Thread by @doctorow

The Texas blackouts weren't caused by renewables - rahter, by a deregulated system that failed to winterize both its wind power (obviously: there are wind-farms in Norway and northern Canada), and its fossil fuel facilities.

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Texas's grid needs weatherization, redundant connections to other grids, and better planning. Regulation, in other words.

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That said, complex systems have lurking failure modes that can't be fully accounted for. Good engineers don't just make systems that work well, they also turn make systems that FAIL well. Not doing this is how you get the decision not to put enough lifeboats on the Titanic.

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One intriguing idea for distributed grid tech that came out of the Texas blackouts is using electric vehicles as a power-source. Nicholas Littlejohn used his 2011 Nissan Leaf to power his house's heat, lights, and wifi.

wired.com/story/when-the…

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EVs are rolling batteries, and there have been many renewables plans that modeled using EVs to store excess solar and wind during the day and then discharge it at night. Texas has 22m cars on the road, and it would only take 10m EVs to match the grid's terawatt capacity.

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Reading @GregoryJBarber's @Wired story on EVs as distributed, grid-scale storage, I was reminded of another Texan's speculative plan for renewable storage with vehicles.

It's an idea from a speech @bruces gave during the Viridian project days:

viridiandesign.org

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Sterling pointed out that the American Great Plains states experience enough wind to power the whole nation, but lack enough storage even to meet their own needs.

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Sterling observed that the GW Bush administration was pushing hard on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, which were considered impractical because fuel-cells are bulky - a hydrogen vehicle with serious range would need to be HUGE.

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Putting these two facts together, Sterling mooted the hilarious, delicious idea of switching from scolding midwesterners for driving massive SUVs to insisting that they upgrade to MONSTER TRUCKS with HUGE fuel-cells.

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All day long, midwestern wind-farms would supply power to the grid, and store any excess to hydrogen, using the power to electrolyze water into O2 and H, pumping the H into these massive vehicles.

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At the end of the work-day, you'd drive your monster-truck home and plug your house into it, as it powered all your needs and comforts.

The Viridian schtick was finding ways to make saving the planet immediately desirable and pleasurable.

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Sterling's vision of a world where environmental sustainability meant driving the largest vehicles imaginable has stayed with me ever since.

Image: Ken Lund (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_…

CC BY-SA:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa…

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ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb…