WEBVTT 00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:04.540 We're back with another Geek Out episode. Richard Campbell, a developer and podcaster who dives 00:00:04.540 --> 00:00:09.640 deep into science and tech topics, is back for our third Geek Out episode. This time around, 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:14.520 we're diving deep into renewable energy, energy storage, and just what do we do to keep the lights 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:19.040 on without frying our beloved Earth? I think you're really going to enjoy this deep dive into 00:00:19.040 --> 00:00:24.740 the science of renewable energy and energy storage. This is Talk Python To Me, episode 329, 00:00:24.740 --> 00:00:27.120 recorded August 4th, 2021. 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:45.480 Welcome to Talk Python To Me, a weekly podcast on Python, the language, the libraries, the 00:00:45.480 --> 00:00:50.140 ecosystem, and the personalities. This is your host, Michael Kennedy. Follow me on Twitter where I'm 00:00:50.140 --> 00:00:55.760 at mkennedy, and keep up with the show and listen to past episodes at talkpython.fm, and follow the 00:00:55.760 --> 00:01:01.660 show on Twitter via at talkpython. This episode is brought to you by us over at Talk Python Training, 00:01:01.660 --> 00:01:07.880 and the transcripts are brought to you by Assembly AI. Richard, welcome back to Talk Python To Me. 00:01:07.880 --> 00:01:12.040 Hey, great to be back, man. It's been a year, quite a year, as I recall. 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:17.960 We're living in like dog years or something like that, right? Every year is like seven years. I don't 00:01:17.960 --> 00:01:23.780 know if we spoke about it, but I definitely joke that historians, when they come back and study this 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:27.520 time frame, they won't be able to say, you know, what decade or what era they study. It'll be like, 00:01:27.520 --> 00:01:33.160 well, what part of 2020 did you study? What part of 2021 did you study? Did you study the summer or was 00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:34.720 it the spring? Because that's a different specialty. 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:40.680 Oh, yeah. No, and it is how much it's changed, and that we're still living with a certain level of 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:46.420 uncertainty, you know? At the time that we're recording this, the Delta variant's having an impact, 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:51.440 and I think everyone's sort of leaning back again going, uh-oh, how bad is this going to get? 00:01:51.440 --> 00:01:51.700 Yeah. 00:01:51.700 --> 00:01:55.920 So, yeah, I don't know. A month from now, things could be very different either way. 00:01:55.920 --> 00:02:00.760 Yeah, it could go either way. That's absolutely right. Yeah, so I'm cautiously optimistic, 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:07.760 trying to, you know, live life, be safe, but not be huddled in a corner for too badly, you know? 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:11.940 And for your own sanity. I mean, one nice thing about being up on the coast is, like, 00:02:11.940 --> 00:02:16.780 the view is impeccable. We're right on the ocean. You'll probably even hear it a bit in the recording. 00:02:16.780 --> 00:02:22.500 Like, it keeps you sane to be able to be out here and breathe the air and just try and connect with 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:25.340 folks, even if it's, it has to be remote, that's all. 00:02:25.340 --> 00:02:31.360 Yeah, yeah. Well, for the audio podcast listeners, tell us how you were speaking to us. 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:35.320 Via Starlink through, I got on the beta for Starlink right at the very beginning, 00:02:35.320 --> 00:02:40.620 and because we're in this relatively remote location, we were opted in very early on. 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:45.780 There is cable modem service up here, but it's broken at the moment. And so there's repairs 00:02:45.780 --> 00:02:48.780 trying to be done this morning, which is one of the reasons we delayed recording, 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:54.580 but they have not been successful so far. So we're counting on Elon's magic as one of, 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:59.960 as now the largest satellite operator in the world. And soon he'll be more satellites than 00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:04.700 everybody else combined at the rate he's going. And it's been pretty good, but, you know, 00:03:04.760 --> 00:03:09.100 there are dropouts. It's never flawless. And this, what we're asking it to do, this real-time 00:03:09.100 --> 00:03:10.300 thing is, of course, the hardest thing. 00:03:10.300 --> 00:03:14.080 Right, right. We're going real-time to space, which is pretty amazing, but it's kind of cool. 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:18.660 I haven't had a chance to speak with anyone who's had real experience with Starlink. 00:03:18.660 --> 00:03:21.040 It's neat to have it. 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:23.180 Yeah, you're part of the experiment now, friend. 00:03:23.180 --> 00:03:23.820 That's right. 00:03:23.820 --> 00:03:24.440 Here we are. 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:31.140 Exactly. We were planning on using high-speed wired internet, but it broke. And so it's a really cool 00:03:31.140 --> 00:03:37.040 fallback to have. And I think it's actually going to be really empowering for people in places where 00:03:37.040 --> 00:03:38.000 that's not an option. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:42.360 Yeah. And certainly I've talked to a bunch of friends who are all very interested in it. 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:46.620 Because I'm right on the ocean, I have a very clear view of the sky. And that's the real problem 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:51.100 with Starlink is you need an absolutely clear view of the sky. And often when you're in remote 00:03:51.100 --> 00:03:55.300 locations, you're surrounded by trees. And trees and Starlink are not friends. 00:03:55.300 --> 00:03:58.560 No. And satellites definitely don't mix. 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:00.160 Yeah. It just doesn't work. 00:04:00.160 --> 00:04:04.600 Well, I'm really glad that we're able to make this happen. And I say that with fingers crossed 00:04:04.600 --> 00:04:07.980 for another 45 minutes or whatever it's going to be. 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:09.400 What a time we got. Yeah. 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:09.740 Absolutely. 00:04:09.740 --> 00:04:14.040 Well, let's hope the satellites are well aligned for this next period and we'll have a good call. 00:04:14.040 --> 00:04:14.660 Yeah, absolutely. 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:20.240 So this episode is going to be like some of the previous ones that you've been on before 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:26.240 in that it's going to be one of these Geek Out episodes. And the Geek Out episodes I learned 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:30.000 about, which mostly, I guess, premiered on .NET Rocks. Is that right? 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:35.260 Right. Yeah. It's totally my friend Carl's idea. I did not want to do these. I thought it was 00:04:35.260 --> 00:04:41.260 a bad idea and I was wrong. So the first Geek Out was back in 2011 and it was about the shuttle 00:04:41.260 --> 00:04:46.300 ending and just my thoughts on what went right and what went wrong with the space shuttle. 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:52.300 And it continued from there. It became a pleasure for me. I'm a researcher by nature 00:04:52.300 --> 00:04:58.060 and I've always been organizing my thoughts around different technologies just because I like to read 00:04:58.060 --> 00:05:05.420 and research. And the shows basically drove me to finish. Now make an hour long conversation about 00:05:05.420 --> 00:05:09.420 that technology. Isn't that interesting about being able to present something? 00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:10.180 Yeah. 00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:14.300 You have to close those loops that you're like, oh, that's interesting, but I'm not going to dig into 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:18.040 that corner or that corner of this thing. And then when you've got to stand up and present it, 00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:23.180 I feel like that's a great way to learn stuff in general as people in technology, not just for the 00:05:23.180 --> 00:05:23.720 Geek Out thing. 00:05:23.720 --> 00:05:28.840 You definitely end up better at it. One of the series that I'm very proud of that absolutely the 00:05:28.840 --> 00:05:33.160 process of making this show has transformed it was the fusion series. Because I originally thought I'd do 00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:38.840 a show on fusion. But as I started really organizing all the materials, I realized there was three 00:05:38.840 --> 00:05:45.480 different shows there. There was a show about national fusion, like the ITER and JET and the National 00:05:45.480 --> 00:05:52.200 Ignition Laboratories, all of these big government projects. And then there was the tech billionaire pet 00:05:52.200 --> 00:05:56.200 fusion projects because you're not a cool tech billionaire if you don't have one. And so there's 00:05:56.200 --> 00:06:02.840 a moment where I realized, geez, every one of them has one and they're all wacky. And then I ran across 00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:09.800 a set of papers out of Mitsubishi Labs about low energy fusion