This is your monthly opportunity to share! Use the comments section in this community thread to:
CLIMATE JOBS & OPPORTUNITIES: Share climate jobs/opportunities
SHARE WORK, ASK FOR HELP, FIND COLLABORATORS: Share your climate-related work, ask for help, or find collaborators
CLIMATE EVENTS & MEETUPS: Share climate-related events and meetups
EVERYTHING ELSE: Discuss David’s Notes or anything else climate-related
MAILBAG QUESTIONS: Ask a question for this month’s Mailbag (anyone can ask a question but mailbag episodes are a paid-sub-only perk). We request that you ask questions via these community threads. Volts has a form for those who are shy, but David prioritizes questions posted in the community threads.
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David’s Notes:
1. Paid subscribers have been asking how to receive mailbag episodes in their podcast feed. It’s easy! Open up a mailbag episode while signed into Substack, look to the right side, and click one of the LISTEN ON links. This action adds a private RSS feed to your podcast player. Most of you listen via Apple Podcasts, so this will be point and shoot. Others will have to manually add a RSS feed link to their podcast player, which is easy too. Spotify listeners will have to wait a few weeks — they’re just about to add this option.
2. Lots of questions on demand-side lately, especially concerning AI.
I wonder why no one ever questions why AI electricity generation requirements are taken as a given. It feels like we're being manipulated yet again by Silicon Valley for the benefit of its billionaire class.
Last Thursday's Washington Post article on electric utility demand growth related to data mining and AI really surprised me - I wasn't thinking the impact was expected to be so large (and maybe it won't be). Anyway, might you do a podcast on demand forecasts one of these days? And isn't there a local WA state angle - some prior smelter load that transformed into crypto currency load?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to cover this — and the general rise in electricity demand — but in the meantime I highly recommend this episode of the Heatmap podcast, with Jonathan Koomey, an expert who is skeptical of the AI-demand hype.
3. ⭐ You know how every podcast asks you to leave a review on the podcast platform of your choice, preferably Apple? That’s because reviews really do help. I don't have an advertising or marketing budget — the only way Volts grows is through word of mouth. So write a review somewhere, click 5 stars, or just tell a friend about it! Please and thank you.
4. ✅ Community comments of the month: A fun exchange between Will M and Mark N, talking about railroads as a potential DER opportunity:
Will: Railroads can be a major DER component. North America has upwards of 25K diesel-electric locomotives which run about 4K horsepower each. In the near future idle pure-electric locos (having battery power in addition to using conventional 'catenary' wire) connected to the grid could offer gigawatts of battery capacity. Also, the U.S. rail right of way of ~140K miles can host HVDC lines using the decades-old model of their hosting fiber optic lines. The Rail Electrification Coalition is uniting the literally parallel rail and transmission industries.
Mark: If it was anyone other than the RRs, I would be way more optimistic about this idea. I regularly have to coordinate with them for work (DOT) and it's like they're operating on another planet. I'm lucky if I get a call back, and if a project involves their RoW you may as well cancel it or assume it's delayed 5 years minimum. All that said, it could be really awesome! Here in the PNW, a lot of rail runs through areas with abundant cheap hydro, wind, and solar electrons waiting to move freight/people.
5. All sorts of battery chemistries have floated across my radar in the last two or three years, from iron-air to sodium-ion to lithium-sulfur to zinc-whatever to flow batteries to 100-hour batteries to thermal batteries. What sorts of batteries would you like to hear more about? Which ones do you think have a chance of carving out a niche alongside the lithium-ion behemoth?
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