
- Ricky Rood's “What would happen to climate if we (suddenly) stopped emitting GHGs today?
- Jacobson WWS literature index
- Ellenbogen: There is no Such Thing as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- James Hansen and granddaughter Sophie on moving forward with progress on climate
- Climate Communication Hassol, Somerville, Melillo, and Hussin site communicating climate to the public
- Grid parity map for Solar PV in United States
- "Getting to the Energy Future We Want," Dr Steven Chu
- Climate Change Reports By John and Mel Harte
- Warming slowdown discussion
- ATTP summarizes all that stuff about Committed Warming from AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS
- 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
- "Mighty Microgrids" Webinar This is a Webinar on YouTube about Microgrids from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), featuring New York State and Minnesota
- Climate change: Evidence and causes A project of the UK Royal Society: (1) Answers to key questions, (2) evidence and causes, and (3) a short guide to climate science
- SolarLove
- Mrooijer's Global Temperature Explorer
- The Scientific Case for Modern Human-caused Global Warming
- Wind sled Wind sled: A zero carbon way of exploring ice sheets
- Dessler's 6 minute Greenhouse Effect video
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
- David Appell's early climate science
- All Models Are Wrong Dr Tamsin Edwards blog about uncertainty in science, and climate science
- Steve Easterbrook's excellent climate blog: See his "The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet?" for example Heavy on data and computation, Easterbrook is a CS prof at UToronto, but is clearly familiar with climate science. I like his “The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet” very much.
- `Who to believe on climate change': Simple checks By Bart Verheggen
- "Lessons of the Little Ice Age" (Farber) From Dan Farber, at LEGAL PLANET
- Energy payback period for solar panels Considering everything, how long do solar panels have to operate to offset the energy used to produce them?
- Simple box models and climate forcing IMO one of Tamino’s best posts illustrating climate forcing using simple box models
- The net average effect of a warming climate is increased aridity (Professor Steven Sherwood)
- weather blocking patterns
Archives
Jan Galkowski
Category Archives: Sonnen community
What’s wrong with Massachusetts? Land wind turbines!
For groups of people who seriously embrace land wind turbines, there is no downside.
Posted in American Conservation Coalition, American Solar Energy Society, Ørsted, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Cape Wind, capitalism, CleanTechnica, climate activism, climate disruption, climate policy, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecocapitalism, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, education, fossil fuel divestment, global warming, global weirding, Green Tea Coalition, Hermann Scheer, Karl Ragabo, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, microgrids, mitigating climate disruption, On being Carbon Dioxide, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Sonnen community, statistical ecology, Talk Solar, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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50 Terawatts of Solar Photovoltaics (“PV”) is now feasible by 2050
This is from an article in Science by Haegel, et al which just was released today. It means, documented in detail, that the projections of Professor Tony Seba are not only right on, but Professor Seba may have underestimated the … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, disruption, distributed generation, investment in wind and solar energy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Sonnen community, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba
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Earth Day 2019: So how do people transition to the new energy economy?
I’ve been pretty hard on the Green New Deal. That’s partly because its proponents don’t seem to see that a transition to a new zero Carbon energy economy is inevitable. It’s opponents don’t see that either. It may not come … Continue reading
Posted in Amory Lovins, an ignorant American public, Ørsted, capitalism, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, compassion, corporate citizenship, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, corporate supply chains, corporations, ecomodernism, electric vehicles, engineering, ethics, extended producer responsibility, extended supply chains, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, Gaylord Nelson, global warming, Green New Deal, Hermann Scheer, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, LBNL, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Mark Carney, Mark Jacobson, microgrids, New England, NIMBY, organizational failures, Orsted, percolation theory, planning, public education, public welfare, RevoluSun, Richard Branson, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, SunPower, sustainability, sustainable landscaping, Talk Solar, technology, temporal myopia, Tesla, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, UU, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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October 2013 retrospective … Karl Ragabo on ‘Talk Solar’ podcast, regarding value of solar generation
In October of 2013, Karl Ragabo was interviewed on the Talk Solar podcast from Beth Bond of Decatur, GA. This was shortly after the first version of the Value of Solar report was issued by IREC. Listen to it below: … Continue reading
Posted in Beth Bond, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, CleanTechnica, climate disruption, climate economics, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, distributed generation, ecomodernism, ecopragmatism, energy storage, energy utilities, engineering, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Ragabo, microgrids, public utility commissions, regulatory capture, resiliency, RevoluSun, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, Stewart Brand, stranded assets, Talk Solar, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral
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Result of our own fiddling: Bob Watson and climate risk
Professor Bob Watson, University of East Anglia, presents the summary risk, climate change: The question is not whether the Earth’s climate will change in response to human activities, but when, where and by how much. Human activities are changing the … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, attribution, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, catastrophe modeling, climate, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, climate grief, climate justice, ecological disruption, ecology, Ecology Action, environment, global blinding, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, meteorology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, non-parametric model, Principles of Planetary Climate, radiative forcing, reasonableness, science, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, Solar Freakin' Roadways, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Solpad, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, sustainability, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, water, wind energy, wind power
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Welcome to snowy New England … Bad place for solar PV, right?
