This is your SolarWakeup for August 17th, 2020

Why This One Matters. Today, I’ll give you the headlines of the weekend and why this election matters. First the politics. I don’t think climate change should be a partisan item, I wish that Americans could be republicans and care about climate change policies even if the policies differ from democrats. Over the past decade we’ve seen a congress that refutes climate science, renewable energy, energy efficiency and free market competition in energy production/delivery. That’s why I’m involved with Clean Energy for Biden because you will see the news over the weekend make it unavoidable, you will see rare forms of natural disasters and even learn about new ones perhaps. So join me on Thursday for a CE4B event with Congressman/Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist. I’ll be talking with him on how to tackle this issue facing us all.

The Plan. Tomorrow I will outline how the Biden/Harris administration should focus on climate change in the first 100 days and what they can do right away.

First Time In 20 Years. 2 times in as many days, the California ISO called for a stage 3 emergency and rolling blackouts. Even when the ISO lifted the emergency, PG&E continued its blackouts without notifying critical infrastructure that led to sewage entering drinking supply. High temperatures and loss of 1,500MW of central generation led to grid instability causing the emergency. The sad part is that this is avoidable and the entire regulatory complex is at fault for being captured by the utilities. As I tweeted this weekend, it’s beyond comprehension how PG&E is exactly where it was before the bankruptcy and nothing has change. This is avoidable and doesn’t require anything to get started. CAISO could contract with every homeowner that has energy storage to create a massive virtual power plant. Utilities could expand the program with OhmConnect and add a gigawatt of demand response. The governor could call for rapid solar expansion and require instant permitting across the State for residential solar plus storage, it’s on his desk as we speak. The solutions are here, we need to unwrap ourselves from this obsession we have that only PG&E and SCE can solve this problem.

Flee To Florida? Hurricane Isaias is what Floridians would call an elongated thunderstorm, Key West would party through the storm in non-COVID times. Meanwhile the infrastructure in New York and New Jersey is showing its weakness once again when it comes to hurricanes. I’ve spoken to a dozen folks from NY/NJ/CT area in the past week and they all had extended power outages. I guess it’s time to flee to Florida for when hurricanes come around. Our concrete homes, power poles and generators (solar included) will keep you running.

It’s Called A Derecho. California outages, wild fires and hurricanes aren’t the worst natural disaster in America this week. Iowa experience a derecho, a 120mph land hurricane that arrives with almost no notice. Iowans are out of power, some counties lost 80% of power and crops are destroyed across the State. Iowa is the center of attention for politics every four years and unfortunately for Iowans, the media is already gone and is not covering this. 14 million acres of crops are damaged, this will end up being experienced by all Americans when shortages reach supply chain.

For The History Books. The ice sheet in Greenland is melted beyond the point of no return. Basically more water sits on top of the ice sheet than what could melt and therefore will result in the ice sheet losing mass continuously. Our kids will read about our actions about the elusive ice sheet that has caused measurable changes in the gravitational field in Greenland today. Instead our kids will live with the measurable increase in water levels caused by the melt.

Fire Tornadoes. For good measure, a firenado.

Data Nerds. My latest podcast on data in imagery with Tim Rochman from EagleView Technologies. Catch it on your podcast app and leave us a 5 star rating. 

Opinion

Best, Yann