This is your SolarWakeup for August 31st, 2021

Ida Sends A Message. Hurricane Ida followed a path eerily similar to Hurricane Katrina and took on New Orleans the gulf coast of Louisiana including shutting down almost 100% of the oil and gas infrastructure in the State. One of the major infrastructure impacts is the destruction of a major transmission tower that has knocked out power to New Orleans and over 1 million customers. This is another knock at the attempt to return to SPI which was already facing a weary audience worried about COVID levels in the area. None of that may matter because it may just be necessary to give local resources the ability to focus on caring for those that are going to be without power for several weeks in heat and humidity without running water. As the solar industry is scheduled to be at the convention center in just 3 weeks, I wonder if that space may just be needed to care for the local community. With as caring as the solar industry is, I can see the organizers making a tough choice for the second year in a row and finding an alternative path forward that isn’t SPI in NOLA as much as we all really wanted it to happen. If you were planning on going and end up saving the travel resource, consider aiding some local charities that will emerge like the World Central Kitchen that is already on the ground and then plan on attending an upcoming solar conference to help the industry financially to make sure they have the resources to fight. Whether that’s an online event or a local conference, groups like CALSSA and SEIA are engaged on many fronts from licensing, net metering, trade and just plain political attacks by well funded incumbent actors.

Ocean’s Energy Storage. As a part time weatherman, like all Floridians, we pay attention to the barometric pressure of hurricanes. The lower the pressure, the more organized and strong the storm will be. Pair pressure with wind speeds and speed of travel, and you know whether you should get out of dodge. Hurricane Ida’s pressure dropped over 50mb down to 929mb in less than 24 hours. In context, Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew came in at 920 and 922 respectively so Ida was no walk in the park. These pressures have increasingly been below 950 and the reason may sit in the upper 700 meters of the ocean where scientists have been measuring the stored energy, in the form of heat (leave your physics corrections at the door), over the past 100 years. Warmer oceans means more stored energy for storms to feed off and also what has been driving storms farther north like last week’s storm that hit New York and Rhode Island.

Evacuating Lake Tahoe. Ski resort cameras are capturing the darkness of the Caldor fire running rampant in the Lake Tahoe valley causing evacuation orders. You would think that all of this climate change related destruction in California would be a kickstarter to ensure the most reliable and resilient grid brought to you by the solar industry but lookout for the attacks that are still coming our way, something is in the water these days that make my head spin.

What This All Means. The concept of designing an engineering solution to the weakest link is true for most problems but it’s central to the energy transition and the need for solutions that are driving the most resilient and intelligent grid possible. We have the tools available to us but the collective we need to act on them. Part of that is the resiliency of duplication and not having to rely on a single massive power plant on the end of a single giant transmission line. The reinforcement and duplication is the resiliency that enables the grid to withstand major attacks whether natural or otherwise. 

Opinion

Best, Yann