reactions. And that actually walked us into 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:18.040 a real conversation about cold fusion, which surprised me. It's like pseudoscience for a long time. But the 00:06:18.040 --> 00:06:24.120 Mitsubishi Labs experiments in the late 2000-aughts were very real and repeatable. Mitsubishi was smart 00:06:24.120 --> 00:06:28.680 enough that when they realized they had something consistent, they handed it over to Toyota, their 00:06:28.680 --> 00:06:34.200 arch rival, and said, "Here, you reproduce this." Because if anybody was going to punch holes in it, 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:38.920 it was their arch rival. And they repeated the experiment successfully. And if you listen to that 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:44.760 show, I'll give away the ending. Yes, you can do lower energy nuclear reactions. They are a kind of 00:06:44.760 --> 00:06:49.160 fusion. It's a part of science that's not well understood. And it takes more energy to do it than 00:06:49.160 --> 00:06:53.720 it produces. Just the sort of thing you don't want from a power plant. We can make it happen, but it 00:06:53.720 --> 00:06:58.760 doesn't produce net energy. Yeah. It's the fun part of that show is I'm walking Carl through the process. And 00:06:58.760 --> 00:07:04.920 Carl's always a great everyman for those kinds of things. And I actually talked about muon catalyzed 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:11.080 fusion, which is a different kind of low energy fusion and very repeatable, workable, and so forth. It's 00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:15.560 just that it takes more energy to make muons than the fusion reaction produces. Which it turns out 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:22.680 is every kind of fusion except stellar fusion, that's how it's always worked. It takes more energy 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:28.680 to fuse than it emits. Yeah, well, if you got that much gravity, it definitely is an unfair advantage. 00:07:28.680 --> 00:07:32.840 So yeah, so this is going to be another one of these geek out episodes. And we're mostly going to just 00:07:32.840 --> 00:07:38.760 focus on the energy side. So it's sort of relevant that you're talking about fusion here. The other thing, 00:07:38.760 --> 00:07:44.200 I guess that's worth just giving a quick shout out to is you're organizing the Dev Intersection 00:07:44.200 --> 00:07:50.680 Conference, right? Yeah. So we did a show back in June as a full hybrid show. So some attendees in 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:57.240 person, some attendees remote, and some speakers in person, some speakers remote. So we know how to do 00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:04.440 that. We're hoping to do a more in-person show in Vegas, but we're prepared to do hybrid again if necessary, 00:08:04.440 --> 00:08:09.880 because we've pulled it off. But this is a developer show. I mean, we have a close relationship with 00:08:09.880 --> 00:08:15.320 Microsoft. So there's lots of .NET content, but also web content across the board, plenty of Azure, 00:08:15.320 --> 00:08:21.080 artificial intelligence technologies. And it's a very big, broad show and a ton of fun. And the MGM 00:08:21.080 --> 00:08:24.040 Grand is a great location for it. Yeah, that's really cool. I feel like, 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:29.320 you know, last time we spoke, this was the pre-Delta, pre-large scale vaccine. And like, 00:08:29.320 --> 00:08:34.920 oh, look, we're sort of crossing over the hump. And this is going to be like, you'll be able to sort 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:39.400 of put this back on no problem. And then Delta and all that kind of stuff. 00:08:39.400 --> 00:08:44.360 And again, ask me in a month and maybe it'll be fine. But at the moment, we're all sort of holding 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:47.560 our breath. It's like, we know what to do if we have to. Yeah. 00:08:47.560 --> 00:08:55.480 I hope I don't have to. Absolutely. All right. So let's dive into our main topic since we are on a 00:08:55.480 --> 00:09:02.040 bit of a time crunch since we're going to space. So on this one, I wanted to talk to you about energy. 00:09:02.040 --> 00:09:08.840 And I think there's a lot of things happening around energy that's both optimistic and amazing, 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:15.400 as well as there's setbacks and other things. So, you know, let's talk about sort of the story of 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:19.960 energy, specifically mostly renewable energy these days. Like, how are we doing? 00:09:19.960 --> 00:09:26.120 We're doing pretty well. I mean, obviously the pandemic changed things. Power consumption overall, 00:09:26.120 --> 00:09:33.560 especially electricity, did decline, especially in the West during the pandemic. Closing of malls and 00:09:33.560 --> 00:09:39.320 commercial spaces and so forth, because those spaces tend to be very efficient in the sense that 00:09:39.320 --> 00:09:44.280 you do shut them down, they reduced a lot of power consumption. Now, everybody went home 00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:49.880 and consumed more power at home. But if you think about the normal work cycle where people 00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:56.520 are at home, then they go to work and then they come back again, the home is not typically not as 00:09:56.520 --> 00:10:02.440 diligently shut down as office spaces. So homes have a sort of always on certain amount of power 00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:05.480 consumption going on. And you can do better than that, be a little more efficient. 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:08.920 Yeah. I bet a bunch of people just leave their AC set to whatever. 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:13.320 Exactly. And you know, the real sin I've come, as I've been studying my house, 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:17.960 heated floors, those electrically heated floors consume a lot more power than you realize. 00:10:17.960 --> 00:10:18.360 Interesting. 00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:22.120 And if you learn how long it takes to get them to temperature and so forth, so that you can 00:10:22.120 --> 00:10:25.320 shut them down when you're not home during the day and heat them up when you need them, 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:29.720 that's a lot of power. That's a kilowatt per floor per day. Easy. 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:34.520 Oh, how interesting. Yeah, that is a lot of energy. Yeah. And air conditioners too. And I suspect a lot 00:10:34.520 --> 00:10:41.640 of people don't shut them down. So I saw an article recently that talked about, oh, we're actually being 00:10:41.640 --> 00:10:47.400 set back by people working from home because we all now have our computers on and our lights on and our 00:10:47.400 --> 00:10:54.040 AC or our heater, depending on the time of the year, at everybody's house instead of one giant office. 00:10:54.040 --> 00:11:00.760 But what I don't believe that took into account was the person who lives 45 minutes away from the 00:11:00.760 --> 00:11:07.800 office and commutes with an old suburban SUV that is burning extra gas, right? Like, I think it just 00:11:07.800 --> 00:11:11.720 looked at the energy of the office and the energy of the homes and said, oh, there's more at the homes, 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:16.360 right? But it eliminated the commute. Well, but I don't think that's true either. In some respects, 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:22.840 you have the same computer, if not a less efficient computer at the office. And so that those things were 00:11:22.840 --> 00:11:27.560 turned off. I think the move to the cloud actually ends up being energy efficient because 00:11:27.560 --> 00:11:34.760 business owned servers tend to be less utilized than cloud servers. So you're actually gaining 00:11:34.760 --> 00:11:38.920 efficiency in terms of power consumption by shifting those workloads into the cloud. Those machines run at 00:11:38.920 --> 00:11:44.680 a much higher constant utilization rate. So there's fewer CPU serving far more workloads that way. 00:11:44.680 --> 00:11:50.680 Right, right. How many VPC servers run on top of, you know, one piece of hardware? A lot. 00:11:50.680 --> 00:11:56.440 Exactly. I mean, a lot. And of course, they're paid by the, for that, their margin is in that 00:11:56.440 --> 00:12:02.520 optimization where typically your owned servers just don't have that same level of utilization. 00:12:02.520 --> 00:12:07.160 But I think that the biggest thing that created in the West, the huge power drops was that 00:12:07.160 --> 00:12:12.200 folks shut down those buildings. They turned as much off as they could, far more reliably than anything 00:12:12.200 --> 00:12:17.960 else. The drop in oil, recognizing that, that oil consumption in the form of gasoline and kerosene, 00:12:17.960 --> 00:12:27.560 50% of all oil is going into road transport and air. And so that drop was tremendous during the peak of the pandemic. 00:12:27.560 --> 00:12:35.640 In April of 2020, the oil industry calls that black April, because it was, if in the West, it was like 30% reduction. 00:12:35.640 --> 00:12:44.360 You know, on a typical day in 2019, the world consumed about 80 million barrels of oil. And in 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:47.320 April of 2020, it was like 45 million. 00:12:47.320 --> 00:12:48.200 Yeah, that's amazing. 00:12:48.200 --> 00:12:54.600 And this thing is like that oil moves all the time. And so if you recall, there was a crisis where 00:12:54.600 --> 00:12:58.280 oil actually went to negative pricing because nobody had anywhere to store it. 00:12:58.280 --> 00:13:04.280 I remember that. And there was all these people investing in sort of indirectly in oil. 00:13:04.280 --> 00:13:07.960 And what I think there were some of them, they didn't realize that they were on the hook to store 00:13:07.960 --> 00:13:09.000 that oil. Exactly. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:09.800 And then they got seriously hammered. 00:13:09.800 --> 00:13:14.040 And so there were oil tankers arriving at refineries with nowhere to offload because the 00:13:14.040 --> 00:13:18.520 tanks were all full. And now the ship was effectively a storage machine. Like that's 00:13:18.520 --> 00:13:25.080 how bad it got for a month. And it hasn't fully recovered. Like oil consumption is still down. 00:13:25.080 --> 00:13:31.320 They don't expect road transport consumption. And I'm referencing the IEA report. This is the 00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:37.000 International Energy Association. It's very challenging to get good energy data, quality 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:41.960 energy data. This is a group that are operated out of Paris there, but they're worldwide and they're 00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:47.560 very agnostic. They're not owned by any energy companies. You know, typically when you go looking 00:13:47.560 --> 00:13:51.720 for data like this, you will find energy companies telling you about how their energy is great. 00:13:51.720 --> 00:13:57.400 This is sort of the most reasonable report you can get in terms of levelizing all of those numbers. 00:13:57.400 --> 00:13:58.920 You've heard the clean natural gas. 00:13:58.920 --> 00:14:02.200 Yeah. Well, cleaner than coal. 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:03.720 It's a relative statement, isn't it? 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:09.000 Give them that. It's about half the emission level of coal, but it's still with significant emissions. 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:14.760 And it's cheap. And that's why natural gas is done so well. So the IEA, I mean, they break down a lot 00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:18.840 of these pandemic details. And one of the points they made is like road transport consumption will 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:25.240 probably reach 2019 levels by the end of 2021. But air transport won't. And air transport is going to take 00:14:25.240 --> 00:14:30.680 longer to come back of people aren't flying. And that's a, it's had a huge impact. Yes, we move a 00:14:30.680 --> 00:14:36.280 lot of stuff by cargo, but we move far more people by air. And so the number of airplanes that are still 00:14:36.280 --> 00:14:42.680 parked and the decrease in consumption all around is, it's not small. And so in that sense, our emissions 00:14:42.680 --> 00:14:48.760 have dropped a non-trivial amount in the process. And the good news is when that power consumption drop 00:14:48.760 --> 00:14:55.160 happened, the power plants that got turned off were the dirtiest ones. So coal consumption went 00:14:55.160 --> 00:14:59.240 drowned dramatically in 2020 because power consumption went down. 00:14:59.240 --> 00:14:59.880 That's really good. 00:14:59.880 --> 00:15:03.960 I mean, it makes sense that that was the plants that they turned off, except in China. 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:10.920 China actually added coal consumption because China could increase their power consumption 00:15:10.920 --> 00:15:16.200 throughout the pandemic. They also, I mean, he gave fair credit to China. While there may have been 50% 00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:21.960 of the increase in coal consumption in 2020, there were also 50% of the increase in renewables over 2020. 00:15:21.960 --> 00:15:26.600 So I mean, China is growing very rapidly. They are building out a lot of infrastructure 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:28.840 and they did not stop through the pandemic. 00:15:28.840 --> 00:15:32.600 They did a better job of containing the pandemic as well. 00:15:32.600 --> 00:15:37.800 I don't know if that's true. What they certainly did was did a good job of containing any data about 00:15:37.800 --> 00:15:38.040 their pandemic. 00:15:38.040 --> 00:15:39.240 Yeah. Okay. Fair. 00:15:39.240 --> 00:15:46.040 They also have the freedom. That's not the right word. They have the flexibility to impose rules 00:15:46.040 --> 00:15:50.680 differently than the suggestions that we have like in North America and Europe. 00:15:50.680 --> 00:15:54.360 Well, and one of the big cases is like the whole world has benefited from the fact that the Chinese 00:15:54.360 --> 00:16:00.760 government chose to simply build gigantic solar power plants to manufacture solar at a massive scale 00:16:00.760 --> 00:16:02.520 and drove the price down with solar. Yeah. 00:16:02.520 --> 00:16:08.680 It probably wasn't the most economically efficient way to go about it, but it's the advantage of having 00:16:08.680 --> 00:16:13.800 you know, the sort of strict single party rule system that says thou shalt build big 00:16:13.800 --> 00:16:15.800 solar factories and they did. Yeah. 00:16:15.800 --> 00:16:17.080 Yeah. And again, 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:22.600 sent the price of solar to the floor to the, to the point where we now in the West use solar differently. 