Texas Regulators Learned Nothing From February's Carnage, Prepare To Repeat The Cycle

from the whoops-you-froze-to-death-surcharge dept

Texas consumers recently learned the hard way that regulatory capture can prove to be fatal. Texas energy companies (and the regulators and lawmakers who love them) ignored a decade-plus of warnings that they needed to harden their utility infrastructure in the face of climate change. As a result, we're still measuring the casualties. Not only did 700 Texans die after they lost power during a brutal cold snap last February, but a new report by ProPublica found that an additional 1,400 Texans were hospitalized, and at least 7 died.

A joint investigation by ProPublica, NBC, and The Texas Tribune found that lax regulatory oversight (aside from, yes, poor human decision making) was a primary reason people keep dying from something so avoidable as carbon monoxide poisoning:

"regulations that would force companies to reduce generators’ carbon monoxide emissions and make the machines safer have been stymied under a statutory process that empowers manufacturers to regulate themselves."

If you squint and tilt your head just right, you may be able to detect a common theme across countless U.S. business sectors (also see: telecom, banking, insurance, energy), where letting giant companies monitor themselves doesn't always work out so great.

You would have thought Texas regulators and energy companies learned something from the experience of February, but you'd be wrong. Texas state lawmakers did pass a law urging Texas utilities to maybe someday think about hardening their infrastructure for increasing colder weather, but they included loopholes that excluded a systemic cornerstone: natural gas companies. Then mysteriously forgot they included those loopholes (which likely means gas industry lawyers wrote the law and the lawmakers they throw campaign contributions at failed to read it, which happens much more than you'd think).

Some companies have wisely updated their infrastructure and symptoms, but they have been warning local reporters they're in the minority, and Texas regulators and lawmakers still aren't taking the problem seriously. Especially when it comes to protecting the reliable flow of natural gas across the state, and tracking upgrades with any consistency:

"energy experts say Texas’ grid remains vulnerable, largely because newly written regulations allowed too much wiggle room for companies to avoid weatherization improvements that can take months or years. More than nine months after February’s storm — which could exceed Hurricane Harvey as the costliest natural disaster in state history — a lack of data from regulators and industry groups makes it impossible to know how many power and gas facilities are properly weatherized."

The Texas natural gas industry did find the time to implement a new $3.4 billion surcharge (with the blessing of state regulators) on Texas consumers' energy bills. So instead of forcing the Texas gas industry to update it's systems to avoid more fatalities, they passed bills that intentionally exempted them from such requirements. Then greenlit steep new surcharges that made consumers pay for the sector's incompetence. All while denying that the underlying reason (climate change caused by pollution) this is even happening in the first place. Great.

Filed Under: electric grid, energy, regulators, texas

Three Energy Bills Look To Increase Fourth Amendment Protections For Americans

from the walking-back-the-third-party-doctrine dept

Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a trio of energy bills for the Senate's consideration. The three bills each have their own area of focus.

One bill [PDF] would direct the Department of Energy -- along with state entities -- to upgrade the flexibility and reliability of energy grids, thus limiting disruption during natural disasters. The second bill [PDF] creates grant programs for consumer-level renewable energy, providing incentives for purchase and deployment of solar panels, electric vehicles, and energy-efficient appliances. The third [PDF] tasks the DOE with leading the way for renewable energy storage R&D in hopes of driving costs down and providing more affordable alternatives to non-renewable energy sources.

Beyond their renewable energy focus, these three bills all have one thing in common: law enforcement agencies aren't going to like them. Each bill contains language erecting warrant requirements for law enforcement access of consumer energy usage data.

In each bill, under the "Privacy, Security, and Resilience" heading, Wyden has inserted a clause limiting warrantless access to energy customer data to identifying info only

CONSUMER INFORMATION.—

A governmental entity may obtain from an electric utility, third party aggregator, or other nongovernmental entity under an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena the—

(A) name of an electric consumer;

(B) address of an electric consumer;

(C) length of service (including start date) of, and types of service used by, an electric con sumer; and

(D) means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) of an electric consumer.

Everything else would require a warrant.

ELECTRIC USAGE INFORMATION.—A governmental entity may only require the disclosure by an electric utility, third party aggregator, or other nongovernmental entity of information regarding the use of electricity by an electric consumer (including monthly usage data, data at a greater level of detail or specificity, and information about electric use by specific appliances) pursuant to a warrant issued based on probable cause, using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (or, in the case of a State court, issued using State warrant procedures) by a court of competent jurisdiction.

