Lynne Kiesling This Miami Herald article discusses the large outage earlier this week in Florida, caused by the combination of a substation fire and a switch that was supposed to trip to isolate the substation, but did not. In particular, note the comments from Colorado State University engineering professor, and emeritus GridWise Architecture Council member …
Michael Giberson On Tuesday this week, while Florida transmission operators were getting everyone back online after a sub-station fire lead to cascading outages around the state, in Texas grid operators were responding to an emergency of their own. A sudden drop off in the West Texas wind produced an almost as sudden drop in wind …
Lynne Kiesling Last week, at the National Electricity Delivery Forum, Kurt Yeager of the Galvin Electricity Initiative issued a challenge to the electricity industry and to regulators to transform the industry, its technology, and its regulation. As reported at The Fuel Cell Market Report, Speaking before an audience of federal and state regulators, utilities and …
Michael Giberson At Freakonomics they have an interview with Hal Varian, lately the chief economist at Google. Many interesting remarks, but students reading Knowledge Problem may be especially interested in his career advice: Q: Your job sounds extremely interesting. What jobs would you recommend to a young person with an interest, and maybe a bachelors …
Michael Giberson … Texas does the non-carbon thing in a pretty big way, too. Tom Fowler, at NewsWatch: Energy, pulls together some numbers. Among his points (edited and slightly rearranged): Texas leads the nation in greenhouse gas emissions; and If Texas were a country, it would rank seventh in the world in greenhouse gas emissions. …
Lynne Kiesling Few details yet, but I’m sure this will give us stuff to talk about over the next week: a large power outage in Florida, affecting 3-4 million people. Florida Power & Light representatives officials expect to have the power restored by 5:30, which is pretty quick. But can such a large outage be …
Lynne Kiesling Lots of folks who worry about climate change argue for large-scale collective action, usually taking the form of some sort of government intervention that involves some degree of coercion. Guest-blogging at Instapundit, Megan McArdle makes a very trenchant observation about how self-reflective virtuous behavior can reduce the need for collective action, in this …
“Bourgeois Commitments to Virtue” Reduce Collective Action Problems Read More »
Michael Giberson Spanish company Abengoa Solar and Arizona Public Service Company have announced plans to build a large solar powered electric generator, to come online in 2011, but like many such announcements it comes with a couple of public-policy related “ifs”; they’ll build it if they get the necessary approvals from the Arizona utility regulator, …
Can Arizona Become the “Persian Gulf of Solar Energy”? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling And this time I mean it! Full Movable Type 4.1 upgrade, a wide range of social bookmarking options on the permalinks and archives of individual entries, a new look-and-feel, and hopefully the elimination of some wonky behaviors that the site had developed after five years of a half-assed recreational programmer (that would be …
Michael Giberson Out in west Texas you can still see the occasional old-style wind mill on a farm or ranch, dutifully pumping up water when the wind blows. A much more common sight these days is the new, sleek wind power generator. A combination of good fundamentals for wind power, federal tax credits, state renewable …
Texas Wind Power: Gets by with a Little Help from Tax Credits Read More »
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive