I've been thinking about how to get homes to electrify. I work in clean energy and care about climate change, yet it's been a slow slog for my Bay Area home because it's all so darn expensive. We've managed to get solar and electrify everything except our furnace (including our hot tub heater, now a new heat pump), but that item will run us at least $18K, so the $2K IRA tax credit hardly makes a dent. And forget about batteries. How can we incentivize electrification to make it happen at the speed and scale we need?
Say you are a developer that is building a bunch of single family homes on a tract of land and your goal is to provide clean, cheap, and reliable energy for all the residents. What kind of infrastructure and technologies are you putting in?
What if you are building multifamily housing instead, or a new single house in an existing neighborhood? How do your solutions to this problem change at different scales, and what advice would you give to developers who care about decarbonization as far as how to get the best bang for their buck?
This is a great question that I'd love to hear more about as well. Here's one of my favorite explanations of the housing and density components - with some of the costs explained as "utility sausage"! It doesn't specifically tackle energy - that'd be a great update.
"Do townhomes drive down housing costs? Social science has an answer"
My question is about ebikes. I love riding mine around - I've put 4,300 miles on mine since buying it two years ago.
I was wondering: Is any work being done on standardizing ebike charging? For now, the charging situation sucks. Every bike I've seen seems to have some variation of an underpowered no-name brick with a barrel connector that can only add about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Good for filling up overnight, but not so great when you're on the go.
I would love it if we had a standardized connector, the way EV's (generally) do. If I can really daydream for a minute, maybe future ebikes could also accept NACS, and have battery cells that could handle more charging current.
Might even be a full episode idea, but what are the obstacles to retrofit multifamily solar and electrification, and who is working to combat them? The IRA doesn't have as many incentives in the space, and sometimes utilities can be a barrier (example below).
I'm in Chicago and a two-flat landlord (owner occupied) in our neighborhood tried to get solar and have one meter for the building, so the tenant gets the benefits too (landlord pays all the electric, solar covers most of it over the year), but ComEd said that wasn't allowed, and the solar doesn't pencil out if it's only going towards the energy use of half the building. Plus, for net metering reasons you wouldn't want to split the solar and have half of it go into a tenant's meter, because any credits would get lost if the tenant changes over. It's a whole headache that goes against the city and state's climate goals, and the same issue comes up if you want a heat pump system with mini splits in the tenant units but billed to a central landlord meter, so that heat is included. We're looking into it more, but we _think_ it's an issue with state municipal policy.
You've mentioned before studying philosophy back when you were in university, which philosophers or philosophical topics did you most enjoy learning about back then? And which have most influenced your worldview since then as an adult?
All else being equal (which it usually isn't) do you think restructured or vertically integrated states are doing a better job with the energy transition? On the one hand deregulated states can in some ways be more dynamic and on the other integrated states have more long term planning capabilities through their IRPs.
The Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) is hiring a Deputy Director! CETI is an independent research & analysis nonprofit working to accelerate an equitable clean energy transition in the Northwest. Position based in Seattle, WA: https://www.cleanenergytransition.org/careers/deputy-director
I just founded a startup that develops software tools for modernizing old software (automated C++ to Rust conversion for the software nerds out there). One of the verticals we are thinking about targeting are utilities like grid operators or power plants. If anyone has experience with those types of companies (especially the software parts of them), I would really love to pick your brain! To be clear, we are way before the sales pitch phase of things, this would just be informational conversations to help me understand the space. Folks should feel free to reach out to me here or matt@brontosource.dev. Thanks!!
Seattle-area folks: Did you know Seattle is getting a climate co-working space, opening imminently? I'm signed up and would love to see other Volts subscribers there IRL. Learn more and sign up here: https://9zero.com/seattle.
And a blurb: "Launched during San Francisco Climate Week 2024, 9Zero is the hub for all things climate. Starting with coworking and events, we’re uniting the entire ecosystem. Startups, investors, corporations, service providers, policymakers, academics: if you’re working toward a healthier, more resilient world, you belong at 9Zero."
My monthly Forests, Climate, and Startups meetup is this week! Thursday from 4:30-7 at Cascadia Pizza Co in Bellevue. We'll be holding court on the back patio. I'll be wearing my cruising vest and hardhat, you'll know it when you see it.
Woytopia.org is the sustainability day festival you can take your family to. Just an hour north of Sydney, Australia ….. (I know some of you are this side of the pacific pond) Sun13Oct lots of Green talks, EV meet up (cars and mopeds), eco-market, circus 🎪 , local bands 🎸- check out the program https://woytopia.org/program-2/ Bring the family or just yourself and find people to talk about everything solar ☀️to native bees. 🐝
It’s FREE and people with no appendix also welcome ! (Get well David)
Yo! We're building a climate community in Philly via our monthly Green Drinks, which meets on the second Tuesday of every month at Victory Brewing at 1776 Ben Franklin (no, really, that's the address) from 6-8. We've got two Volts listeners among our regular attendees, but we want more. Anyone else in the area, please join us.
First, Dave, get well quickly and completely. Second, my objection to curbside charging in the earlier episode was NOT about inconveniencing sidewalk users, as I think I made pretty clear. So, whether that is silly or not misses the point. The point is the access to the curb from the street, or "public right-of-way" as it is often referred to in the planning field. There are only so many linear feet of curb on any given street, and on streets in retail/business districts, there are many demands on that curbspace. Public parking for private vehicles, while treasured by people looking for parking, is the least efficient use of that curbspace by far, especially when it's free or under-charged. There's bus stop, paratransit, loading zones, gig delivery/pick-up, handicapped access, and more. Not to mention future changes to the street, like protected bike lanes or widened sidewalks. As we begin to establish curbside charging, we are really developing what might be called "super-parking", justified and fortified by not just parking, but now charging, and adding additional stakeholders in defending that parking/charging from any future changes in use to the street. Remember, public right-of-way is just that: public. But there is a large and growing portion of the public that does not/cannot drive (see Anna Zivarts' excellent new book "When Driving is Not an Option" from Island Press), as high or higher than 30%. But we all pay for, and use in our own way, that shared public space. I support getting off of gas vehicles as quickly as possible, but I think we can manage to keep vehicle charging off-street to a very large extent, and then if we have to, allow limited on-street parking, but with a stiff lease expiration clause, so that the neighborhood/city can make other choices. Let's not be like Chicago, who sold all their parking meters to Wall Street in the 2008 financial crisis. (mind-blowing details of this colossal blunder here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Parking_Meters). Let's plan ahead! So we can keep car-free living as the best potential diversion from the current status quo.
My question is about IOUs vs co-ops and other public power. I've heard you talk repeatedly about the incentive problem caused by investor-owned utilities making money by building things. However, this goes both ways. I recently listened to a presentation by someone who works for the association of electric co-ops in Minnesota explaining that this is exactly why the IOUs supported the aggressive new electricity policy, while the co-ops fought to weaken it. Co-ops have strong incentives against transitioning. Electric rates are likely to rise no matter what (inflation if nothing else). A co-op might build a renewable project that makes electric rates rise less than they would have otherwise, but members only see that the rates rose, and might blame the project. There's a strong incentive to not anger the local nimbys and just do nothing. Co-op boards lack technical expertise and are overly-influenced by management. Legislators and regulators are deferential to what co-ops say, because they theoretically are already working in the public interest. Is there any evidence, across the country that public power utilities do better in advancing the energy transition, or do they actually do worse? I'd love to hear someone speak to whether public power actually helps this at all. (Speaking as someone who's been on an electric co-op board for 6 years, in a state mostly served by co-ops, which is NOT doing a great job getting off fossil fuels)
I'm in the process of pricing out a water heater replacement, and my state has a rebate. I'm looking at the estimates and the price difference looks awfully like the plumber is trying to claim the state rebate for themselves.
Anyone else seeing something similar? I know it happened with EVs.
Fire hydrants, trash cans, and trees are all absolutely accessibly challenges in an urban context! They are not excuses to make other people's lives just a little bit worse; they are reasons to push harder for nicer spaces for humans in our urban environments. David's reply on the impacts of curbside charging reads as ableist, dismissive, and wrong. Consider if the charger were moved into a parking spot, who would complain and how would that feedback go? Why isn't the power for street side charging delivered via a catenary system? The same catenary system providing power for a fleet of electric busses? Digging up a sidewalk, running power, leaving an obstruction, and expecting public space users to maintain responsibility for it all in order to promote privatization of transportation and profits. Oh, and then the public obligation to clean it all up when this company fails, or cancels this line of business in 5 years, or a new building owner decides to opt out, or a new battery technology comes along and changes the game in charging - making this technology obsolete. Or, for the techno-optimist why not a retractable solution that gets out of the way when not in service (located inside the parking/street space rather than the human space)? There are options that do not impose costs on the everyone else in the use environment they just cost more to deploy. Any of the system fixes requires broader municipal buy-in (e.g. if public transit was timely and safe you'd not need personal vehicles, and therefore no need to construct a system for private profit over public resources to support individual vehicle ownership). This solution is only looking at the economically optimal option for the company sans concern for the rest of the world, picking and choosing who matters (it is the cars, they matter here - people who can buy EVs can pay a premium for charging).
The use and access arguments flip right around if we're talking about charging infrastructure for electric scooters, something that at least pencils as an environmental improvement to personal automobile ownership. You should think about why that is. Why is scooter infrastructure on sidewalks a big problem (and has been very publicly for 5 years; Bird had initial deployments of building sponsored charging in 2019 - attached to the building wall to avoid a sidewalk grab) and car infrastructure a small inconvenience, not even an inconvenience, you are silly for bringing it up? Why defend this (ableist, capitalist, classist, car-first) status quo? It was the League of American Wheelmen that paved the roads, not for cars but for bicycles. The truth under the fact is that they did it to defend status and class; quickly transitioning from bicycles to cars as their signal of status. This solution is squarely in that older spirit, and minimizing those who have a different experiences with the ease of use of public spaces is right in that tradition.
How different is a charger post (at least of the Level 2 style, like the Tesla Wall connector) from a parking meter, though? And we put those along the edges of sidewalks all the time. You probably could do an integrated meter / charger.
It isn't about the physical solution, though that does matter, so much as who decides for public spaces and if those deciders give accommodation to people who are different than they are. It is the difference between observing "these other bad things exist" and "this thing is good." We routinely site traffic poles and utility boxes in sidewalks making them unusable for many citizens, this doesn't mean it is ok to expand the practice!
The device in use has a cord that attaches from a pylon set in the sidewalk to a car that may or may not be directly aligned to that pylon. This is a larger footprint of impact/obstacle than a street meter or a hydrant. It'll catch garden variety j-walkers and they'll rip out the cords after they trip over the first one. You can see an ideal image of it here: https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a43780946/itselectric-curbside-ev-charging/
One who cares about access would put it in the street or on a retractable pylon/bollard. Cities other than New York have under-sidewalk garbage collection too, so solutions exist we're just not picking them.
There are whole disciplines dedicated to the challenge dismissed in the response highlighted in today's Notes. It is the height of... something for sure.
First, I wish you a speedy recovery and future good health.
Tonight I saw Ayana Elizabeth Johnson interviewed on PBS on her new book, "What if We Get it Right- Visions of a Climate Future". Thomas Piketty, the French Economist, has been talking about climate change in terms of wealth inequality. You haven't had such book writers on Volts. Is that deliberate, or you just haven't gotten the person you want to talk to?
I trust German healthcare more than US hospitals hands down. It sounds as though you had an appendectomy but I'm curious if they first tried antibiotics.
I'm trying to imagine how BPA residential ratepayers might organize and raise their choices about the new pending 18 yr contract in order to provide the opportunity to install more than the piddling 5 MW. As your democratizing energy podcast back in May says, schools (and other public facilities) should be given the opportunity to generate power and revenue behind the distribution lines. That also would help BPA cover the rising demand by new data storage and Bitcoin. We must find a way to tame the dinosaur bureaucracy into operating in today's world.
I recently viewed an interview of Jane Fonda by Jimmy Kimmel. She spoke very passionately about her efforts against climate change and has started a PAC called JANEPAC, the goal is to elect climate friendly public officials.
In case you have not heard about it, here is the url to the interview:
In the approximately 2 years I've been listening, I don't recall any mention of household solar hot water. Is it no longer cheaper than solar PV plus a water heater? I thought it might have been appropriate in last week's "tool for solar-first" episode. Perhaps it is a mature technology with nothing interesting happening. Perhaps it's not of much use in Seattle! I realize that here in Honolulu we have particularly good conditions--sunny all year, no danger of freezing--but we have used electricity to heat water only a few days in the last 20 years.
OUCH!!! Sorry your loaded stick o' dynamite since birth went off, dude. I guess it's a blessing in disguise that it happened in Germany & not the US? 😅
Question. Are rooftop solar and batteries part of the likely optimal mix in say 20 years? Or is it more likely that the cost savings of utility scale solar will swamp rooftop solar? Even with utility scale, I can imagine home batteries being part of the mix.
Given the rise of VPPs, I'd say home batteries will be critical. They do need to get cheaper (and more incentivized) — we're almost all-electric in my house (waiting for more IRA incentives to get a heat pump heater) and have solar, but batteries are still so expensive that we haven't even considered getting one. Also, Americans could save big $$ by deploying a lot more distributed energy resources in close coordination with utility-scale (see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transmission-elephant-room-rosana-francescato)
--- MAILBAG QUESTIONS ---
Hope you feel better soon, David!!
I've been thinking about how to get homes to electrify. I work in clean energy and care about climate change, yet it's been a slow slog for my Bay Area home because it's all so darn expensive. We've managed to get solar and electrify everything except our furnace (including our hot tub heater, now a new heat pump), but that item will run us at least $18K, so the $2K IRA tax credit hardly makes a dent. And forget about batteries. How can we incentivize electrification to make it happen at the speed and scale we need?
Say you are a developer that is building a bunch of single family homes on a tract of land and your goal is to provide clean, cheap, and reliable energy for all the residents. What kind of infrastructure and technologies are you putting in?
What if you are building multifamily housing instead, or a new single house in an existing neighborhood? How do your solutions to this problem change at different scales, and what advice would you give to developers who care about decarbonization as far as how to get the best bang for their buck?
This is a great question that I'd love to hear more about as well. Here's one of my favorite explanations of the housing and density components - with some of the costs explained as "utility sausage"! It doesn't specifically tackle energy - that'd be a great update.
"Do townhomes drive down housing costs? Social science has an answer"
https://www.kuow.org/stories/does-density-drive-down-housing-costs-science-has-an-answer
(there's an even longer version of it linked at the bottom - recommended!)
I wish you a speedy recovery, David!
My question is about ebikes. I love riding mine around - I've put 4,300 miles on mine since buying it two years ago.
I was wondering: Is any work being done on standardizing ebike charging? For now, the charging situation sucks. Every bike I've seen seems to have some variation of an underpowered no-name brick with a barrel connector that can only add about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Good for filling up overnight, but not so great when you're on the go.
I would love it if we had a standardized connector, the way EV's (generally) do. If I can really daydream for a minute, maybe future ebikes could also accept NACS, and have battery cells that could handle more charging current.
Might even be a full episode idea, but what are the obstacles to retrofit multifamily solar and electrification, and who is working to combat them? The IRA doesn't have as many incentives in the space, and sometimes utilities can be a barrier (example below).
I'm in Chicago and a two-flat landlord (owner occupied) in our neighborhood tried to get solar and have one meter for the building, so the tenant gets the benefits too (landlord pays all the electric, solar covers most of it over the year), but ComEd said that wasn't allowed, and the solar doesn't pencil out if it's only going towards the energy use of half the building. Plus, for net metering reasons you wouldn't want to split the solar and have half of it go into a tenant's meter, because any credits would get lost if the tenant changes over. It's a whole headache that goes against the city and state's climate goals, and the same issue comes up if you want a heat pump system with mini splits in the tenant units but billed to a central landlord meter, so that heat is included. We're looking into it more, but we _think_ it's an issue with state municipal policy.
This may be of interest to you: https://allumeenergy.com/us/. Here's a Canary Media article about the company: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/this-startup-has-a-smarter-way-to-make-solar-work-for-apartments.
You've mentioned before studying philosophy back when you were in university, which philosophers or philosophical topics did you most enjoy learning about back then? And which have most influenced your worldview since then as an adult?