No more pulling citizens' electric bills without some articulable reason for doing so. The bill would also limit notification delays on these warrants to 180 days (although that period could be extended by a judge) and provides for suppression of evidence derived from warrantless access to energy usage information.

This will be a tough sell, considering law enforcement is very used to gathering up everything it can possibly construe as a third party record. Energy customers definitely know the energy they use is being tracked by their service provider. Even so, that knowledge is not the same as making the assumption that anything known by your electric company can also be accessed by law enforcement with almost zero paperwork.

A warrant requirement isn't much of a hurdle for law enforcement. What this would do is prevent fishing expeditions utilizing electric bills in hopes of stumbling over someone maintaining a home grow operation. This could mean people who shop for gardening supplies won't be having their electric bills constantly accessed by officers who assume the only hobby gardeners left are those in the marijuana business.

Still, it's a good move by Wyden. The bills may not go forward with these clauses intact, but they'll at least get legislators talking about the wealth of personal information law enforcement has warrantless access to.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, energy, ron wyden

Utilities In Florida Are Using A Fake Consumer Group To Hamstring Solar Competition

from the solar-sockpuppetry dept

Earlier this year, we noted how traditional utilities were playing extremely dirty in Florida to try and derail efforts to ramp up solar competition and adoption in the state most likely to benefit from it. After all, the vision of a future where competition is rampant, customers pay less money, and solar users actually get paid for driving power back to the grid gives most of these executives heartburn. As a result, utilities have gotten creative in the state, launching fake solar advocacy groups that actually function to pollute public discourse and derail any amendments intended to help solar grab a larger foothold in the state.

The key group in question is "Consumers For Smart Solar," which is funded by traditional utilities, but has actually been fighting tooth and nail against solar-friendly legislative efforts in the state that would lift the ban on the sale of solar panels by third parties. The group's website describes the organization this way:

"Consumers for Smart Solar is a diverse, bipartisan coalition of business, civic, and faith-based organizations working to promote solar energy without sacrificing commonsense consumer protections. We believe Florida needs more solar and that we have to do it the right way. That means protecting consumers from scam artists, rip-offs and long-term contract traps while ensuring that those who do not choose solar electricity are treated fairly, too."

The bogus pro-solar competition group hasn't just been fighting new legislation that would expand solar adoption in Florida (where thanks to AC the average household spends $1,900 a year on power, 40% higher than the national average), it has actively been pushing Amendment 1, regulation crafted by the utility industry the group claims "guarantees your right to place solar panels on your home." Except it does nothing of the sort, and was crafted specifically to protect incumbent utilities from competition once they eventually get around to embracing the future in 2050 or so.

That Amendment 1 is a ruse being pushed by incumbent utilities and a bogus solar advocacy group has generally been common knowledge in the state for much of the year. But in an amusing twist the last few weeks, a leaked audiotape exposed one local utility-tied Florida think tanker admitting that Consumers for Smart Solar Choice and Amendment 1 was a giant ruse to keep actual pro-solar competition supporters on their heels:

"(James Madison Institute in Tallahassee's Sal) Nuzzo called the amendment, which has received more than $21 million in utility industry financing, “an incredibly savvy maneuver” that “would completely negate anything they (pro-solar interests) would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road,” according to an audio recording of the event supplied to the Herald/Times.

...“To the degree that we can use a little bit of political jiu-jitsu and take what they’re kind of pinning us on and use it to our benefit either in policy, in legislation or in constitutional referendums — if that’s the direction you want to take — use the language of promoting solar, and kind of, kind of put in these protections for consumers that choose not to install rooftop."

The tactic of using think tanks and fake consumer groups working in concert to derail threatening legislation (or pass awful, protectionist legislation of their own) is something the telecom and other industries have engaged in for years, but it's just complicated enough to confuse the lion's share of voters. In this instance, Florida's utility think tank pals apparently decided to make things easier on consumers by admitting on tape the entire thing was a sham. Unsurprisingly, the "free market" think tank in question was forced to issue a statement claiming Nuzzo "misspoke":

“At an event with an unfamiliar, national audience, Mr. Nuzzo generalized his commentary and misspoke in reference to JMI partnering with Consumers for Smart Solar in any capacity,” McClure said in a statement.

Yeah, whoops a daisy.

Filed Under: advocacy, astroturf, energy, florida, solar

DailyDirt: Fingerprints And Watermarks On Everything?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Making copies of physical goods is becoming easier and easier all the time. Some folks want to make sure that all these physical items are authentic, devising fingerprinting or watermark technology to identify objects uniquely. Dollar bills, documents and all kinds of valuable things could be tracked with this kind of anti-counterfeiting tagging. Here are just a few other examples of making a mark on stuff that could be useful.

• SmartWater is a chemical fingerprint spray that can help identify thieves (who get caught) by covering them with a durable watermark. This stuff can stay on skin for months, and SmartWater has been a commercial product for decades now. [url]
• Actual fragments of DNA injected into underground wells could help track hydrothermal water for drilling optimal wells for geothermal energy production. DNA-encoded materials can identify where water flows underground, and they're a bit more environmentally friendly and durable than radioactive tracers or chemical dyes. [url]
• Wrinkled silica polymers can be formed into artificial fingerprints that could be used as anti-counterfeit tags. If artificially intelligent robots are going to take over the world someday, maybe we should give them fingerprints just like us. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: anti-counterfeiting, dna, energy, fingerprints, geothermal energy, smartwater, watermark

DailyDirt: Capturing The Power Of The Sun...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Solar power is literally everywhere, just not at night. But it's free to capture, if you have the means. Plenty of folks have been trying to capture enough solar energy to power cities or cars or whatever gadget you can think of, but sunlight just isn't as convenient as we'd like it to be. Solar energy is still going to become a larger and larger contributor to the mix of energy resources, and even as oil prices remain low, it looks like some companies are still committed to investing in it. Go, solar power, go....

• The world's largest coal supplier, Shenhua Group Corp, is partnering with SolarReserve to build 1,000 megawatts of solar power facilities in China for a couple billion bucks. This is just one step towards China building solar power plants capable of generating 10,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020. [url]
• Ivanpah is a huge solar energy farm with about 350,000 computer controlled mirrors redirecting sunlight at a tower in the middle of a California-Nevada border desert. A few of its mirrors were aimed incorrectly and damaged its operations, but this kind of solar farm design might not be very economical for very long, anyway. [url]
• New solar energy capturing materials could help harvest sunlight during the day and release the energy at night -- or at any other time, on demand. Chemically-based storage materials -- aka solar thermal fuels (STF) -- have been around for a while, but the development of inexpensive, durable solid (transparent) materials with this ability might be more practical and lead to smarter windows and surfaces that can absorb light and emit heat. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: energy, ivanpah, materials, renewable energy, solar, solar farm, solar thermal fuels, stfs
Companies: shenhua group corp, solarreserve

DailyDirt: Storing Lots Of Energy

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The obvious challenge with renewable energy sources like solar and wind is: what do you do when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing? Solar and wind generators don't tend to produce electricity in convenient amounts whenever we want, leading to wasted resources and further reliance on fossil fuel generators to keep up with electricity demand cycles. Storing lots of energy in an efficient way that can be readily recovered isn't easy, but there are some solutions that could work.

• It sounds like a made-up high school physics problem, but there's a startup called ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) that wants to store energy by pushing heavy trains up a hill. When the energy is needed, the trains would roll back down the hill and generate electricity doing so. The rail system takes up a bit of space, but its backers compare it to a hydroelectric dam -- but without the water and with less environmental impact. [url]
• The Llyn Peris reservoir has a hydroelectric generator with a peak output of 1.728 GW (great, Scott!). This storage station supplements Britain's national grid, but it could power the city of Wales on its own for about 5.5 hours. [url]
• Storing energy in chemical batteries doesn't sound quite as simple, but batteries take up a lot less space. Big cheap batteries for grid storage could use molten metal salts, but the technology still needs a bit more work before scaling up. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: advanced rail energy storage, ares, battery, energy, energy storage, generators, llyn peris reservoir, solar power

DailyDirt: Thanks For The Free Energy, Sun

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The world economy still largely depends on fossil fuels for energy, and nuclear energy isn't exactly popular after decades of use. Until we figure out nuclear fusion, if we want to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons, we're going to need to ramp up renewable energy sources from solar and wind. Solar energy capacity seems to be growing robustly, but apparently, there are still some bugs to work out.

