#Energy & utilities

[karmathenightowl]

The one and only Shlabethany, along with the other npcs that appear in the Passion's Cove arc!

[thashining]

#fafo Season: Alabama MAGA Voters BETRAYED After Trump Order Cancels Energy Grant & Hikes Power Bill | Red States

Awwww

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Energy Department said on Thursday that it planned to offer $22.9 billion in loan guarantees to help eight electric utilities around the country modernize their power grids, add large amounts of renewable energy — and pass along any resulting savings to customers.

The deals amount to one of the biggest commitments ever made by the department’s Loan Programs Office, which under President Biden has already doled out tens of billions of dollars for battery factories and other low-carbon energy projects.

As part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats in Congress handed the office $250 billion in loan authority to repurpose or replace existing energy infrastructure in order to lower air pollution and reduce planet-warming emissions. So far, the office has used that authority to back efforts to restart a shuttered nuclear reactor in Michigan and to help California’s largest utility upgrade its electric grid.

The new loan guarantees, which still have to be finalized, are even more far-reaching. They are meant to help utilities that serve more than 14.7 million people across 12 states upgrade aging transmission lines or build new ones. Doing so, the office said, would help power companies tap into more wind, solar and hydroelectric power while improving grid reliability.

In Michigan, DTE Electric and DTE Gas would receive loan guarantees totaling nearly $9 billion to install thousands of megawatts of solar, wind and batteries and to replace existing gas pipelines in order to reduce leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

In the Pacific Northwest, PacifiCorp would receive a $3.52 billion loan guarantee to help build 700 miles of new transmission lines in Idaho, Oregon and Utah, with the aim of using more renewable energy and cutting emissions.

In Iowa and Wisconsin, Alliant Energy and its subsidiaries would receive a $3 billion loan guarantee to add more than 2,000 megawatts of wind power and batteries to the grid. The utility is planning to close a large coal-fired power plant by 2030.

Other recipients include Consumers Energy in Michigan; Jersey Central Power & Light in New Jersey; and AEP, which serves Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

[lala-blahblah]

I will never make this because it would be for an audience of one (me) but ever since reading "If we Were Villains" (story about serious drama kids in college who perform shakespeare and deal with a murder) I have been entertaining the thought of a crack fic crossover with High School Musical The Musical The Series where the staff decides they will no longer put on shakespeare after the tragic accident that happened at Thanksgiving, because Shakespeare plays would only increase the tension and drama. So they hire Ms. Jen who decides their spring play will actually be High School Musical (which exists in the 90s in this universe) and it ruins the vibe so much that everyone gives up on being dark and mysterious because they're universally pissed at Ms Jen for making them learn choreoraphed basketball dancing.

[calciumyum]

Empirestober 2 Day 13 - Shulker! Featuring the shulker kid themself!! (prompts)

[sw5w]

Anakin Checks Zam While Obi-Wan Looks for Her Killer

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:24:44

Beyond checking if Zam is truly dead, I like to think Anakin may be doing a small "return to the Force" gesture, like maybe some traditional Jedi custom.

[trustinisms]

*trips and falls and izzney pictures fall out of my pockets*

i love izzney .. theyre so cute snd one of the only occasions i actually actively multiship. heathney is my favorite courtney ship and thats never gonna change but her and izzy are WAY up there also … <3 . such a robbery that they wouldve been on the same team 3 times but were separated every time (izzy was on bass initially then volunteered to switch to gophers, izzy rejoined on the gaffers and was eliminated right before courtney also joined on the gaffers, and the izzy-sierra team swap took izzy off the amazons in world tour)

ough.. the . yeah

[orangedodge]

A year on, one thing I would have liked had TotK handled it differently was Zelda's general sense of uncertainty.

There were specific areas where I think it made sense and was explicable for her to be unsure of herself. The time travel can be easily forgiven, of course. Having ancestral time powers was news to her, let alone understanding how to use them. And, up until the moment Ganondorf became the Demon King, the whole situation could theoretically have been one giant coincidence (as players participating in a narrative we know otherwise, but she didn't know she was a character in a story, so her trepidation there all checks out).

Having her struggle in Rauru's court was a good place to center her arc. It's been a long time since she's had to perform being a princess, and her father, the king, did a not-so-great job of preparing her for it. We know she's been functioning in a leadership role since BotW, but to the greatest extent, she seems to be working primarily through her Sheikah friends while being a recluse off in Link's house. She hasn't really been acting as The Crown. So having her take advantage her her time travel adventure to observe Rauru and Sonia, letting them correct her father's mistakes a little via example, bringing the story eventually to a close on her returning home and accepting the allegiance of the sages is a good, satisfying, direction for a sequel.

What detracts from it, though, is where Zelda's scenes specifically--and perhaps this is a consequence of how few of them there really are, necessitating as much economy of film shorthand as possible--tend to broaden her uncertainty in a few understandable areas into paralyzing uncertainty in all areas. Maybe she doesn't feel ready to jump right in to ruling all of Hyrule in the wake of BotW, but one thing she really should have down by now is the whole "sealing evil" thing. She's been doing THAT for over a century. And there were plenty of times where remembering that she had those powers would have been extremely useful. (If anything, maybe they could have made her a little too comfortable on that end? Ganondorf's whole thing was using trickery to take advantage of the complacency of more powerful foes. She's just sealed away Calamity Ganon, and Ganondorf himself is just... some guy, in comparison).

It doesn't diminish the game for me or anything, but effectively we do have a scenario where a 100+ year old woman has received two separate coming of age arcs, where the second one would have been more effective if imagined more as a time of healing and recovery now that her war with the Calamity is over. It's still very effective as an outright do-over of BotW, but as a sequel I hope they do better next time.

[directactionforhope]

"There is a small panel of regulators in every state that holds a similar power over electricity generation and, by extension, an enormous segment of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. By setting electricity prices, they also have a substantial impact on most people’s lives and pocketbooks. Yet, in Georgia and elsewhere, these groups — known as public service or public utility commissions — get little attention or scrutiny outside of energy wonk circles. Their hearings and documents tend to be long and jargon-heavy, covered in the media by a small group of specialized reporters, making it hard to engage with the process. 

This year, Grist and WABE will try to demystify energy regulation in Georgia and beyond. We’ll bring you stories on not only how your power gets made, but how those decisions happen — and how residents who vote and pay electricity bills can get involved."

-via Grist, March 5, 2024. See link for more details (especially in Georgia) and more ways to get involved.

[petrichorium]

pluvi i impulsively pulled for jiaoqiu and i don’t know how to build him (and don’t even have acheron) do u know what works for him team wise and artefacts wise?

I will point u over to my beloved guoba’s vid on him if u want an in-depth discussion but for a tl;dr of that:

He slots decently well in any team where Pela does, so he’s good as a Dr Ratio support if ur hurting for debuffs w his team. Hes also an okay dot support (better w eidos so most wouldn’t bother at e0) and he’s pretty good in pure fiction due to ult spam—in general, probably think of him as a debuffing ult support, so he’s good w chars that need debuffs like Ratio and/or whose damage primarily comes from their ults like Argenti or Yunli BUT w the caveat that you’ll probably want Tingyun on there w them as a battery.

Here are the important graphics guoba gave wrt relics

Obvi his sig is his best lc but in lieu of that apparently eyes of the prey is good bc it gives ehr, and tutorial mission (the event lc from way back when silver wolf was introduced, im sorry if u don’t have it) or the Herta shop cone r both very good for ult spam, w the Herta shop cone especially good for pure fiction.

Hope that helps!!!

[kissingagrumpygiant]

wakes up pissed in the middle of the night about things outside my control that had nothing to do with me . passes out again

[reasonsforhope]

Non-paywall version here.

"Shortly after a federal appeals court ruling threatened to hamstring Berkeley’s ban on new natural gas hookups, New York state has passed a budget barring gas appliances in new buildings.

New York, which was America’s sixth-largest state consumer of natural gas in 2020, became the first state to enact such a ban when the state’s 2023-24 budget was passed [on May 2, 2023].

“Changing the ways we make and use energy to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels will help ensure a healthier environment for us and our children,” New York House Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat, said in a news release.

Los Angeles is among more than 70 California cities and counties that have banned or discouraged natural gas hookups in new buildings. The City Council voted in May to do so, citing climate change. However, no state had passed such a ban until now.

The requirements for electric construction will be phased in starting in 2025, and include some exemptions: “Hospitals, critical infrastructure and commercial food establishments” will be left out, according to Heastie’s statement, as will “buildings where the local grid is not capable of handling the load.” ...

The ban is part of an overall strategy “to reduce our state’s carbon emissions and move us away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources,” Assemblymember and Energy Committee Chair Didi Barrett said...