All else being equal (which it usually isn't) do you think restructured or vertically integrated states are doing a better job with the energy transition? On the one hand deregulated states can in some ways be more dynamic and on the other integrated states have more long term planning capabilities through their IRPs.
--- CLIMATE JOBS & OPPORTUNITIES ---
The Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI) is hiring a Deputy Director! CETI is an independent research & analysis nonprofit working to accelerate an equitable clean energy transition in the Northwest. Position based in Seattle, WA: https://www.cleanenergytransition.org/careers/deputy-director
--- SHARE WORK, ASK FOR HELP, FIND COLLABORATORS ---
I just founded a startup that develops software tools for modernizing old software (automated C++ to Rust conversion for the software nerds out there). One of the verticals we are thinking about targeting are utilities like grid operators or power plants. If anyone has experience with those types of companies (especially the software parts of them), I would really love to pick your brain! To be clear, we are way before the sales pitch phase of things, this would just be informational conversations to help me understand the space. Folks should feel free to reach out to me here or matt@brontosource.dev. Thanks!!
--- CLIMATE EVENTS & MEETUPS ---
Seattle-area folks: Did you know Seattle is getting a climate co-working space, opening imminently? I'm signed up and would love to see other Volts subscribers there IRL. Learn more and sign up here: https://9zero.com/seattle.
And a blurb: "Launched during San Francisco Climate Week 2024, 9Zero is the hub for all things climate. Starting with coworking and events, we’re uniting the entire ecosystem. Startups, investors, corporations, service providers, policymakers, academics: if you’re working toward a healthier, more resilient world, you belong at 9Zero."
My monthly Forests, Climate, and Startups meetup is this week! Thursday from 4:30-7 at Cascadia Pizza Co in Bellevue. We'll be holding court on the back patio. I'll be wearing my cruising vest and hardhat, you'll know it when you see it.
Scheduling link here: https://lu.ma/3qb3ch0k
If you'll be in NYC for NY Climate Week, come celebrate the launch of PowerLines Tuesday from 6-8pm! https://lu.ma/8vv472h3
Woytopia.org is the sustainability day festival you can take your family to. Just an hour north of Sydney, Australia ….. (I know some of you are this side of the pacific pond) Sun13Oct lots of Green talks, EV meet up (cars and mopeds), eco-market, circus 🎪 , local bands 🎸- check out the program https://woytopia.org/program-2/ Bring the family or just yourself and find people to talk about everything solar ☀️to native bees. 🐝
It’s FREE and people with no appendix also welcome ! (Get well David)
Yo! We're building a climate community in Philly via our monthly Green Drinks, which meets on the second Tuesday of every month at Victory Brewing at 1776 Ben Franklin (no, really, that's the address) from 6-8. We've got two Volts listeners among our regular attendees, but we want more. Anyone else in the area, please join us.
https://bostonglobeclimateweek2022.splashthat.com/
--- EVERYTHING ELSE ---
First, Dave, get well quickly and completely. Second, my objection to curbside charging in the earlier episode was NOT about inconveniencing sidewalk users, as I think I made pretty clear. So, whether that is silly or not misses the point. The point is the access to the curb from the street, or "public right-of-way" as it is often referred to in the planning field. There are only so many linear feet of curb on any given street, and on streets in retail/business districts, there are many demands on that curbspace. Public parking for private vehicles, while treasured by people looking for parking, is the least efficient use of that curbspace by far, especially when it's free or under-charged. There's bus stop, paratransit, loading zones, gig delivery/pick-up, handicapped access, and more. Not to mention future changes to the street, like protected bike lanes or widened sidewalks. As we begin to establish curbside charging, we are really developing what might be called "super-parking", justified and fortified by not just parking, but now charging, and adding additional stakeholders in defending that parking/charging from any future changes in use to the street. Remember, public right-of-way is just that: public. But there is a large and growing portion of the public that does not/cannot drive (see Anna Zivarts' excellent new book "When Driving is Not an Option" from Island Press), as high or higher than 30%. But we all pay for, and use in our own way, that shared public space. I support getting off of gas vehicles as quickly as possible, but I think we can manage to keep vehicle charging off-street to a very large extent, and then if we have to, allow limited on-street parking, but with a stiff lease expiration clause, so that the neighborhood/city can make other choices. Let's not be like Chicago, who sold all their parking meters to Wall Street in the 2008 financial crisis. (mind-blowing details of this colossal blunder here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Parking_Meters). Let's plan ahead! So we can keep car-free living as the best potential diversion from the current status quo.