• Solar farms in California are producing "too much" electricity in the spring and fall -- and the solution so far is to just turn them off. This problem of "excess" renewable energy isn't expected to get better as more solar energy is added to the grid, but hopefully, the state of California will figure out a better way to balance the electrical supply and demand (such as exporting the solar power to nearby states or storing the energy in large batteries). [url]
• Los Angeles might have some problems with blackouts this summer due to that enormous gas leak that was only somewhat recently plugged. That natural gas leak shut down one out of 17 natural gas facilities in the area, but the other facilities may need to be taken offline for safety inspections -- and unfortunately, renewable energy sources and other power plants can't handle the peak electricity demands during hot LA summers. [url]
• China has become the nation with the highest amount of solar energy producing capacity -- 43.2 gigawatts -- compared to 2nd place Germany at 38.4 gigawatts and the US with 27.8 gigawatts. Solar capacity numbers don't exactly translate into how much energy is expected to be produced (or actually will be produced), but more is presumably better. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: blackouts, energy, fossil fuels, natural gas, renewable energy, solar, solar farms

DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Making Progress?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The problems with nuclear power via fission have obviously not been overcome by technology (or politics). European countries have started to back off nuclear power, and the US isn't expanding its nuclear power capacity in the near future. However, nuclear power isn't dead yet. Maybe some people think it should be, but what if someone figures out how to prevent meltdowns and burn nuclear waste as fuel?

• China is expected to have an operational Generation IV nuclear fission power plant within the next few years, not sometime in 2030 or 2040. High temperature pebble-bed reactors that use helium instead of water to transfer heat are designed to avoid meltdowns with passive systems. China is looking to sell their nuclear power plants to countries like Saudi Arabia, and it also has some molten-salt reactors using thorium on the way, too. [url]
• Bill Gates has invested in TerraPower, a company that is developing nuclear energy technology called a travelling wave reactor. This kind of reactor doesn't require enriched fuels, so it avoids proliferation problems and can even consume some depleted uranium waste as fuel. But these reactors aren't fully operational just yet. [url]
• Tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste is currently in "temporary" storage, above ground in power plants across the US. A few geologically stable sites have been considered for nuclear waste storage, but shale deposits have only recently been investigated. A handful of European countries, as well as Canada and Japan, have already been looking into shale deposits to store radioactive waste, but the NIMBY factor for nuclear waste makes it tough to commit to any long-term storage plans. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: energy, fission, nuclear energy, nuclear meltdown, nuclear power, nuclear waste, pebble bed reactor, shale deposits, traveling wave reactor
Companies: terrapower

DailyDirt: Watched Pots Do Boil

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People often joke about how bad they are at cooking that they can't even boil water, but the process of boiling water is actually so ubiquitous and important that figuring out how to do it more efficiently is a significant challenge. We've mentioned some materials and designs that can help speed up the boiling process before, so here are a couple more cool ways to vaporize liquids.

• More efficient fractional distillation can separate alcohol from water using nanoparticles. Dissolved nanoparticles of gold-silica can absorb light and heat up just the surface of a liquid, allowing the more volatile alcohol to vaporize (and avoiding an azeotropic mixture). [url]
• Taking advantage of the Leidenfrost effect, steel balls coated with a super-hydrophobic coating can be heated to 400°C and plunged into room temperature water without producing violent boiling bubbles. This discovery could help improve various heat-transfer techniques and make some large industrial processes much safer. [url]
• Producing steam using solar energy can be done very quickly using nanoparticles, too. Heating up water to its boiling point is useful for a lot of applications (eg. producing electricity, purifying water, etc), so any tricks to make the process more efficient could have a significant impact on energy usage. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: azeotrope, boiling, distillation, energy, heat transfer, leidenfrost effect, nanotech, nanotechnology, purification, solar energy, water

DailyDirt: Harnessing A Lot Of Energy Ain't Easy

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've mentioned some advances in fusion energy research not too long ago, and it looks like Germany is ready to take a few more baby steps towards figuring out how to control insanely hot plasma. Still, we're a long way from plentiful fusion-generated electricity (not counting solar), but if we want to stop burning fossil fuels, we're going to need to do some more research.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel flipped the switch on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator to start testing its experimental plasma conditions that could lead to a fusion generator someday. Germany has spent over a billion euros and two decades building this experimental device which will never actually generate more energy than it consumes. Let's hope they learn a lot from this facility -- and maybe we'll have a new source of clean, convenient energy in a few more decades. [url]
• Nuclear reactors using fission (not fusion) are relatively expensive compared to other sources of energy. The history of small or modular nuclear reactors also suggests that there's not much advantage in small scale nuclear power plants. Dealing with radioactive waste also just scares people away from fission, too. [url]
• If Back To The Future taught us anything, it's that a lightning strike has enough energy to send a car through time itself -- if you only knew where lightning was going to strike. Unfortunately, 1.21 gigawatts isn't as useful as you might think, and capturing the energy of a lightning bolt doesn't get you all that much energy (unless you could do it continuously somehow). [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: angela merkel, energy, fission, fusion, lightning, nuclear energy, stellarator, wendelstein 7-x