00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:28.600 You know, once upon a time, solar panels were so precious, you put them on articulated arms to aim 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:34.520 them perfectly at the sun throughout the day to maximize utilization. These days, you don't do that 00:16:34.520 --> 00:16:37.800 because those arms are fragile. They break and they're expensive. Yeah. 00:16:37.800 --> 00:16:42.920 And for a lot. And so when Germany did this huge push towards solar, as they started to try and wind 00:16:42.920 --> 00:16:48.600 down their nuclear power, they were putting all of these solar panels in all aimed south because they're 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:53.480 in the north, you know, fairly far north and they get the most light if they're physically aimed south 00:16:53.480 --> 00:16:57.080 until they were generating so much power at the middle of the day when they didn't need it, 00:16:57.080 --> 00:17:01.320 that it was actually a problem for their grid. And they don't do that anymore. They now point their 00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:07.000 panels east and west, which seems foolish because it means you get less utilization per panel. But what 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.560 you're actually doing is smoothing out your power generation. You don't need as much power at noon. 00:17:11.560 --> 00:17:16.600 What you need is more power in the morning and more power in the evening and moving those panels, 00:17:16.600 --> 00:17:20.520 using each panel less efficiently actually makes a more efficient grid. 00:17:20.520 --> 00:17:26.280 How interesting. So I think the area I really want to focus on with our conversation is that storage 00:17:26.280 --> 00:17:29.000 side, because I think that's the magic of unlocking things. 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:29.560 Sure. 00:17:29.560 --> 00:17:32.280 Before we do, have you seen Project Sunroof? 00:17:32.280 --> 00:17:34.520 I have. It doesn't work in Canada, unfortunately. 00:17:34.520 --> 00:17:37.880 That is unfortunate. The sun is totally different there or no, just kidding. 00:17:37.880 --> 00:17:42.280 Well, you know, it has a U in his name. So, you know, what are you going to do? 00:17:42.280 --> 00:17:49.320 Yeah, yeah. So this thing lets you go to your address or anyone's address and click on it and say, 00:17:49.320 --> 00:17:54.760 it gives you a heat map of the roof of your house for the amount of energy it's going to receive. 00:17:54.760 --> 00:17:59.480 And unfortunately here, you know, I'm also in the Pacific Northwest. And one of the things that I think 00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:06.600 is glorious about here is, you know, right in my yard, I have 150 year old trees that are super high, 00:18:06.600 --> 00:18:12.280 right? Which are amazing. Unless you want solar radiation on your house. 00:18:12.280 --> 00:18:14.040 Unless you want sunlight to hit places. 00:18:14.040 --> 00:18:14.360 Yes. 00:18:14.360 --> 00:18:16.040 Exactly. There's like a little sliver. 00:18:16.040 --> 00:18:17.480 Or Starlink for that matter. 00:18:17.480 --> 00:18:22.120 Yeah, both are out for me. Like, I actually had some solar people come out and estimate, 00:18:22.120 --> 00:18:26.840 and I said, does it make any sense to, I mean, like, put the money aside. Does it even make sense 00:18:26.840 --> 00:18:30.600 just from a climate perspective? And they're like, you know what? It's going to take five years to 00:18:30.600 --> 00:18:35.080 pay off the carbon and manufacturing just the panels. And I go, right. 00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:38.920 It's like too inefficient to justify it, unfortunately. 00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:44.040 But yeah, yields are just too low. And it's like, if you really wanted to reduce your carbon footprint, 00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:47.880 spending that money on the best appliance, the most efficient appliances you could have. 00:18:47.880 --> 00:18:50.440 Right. Or redoing your installation or something like that. 00:18:50.440 --> 00:18:58.360 Yeah. Or even using things like Tesla Powerwall to run on battery during peak power consumption times. 00:18:58.360 --> 00:19:03.400 Those things represent the problem with most grid power is that it pretty much generates the same 00:19:03.400 --> 00:19:07.560 amount of power all the time. Grid is not that flexible. It takes a while to spin up those big power 00:19:07.560 --> 00:19:13.480 power plants. And so they produce for peak. And if so, if most people, you know, the concept of 00:19:13.480 --> 00:19:19.960 Powerwall was, hey, if I can take you off the grid during peak, if I can store power at the cheap times, 00:19:19.960 --> 00:19:24.680 and then use that power at the peak times, we can turn off a peak power plant. 00:19:24.680 --> 00:19:29.000 Talk Python To Me is partially supported by our training courses. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:34.120 Do you want to learn Python, but you can't bear to subscribe to yet another service? 00:19:34.120 --> 00:19:37.080 At Talk Python Training, we hate subscriptions too. 00:19:37.080 --> 00:19:42.600 That's why our course bundle gives you full access to the entire library of courses for one fair price. 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:49.720 That's right. With the course bundle, you save 70% off the full price of our courses, and you own them all forever. 00:19:49.720 --> 00:19:55.800 That includes courses published at the time of the purchase, as well as courses released within about a year of the bundle. 00:19:55.800 --> 00:20:09.400 It seems completely reasonable. 00:20:09.400 --> 00:20:11.240 Power Pack that Tesla does. 00:20:11.240 --> 00:20:15.800 Yeah, I mean, it's not a lot of success. There's been a few. I mean, Australia being the famous. 00:20:15.800 --> 00:20:17.320 Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of, for sure. 00:20:17.320 --> 00:20:23.160 Yeah, they just had a big fire at one of them in terms of, you know, lithium-ion, ion burns prolifically. 00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:29.560 Yeah, I was going to call that one. Where was that one? That was, yeah, that one was definitely, I guess I can't pull it up. 00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:34.440 The biggest advantage of battery over all storage methods, period, is recovery. 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:42.680 That it comes about 90% efficient. So put 100 kilowatts in, you'll get 90 kilowatts out in exchange for expensive. 00:20:43.480 --> 00:20:50.360 That's the issue, is that they're expensive installations. They do have fire risks. The availability of lithium is constrained. 00:20:50.360 --> 00:21:01.160 Although we're starting to see some other battery technologies come down the pipe. The famous, the big news stories at the moment are around iron-based batteries. 00:21:01.160 --> 00:21:08.120 So liquid iron, it's not, the iron's not liquid, but it's a liquid electrolyte iron battery. Essentially rust batteries. 00:21:08.120 --> 00:21:15.000 So you, when you oxidize the iron, you can move, you can store electricity and then you deoxidize to release the electricity. 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:18.360 Oh, interesting. It's almost like electrolysis, but applied to iron. 00:21:18.360 --> 00:21:24.680 Yeah, and it's the same. And fundamentally that's what all batteries are, right? It's doing a chemical reaction that creates new compounds. 00:21:24.680 --> 00:21:31.960 You're not going to find iron batteries in your phone anytime soon. They are big, they are heavy, but they are very grid scale. 00:21:31.960 --> 00:21:37.960 The most advanced batteries that I've seen that seem to have the best backing right now are a company called Form Energy. 00:21:37.960 --> 00:21:38.120 Okay. 00:21:38.120 --> 00:21:49.560 So they've raised about $125 million, which seems like a lot. And it is in this space, but grid scale power is hundreds of millions of dollars. So they haven't got a deal yet. 00:21:49.560 --> 00:22:00.120 But it had some breakthroughs in their battery. Their typical battery unit is about the size of a dishwasher. So again, that's, it wouldn't be good for a car, wouldn't be good for a phone. 00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:14.040 It's also because it has a liquid in it. Its orientation really matters. So these are meant to be held in place, mounted on the ground. They run pretty hot. Not a sort of thing you want to be around, but they're cheap. 00:22:14.040 --> 00:22:30.980 Like typically with lithium ion batteries today, we're coming in around a hundred, it may be as low as $80 a kilowatt. And believe me, like when a hundred dollars a kilowatt was reached for vehicle class batteries, that was considered the point where now we are price competitive with internal combustion cars. 00:22:30.980 --> 00:22:31.200 Right. 00:22:31.200 --> 00:22:36.860 And that breakthrough was like in the past couple of years, these iron batteries are coming in at like $20 a kilowatt. 