Get well quickly!
My question is about IOUs vs co-ops and other public power. I've heard you talk repeatedly about the incentive problem caused by investor-owned utilities making money by building things. However, this goes both ways. I recently listened to a presentation by someone who works for the association of electric co-ops in Minnesota explaining that this is exactly why the IOUs supported the aggressive new electricity policy, while the co-ops fought to weaken it. Co-ops have strong incentives against transitioning. Electric rates are likely to rise no matter what (inflation if nothing else). A co-op might build a renewable project that makes electric rates rise less than they would have otherwise, but members only see that the rates rose, and might blame the project. There's a strong incentive to not anger the local nimbys and just do nothing. Co-op boards lack technical expertise and are overly-influenced by management. Legislators and regulators are deferential to what co-ops say, because they theoretically are already working in the public interest. Is there any evidence, across the country that public power utilities do better in advancing the energy transition, or do they actually do worse? I'd love to hear someone speak to whether public power actually helps this at all. (Speaking as someone who's been on an electric co-op board for 6 years, in a state mostly served by co-ops, which is NOT doing a great job getting off fossil fuels)
I'm in the process of pricing out a water heater replacement, and my state has a rebate. I'm looking at the estimates and the price difference looks awfully like the plumber is trying to claim the state rebate for themselves.
Anyone else seeing something similar? I know it happened with EVs.
Perhaps not apples to apples, but that's exactly what happened when I bought my first EV.
Re: Curbside Charging response.
Fire hydrants, trash cans, and trees are all absolutely accessibly challenges in an urban context! They are not excuses to make other people's lives just a little bit worse; they are reasons to push harder for nicer spaces for humans in our urban environments. David's reply on the impacts of curbside charging reads as ableist, dismissive, and wrong. Consider if the charger were moved into a parking spot, who would complain and how would that feedback go? Why isn't the power for street side charging delivered via a catenary system? The same catenary system providing power for a fleet of electric busses? Digging up a sidewalk, running power, leaving an obstruction, and expecting public space users to maintain responsibility for it all in order to promote privatization of transportation and profits. Oh, and then the public obligation to clean it all up when this company fails, or cancels this line of business in 5 years, or a new building owner decides to opt out, or a new battery technology comes along and changes the game in charging - making this technology obsolete. Or, for the techno-optimist why not a retractable solution that gets out of the way when not in service (located inside the parking/street space rather than the human space)? There are options that do not impose costs on the everyone else in the use environment they just cost more to deploy. Any of the system fixes requires broader municipal buy-in (e.g. if public transit was timely and safe you'd not need personal vehicles, and therefore no need to construct a system for private profit over public resources to support individual vehicle ownership). This solution is only looking at the economically optimal option for the company sans concern for the rest of the world, picking and choosing who matters (it is the cars, they matter here - people who can buy EVs can pay a premium for charging).
The use and access arguments flip right around if we're talking about charging infrastructure for electric scooters, something that at least pencils as an environmental improvement to personal automobile ownership. You should think about why that is. Why is scooter infrastructure on sidewalks a big problem (and has been very publicly for 5 years; Bird had initial deployments of building sponsored charging in 2019 - attached to the building wall to avoid a sidewalk grab) and car infrastructure a small inconvenience, not even an inconvenience, you are silly for bringing it up? Why defend this (ableist, capitalist, classist, car-first) status quo? It was the League of American Wheelmen that paved the roads, not for cars but for bicycles. The truth under the fact is that they did it to defend status and class; quickly transitioning from bicycles to cars as their signal of status. This solution is squarely in that older spirit, and minimizing those who have a different experiences with the ease of use of public spaces is right in that tradition.
How different is a charger post (at least of the Level 2 style, like the Tesla Wall connector) from a parking meter, though? And we put those along the edges of sidewalks all the time. You probably could do an integrated meter / charger.