Gov. Kathy Hochul... released a statement touting the budget and its “$5.5 billion investment to promote energy affordability, reduce emissions, and invest in clean air and water, building on more than $30 billion committed to climate action. ”

The budget, according to Hochul’s website, includes “nation-leading building decarbonization proposals that will prohibit fossil fuel equipment and building systems in new construction, phase out the sale and installation of fossil fuel space and water heating equipment in existing buildings, and establish building benchmarking and energy grades.”"

-via Los Angeles Times, 5/3/23

[allthecanadianpolitics]

New Brunswick’s Energy and Utilities Board has approved a nearly 13 per cent increase on bills for NB Power residential customers starting next month.

On Tuesday, the EUB approved NB Power’s request for a three per cent increase on its ‘variance account recovery’ application. NB Power’s request cited outages at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station and the need for replacement fuel.

Last week, the EUB approved NB Power’s general rate application of a 9.8 per cent increase for residential customers.

When NB Power made its combined 12.8 per cent rate increase request public in December it suggested EUB approval would amount to a $300 increase for average residential customers in 2024-2025.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Op-Ed from the New York Times:

To keep the lights on, many utility companies are proposing to build dozens of new power plants that burn natural gas. North Carolina-based Duke Energy alone wants to add 8.9 gigawatts of new gas-fired capacity — more than the entire country added in 2023. Using their own projections of soaring energy demands as justification, these companies are also pushing back on the climate targets set by their states and the Biden administration.

If state regulators sign off on these plans, they will be gambling with our country’s future. We need to electrify everything from cars to appliances to slow climate change, but we won’t be able to reach our climate goals if we power all of those machines with dirty energy.

There is a better way. But to get there, legislators will need to overhaul the incentives driving utilities to double down on natural gas, so that they can turn a profit without cooking the planet.

Companies like Duke, Dominion Energy and Georgia Power argue that they need more gas-fired plants to reliably provide power during times of peak demand — for instance, on a hot summer weekday afternoon when home cooling systems and data servers are all humming at maximum output, and the grid strains to keep up. But those peaks tend to materialize only for a few dozen hours per year, and there are ways to deal with them that don’t require a massive amount of new methane-burning infrastructure.

The real reason the utilities want to build these plants is quite simple: The more stuff they build, the more money they make. Regulators let utilities charge their customers enough money to cover what they spend on assets like combustion turbines and wires, plus a generous rate of return (up to 10 percent) for their investors. This longstanding arrangement incentivizes power providers to build expensive things whether society needs them or not, in lieu of lower-cost, cleaner options, and to invoke their duty to keep the lights on as a post hoc rationalization.

Fortunately, utilities have plenty of ways to meet this new need.

They include “virtual power plants” — when technologies such as home batteries, rooftop solar systems, smart water heaters and thermostats are linked together and managed via software to provide the same services as a conventional power plant. Utilities in Vermont, Colorado and Massachusetts are already using them, to quickly respond to rising demand at a much lower cost than operating natural gas combustion turbines. According to one estimate, virtual power plants could lower U.S. utilities’ costs by as much as $35 billion over the next decade.

Utilities could also accelerate efforts to replace outdated transmission lines with newer ones that can carry double the electric current and to bring more battery storage online. They can compensate customers for using less energy during times when demand is high and invest far more in energy efficiency, helping customers to adopt devices that use less electricity.

All of these solutions would save customers money and reduce carbon emissions. They could, according to a Department of Energy analysis, meet the entire projected growth in U.S. peak electricity demand over the next decade.

[bluescarfvivi]

((A pondering thought I’ve had for some time now: putting Vivi in Dead by Daylight.

Let her go survivor mode, let her have a tussle with the killers and GO AS FAR AS picking some kind of fight with the Entity. She will work well with the other survivors trying to escape, planning tactics and leading them through their game, but also she won’t say no to being a distraction either. In fact, she’d gladly full body tackle those killers and give them a good beating with her bat.))

[poojagblog-blog]

The global US Electric Motors Market share is expected to grow from USD 31.06 billion in 2024 to USD 42.07 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 6.3% during 2024-2029. The electric motors market in US is growing as energy efficiency solutions become increasingly visible and demanded across all segments. Besides contributing renewable energy systems and electric vehicles to smart manufacturing, the country's electric motors are quite linked to the sustainability goals of the nation. Among the benefits reapable from the use of electric motors are reduction of energy, cost savings in operations, and the elimination of emissions from the overall energy portfolio. The adoption is further assisted through government policies and incentives that stimulate energy-efficient technologies. Innovations in motor technologies such as brushless DC motors and variable frequency drives have improved performance, reliability, and flexibility of applications hence promoting the growth of the market.