Yes, I was also very happily surprised to hear that. There’s just so much more coverage about all the cynical pardons. I’m hoping there were more truly deserving pardons than just these two. I know Biden did something for non-violent drug offenders, but I think I heard that a bunch of those people were already out.

Have any other good pardons come through?

… to make you realize how difficult it would be to run everything purely on solar and wind …

Who said anything about running everything purely on solar and wind?

Yours is the third reply to me that makes a Factorio reference over the past month. I didn’t realize it was a game until yesterday. I guess I should give it a try.

You’re correct that intermittent power from wind and photovoltaic solar needs to be managed somehow. There are certain energy intensive, productive processes that can be conveniently ramped up or slowed down to meet this requirement. I just think such a system would be more responsible and less exploitative than building these massive battery facilities for speculating on the electricity supply.

Your half-joking idea of converting excess electricity to steam makes sense because steam is itself a useful product that’s needed for heating buildings as well as various industrial processes. Converting it back into electricity isn’t ideal, but that’s all you can do with a chemical battery in comparison.

I would prefer to use energy rather than store it, but yes, pressure vessels are preferable to chemical batteries.

Start with policies requiring technology companies to use computational work as a sink for excess electricity, compelling grid operators to prioritize sharing of intermittent renewable power, and mandating rooftop solar. That will hold us over while we start shutting down fossil fuel power plants and ramp up production of emissions free thermal alternatives and productive power sinks like electrolysis and desalination plants. Small back up power systems can be installed as needed at sensitive sites (similar to what we already do) and the roof top solar requirement will facilitate that. We would never expect PV solar plants to run at night. We’d just reduce computations or hydrogen and fresh water production as the PV solar output falls off.

I’ve never played the games you mentioned. Are there mods for automatic productive power sinks?

The solution is to make sure the electricity supply always exceeds demand even during spikes.

It’s complicated, but in terms of direct kills, hydro power takes the cake. If you’re also considering indirect kills, fossil fuel power is far and away the worst offender and I think that’s before you even account for climate change deaths:

Hydroelectric dams have also claimed more human lives than any other type of power plant.

A little bit of authoritarianism is what we need now to mitigate climate change and avoid the much worse kind of authoritarianism we will be in for as climate change gets worse. There’s no hippy la-la conscious capitalism way out of this situation.

Sometimes you have to intentionally burn some stuff to create a firebreak and save a lot more other stuff.

I do not understand how climate change is analogous to a leaky faucet with respect to anything.

What do you mean by “convert it back”? Convert it back to electricity for the grid? No. We need the hydrogen for important things, like making steel and fertilizer.

As I’ve already explained, we need hydrogen. We need it not for energy storage, but as a useful, important product. Electrolysis of water is pretty much the only way to get it without emitting greenhouse gases. Therefore, the efficiency of it doesn’t really matter, especially if the energy to do it would otherwise go to some dangerous, battery based buy low/sell high scheme.

Back to energy storage: if you’ve got some brilliant solution - get to it. We’re waiting.

No to storing joules in environmentally questionable batteries. Use the energy immediately to produce useful, necessary stuff like fresh water and hydrogen.

I’m not sure what you mean. Natural fresh water supplies are stressed in many regions. We need hydrogen to fuel vehicles and for the production GHG-free steel and fertilizer. Oxygen of course is necessary for medical and industrial applications. Safely handling hydrogen and oxygen is a solved problem and these gases are not polluting if you have to vent to atmosphere. It only makes sense from a wasteful, financially extractive perspective to store extra electricity by environmentally questionable means instead of actually using that energy right away.

I don’t think they should be operating at all.

If we build out our GHG-free power capacity beyond our electricity demand, efficiency isn’t an issue. We need fresh water. We need hydrogen and oxygen. I’m sure there are other convenient things to produce whenever electricity demand falls off. These energy storage and reselling schemes are just destroying value.

Well, I don’t know how we’re supposed to fix the climate while playing nice with bourgeois interests.

There’s also avoiding (or minimizing) the need for storage at all, with “demand shaping”. Basically, we radically overbuild solar, wind, wave, tidal, etc. Normally, that would tank energy prices and be unprofitable, but we also build out some massive, flexible demand to buy this excess power. Because they are extremely overbuilt, the minimal output from these sources during suboptimal conditions is more than enough to meet normal demands; we just shut off the flexible additional demand we added.

Bingo.