It isn't about the physical solution, though that does matter, so much as who decides for public spaces and if those deciders give accommodation to people who are different than they are. It is the difference between observing "these other bad things exist" and "this thing is good." We routinely site traffic poles and utility boxes in sidewalks making them unusable for many citizens, this doesn't mean it is ok to expand the practice!
The device in use has a cord that attaches from a pylon set in the sidewalk to a car that may or may not be directly aligned to that pylon. This is a larger footprint of impact/obstacle than a street meter or a hydrant. It'll catch garden variety j-walkers and they'll rip out the cords after they trip over the first one. You can see an ideal image of it here: https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a43780946/itselectric-curbside-ev-charging/
One who cares about access would put it in the street or on a retractable pylon/bollard. Cities other than New York have under-sidewalk garbage collection too, so solutions exist we're just not picking them.
There are whole disciplines dedicated to the challenge dismissed in the response highlighted in today's Notes. It is the height of... something for sure.
https://www.planning.org/planning/2022/winter/8-major-roadblocks-to-inclusive-streets/
https://www.access-board.gov/prowag/proposed/planning-and-design-for-alterations/chapter5/
(I do find it sad/funny that most of the images in this government accessibility website are broken links)
First, I wish you a speedy recovery and future good health.
Tonight I saw Ayana Elizabeth Johnson interviewed on PBS on her new book, "What if We Get it Right- Visions of a Climate Future". Thomas Piketty, the French Economist, has been talking about climate change in terms of wealth inequality. You haven't had such book writers on Volts. Is that deliberate, or you just haven't gotten the person you want to talk to?
I trust German healthcare more than US hospitals hands down. It sounds as though you had an appendectomy but I'm curious if they first tried antibiotics.
I'm trying to imagine how BPA residential ratepayers might organize and raise their choices about the new pending 18 yr contract in order to provide the opportunity to install more than the piddling 5 MW. As your democratizing energy podcast back in May says, schools (and other public facilities) should be given the opportunity to generate power and revenue behind the distribution lines. That also would help BPA cover the rising demand by new data storage and Bitcoin. We must find a way to tame the dinosaur bureaucracy into operating in today's world.
Keep up the great work, my friend!
Love your podcast - my absolute favorite!
I recently viewed an interview of Jane Fonda by Jimmy Kimmel. She spoke very passionately about her efforts against climate change and has started a PAC called JANEPAC, the goal is to elect climate friendly public officials.
In case you have not heard about it, here is the url to the interview:
https://abc.com/video/1555bbce-a739-43bd-b7c9-d00f2c3be0fb
and a link to her site: https://janepac.com/
VERY impressive!
THANKS for all of your efforts! Hope you are back on your feet soon!
In the approximately 2 years I've been listening, I don't recall any mention of household solar hot water. Is it no longer cheaper than solar PV plus a water heater? I thought it might have been appropriate in last week's "tool for solar-first" episode. Perhaps it is a mature technology with nothing interesting happening. Perhaps it's not of much use in Seattle! I realize that here in Honolulu we have particularly good conditions--sunny all year, no danger of freezing--but we have used electricity to heat water only a few days in the last 20 years.
So sorry to hear about your health troubles, speedy recovery to you.
Feel better David, sounds like an ordeal!
I hope you feel better and get out of the hospital soon! That is absolutely no fun.
Don't die, dude! Hope you feel better soon.
Heal up and home soon.
OUCH!!! Sorry your loaded stick o' dynamite since birth went off, dude. I guess it's a blessing in disguise that it happened in Germany & not the US? 😅
In any case, feel better soon!
Ben in Pittsburgh
Feel better soon!
Question. Are rooftop solar and batteries part of the likely optimal mix in say 20 years? Or is it more likely that the cost savings of utility scale solar will swamp rooftop solar? Even with utility scale, I can imagine home batteries being part of the mix.
Given the rise of VPPs, I'd say home batteries will be critical. They do need to get cheaper (and more incentivized) — we're almost all-electric in my house (waiting for more IRA incentives to get a heat pump heater) and have solar, but batteries are still so expensive that we haven't even considered getting one. Also, Americans could save big $$ by deploying a lot more distributed energy resources in close coordination with utility-scale (see https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transmission-elephant-room-rosana-francescato)