And this is ISO-NE, who, as little as three years back were highly sceptical anything other than additional natural gas generation could supply the ever increasing electrical power needs of the region, particularly with the withdrawal of generation from oil, … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Amory Lovins, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, climate economics, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporations, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, distributed generation, ecological disruption, economic trade, economics, ecopragmatism, ecopragmatist, engineering, entrpreneurs, green tech, Green Tech Media, grid defection, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, Joseph Schumpeter, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, rate of return regulation, reworking infrastructure, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, Sankey diagram, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, technology, 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, UNFCCC, Unitarian Universalism, unreason, utility company death spiral, Wally Broecker, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon
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“… [N]ew renewable energy capacity could quadruple that of fossil fuels over next three years”
This is utility-scale capacity only. See the footnote from the original post repeated at the bottom. Also, given uncertainties related to federal data availability at federal Web sites during the partial federal shutdown, I have copied the cited report and … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Anthropocene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, Buckminster Fuller, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, electricity, FERC, green tech, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, natural gas, rate of return regulation, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, the energy of the people, the right to know, the value of financial assets, Tony Seba, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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Cold Massachusetts Thanksgiving powered by Massachusetts solar
Update, 2018-12-15 (Click on image to see larger figure, and use your browser Back Button to return to reading blog.) Thanksgiving in 2018 was cold, but it was also sunny. That means the 150,000 solar installations in Massachusetts could delivery … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Ørsted, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, disruption, distributed generation, electrical energy storage, electricity markets, energy utilities, explosive methane, green tech, Green Tech Media, grid defection, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, Mark Jacobson, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, pipelines, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, SolarPV.tv, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, the energy of the people, the green century, Tony Seba, utility company death spiral, wind energy, zero carbon
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What will happen to fossil fuel-fired electric bills everywhere, eventually, including those fired by natural gas
See Cost of Coal: Electric Bills Skyrocket in Appalachia as Region’s Economy Collapses, by James Bruggers at Inside Climate News. Excerpt: The common denominator is American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest utilities. It owns Kentucky Power, along with … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, American Solar Energy Society, Amory Lovins, an uncaring American public, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to nowhere, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, corporate responsibility, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, electricity, electricity markets, energy utilities, engineering, exponential growth, fossil fuels, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, ILSR, investment in wind and solar energy, ISO-NE, John Farrell, Joseph Schumpeter, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, natural gas, pipelines, public utility commissions, PUCs, rate of return regulation, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, Spaceship Earth, stranded assets, 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, tragedy of the horizon, unreason, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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“The path to US$0.015/kWh solar power, and lower” (PV Magazine and GTM Research)
The headline and a page with lots of graphics and associated worksheets come from this PV Magazine article. The underpinning assessment is from GTM Research and their report Trends in Solar Technology and System Prices. Recall that Natural Gas Combined … Continue reading
Posted in American Solar Energy Society, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, CleanTechnica, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, distributed generation, electricity, electricity markets, fossil fuel divestment, green tech, Green Tech Media, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, ISO-NE, local generation, local self reliance, marginal energy sources, microgrids, natural gas, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, stranded assets, the energy of the people, the green century, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, zero carbon
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What gives me hope … And it ain’t the small stuff
AS Arman Oganisian of Stable Markets writes “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” That is a fundamentally engineering attitude. It is fundamentally about the economics, and, in particular, the dramatic drop in levelized cost of energy for wind and renewables, … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, biology, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, clean disruption, climate business, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, Cult of Carbon, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, destructive economic development, disruption, distributed generation, ecological services, ecology, Ecology Action, economic trade, economics, engineering, environment, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, global warming, Green Tech Media, greenhouse gases, grid defection, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, local generation, local self reliance, Sankey diagram, smart data, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, the energy of the people, the green century, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon, wind energy, wind power, wishful environmentalism, zero carbon
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LLNL Sankey diagram of U.S. national energy flows in 2017: What’s possible, what’s not, and who’s responsible
(Updated, 2018-05-02. See below.) I love Sankey diagrams, and have written about them with respect to influence of Big Oil on U.S. climate policy, and in connection with what it takes to power a light bulb, providing a Sankey-based explanation … Continue reading
Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Solar Energy Society, AMETSOC, AMOC, Amory Lovins, Anthropocene, being carbon dioxide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, BNEF, bridge to somewhere, clean disruption, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, coastal communities, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Cult of Carbon, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, denial, ecological services, energy utilities, environmental law, exponential growth, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, global warming, Hermann Scheer, Humans have a lot to answer for, Hyper Anthropocene, investment in wind and solar energy, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Anderson, local generation, local self reliance, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, Sonnen community, 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, tragedy of the horizon, utility company death spiral, wind energy, wind power, wishful environmentalism, zero carbon
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a microgrid with dynamic boundaries
(Updated 2018-04-05, 23:53 EDT.) Now here’s a thought: A microgrid with dynamic boundaries. Original popular article. Controller design. Basic ideas were conceived by Nassar and Salama, “Adaptive self-adequate microgrids with dynamic boundaries”: Abstract Intensive research is being directed at microgrids … Continue reading