00:22:36.860 --> 00:22:37.140 Wow. 00:22:37.140 --> 00:22:37.620 So. 00:22:37.620 --> 00:22:39.940 Are they more stable than the lithium ones as well? 00:22:39.940 --> 00:22:58.540 Yeah. They're far less fire risk and slow, steady discharging. So one of the claims to fame for the form energy battery is full discharge took a hundred hours. So the idea that, again, if you think about what is a grid want, it's that ability to have stable power all of the time. 00:22:58.540 --> 00:23:28.240 And so being able to count on a long duration battery makes a lot of sense. So this is not the kind of battery you'd want in your home. Like we have this home based, Hey, we're going to spend less on the grid. We're going to put some solar panels in. We're going to put some power walls in and we'll use the grid as backup and take less pressure off of that. But grid scale power storage, you're starting to see different kinds of storage system. And this is the first battery technology I've seen. It's really based on grid style storage and has that really high efficiency rating, but it's not the only way to store power. 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:49.440 Yeah. Yeah. Before we move off to the, just the battery side, I do want to ask you, if you use your crystal ball and look into the future, do you see a world where we've got renewable energy locally generated, like on roofs in California and maybe a power wall on a house? Like I could see California mandating every house comes with some sort of local battery. 00:23:49.580 --> 00:23:54.780 Yeah. And they have mandated solar. You now have to apply for a permit to not put solar on your house. 00:23:54.780 --> 00:23:55.580 Which is perfect. 00:23:55.580 --> 00:24:07.020 It's cool. You know, I mean, California has often done these kinds of things. The battery technology is a little trickier. They are expensive. They are relatively fragile. But yeah, it's possible, but it's easier solved with grid. 00:24:07.020 --> 00:24:15.220 Yeah. I was going to say, do you see that future or do you see a future where we've got, you know, massive grid scale type of generation and storage? 00:24:15.220 --> 00:24:26.440 Yeah. I think it's going to be lots of both because there's good reasons for both. Now, and one of the challenges here, when you start thinking about this micro grid behavior of having homes able to be on the grid is the grid needs to get much smarter. 00:24:26.580 --> 00:24:41.900 We need internet technology applied to electrical generation and utilization because it's a peer to peer kind of problem. And I mean, we're in computing, so we get that. But if you go talk to people who've worked in power grids all their life, peer is bizarre to them, right? 00:24:41.900 --> 00:24:51.620 They're very much a fewest number of power plants necessary to supply the load and a single set of wires to feed it out. Redundancy is an expensive, often unnecessary thing. 00:24:51.940 --> 00:24:59.540 And so, but that is clearly changing is where we are creating more automation. So I think people will have a choice on how they want to consume in that respect. 00:24:59.540 --> 00:25:14.880 But we're starting to perfect grid power storage and mostly because our renewables don't deliver a levelized load. They deliver when they deliver. And we need to levelize with other strategies. And that's where storage comes into play. 00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:32.820 All right. Two other things really quick, maybe one altogether. So we had a lot of resistance in the US to putting up windmills, wind farms off the East Coast, because the people with their yachts, when they went a little farther out, they would see the windmills and they really hated it. 00:25:32.820 --> 00:25:53.140 And then out in the desert in Nevada, though, what would have been a tremendously large solar grid scale solar is canceled because the electric, the article headline is the US largest solar farm is canceled because Nevada locals don't want to look at it while they're out on their all train vehicles, which I love riding all train vehicles. 00:25:53.140 --> 00:25:57.240 I'm not against that. But, you know, it seems like some trade offs that are necessary. 00:25:57.240 --> 00:26:09.180 Yeah. I mean, people, there is always an NIMBY effect. What's interesting about a place like Nevada and New Mexico is that they could be, they're doing heliosolar. So rather than using photovoltaic, they're using reflectors to heat molten salt. 00:26:09.180 --> 00:26:23.240 And what's interesting about that at that scale is the salt gets so hot that it still generates power through the night. You know, I mean, there's a bunch of ways to use molten salt. It's used in nuclear reactors. It's used in power storage systems. It's used in heliosystems. 00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:43.400 The thing that's powerful about salts, whatever they may be, sodium-based salts, fluorine-based salts, doesn't really matter, is that their operating liquid temperature, the temperature that they turn from a solid into a liquid is around 400 degrees Celsius. It varies from material to mineral. But their boiling point when they'll turn into a gas is past 1500 degrees. 00:26:43.800 --> 00:26:43.980 Yeah. 00:26:43.980 --> 00:27:05.820 So you have this huge operating range of liquid, right, as opposed to water, which only has a hundred degree range. And I'm using Celsius, because I'm a civilized human, for the liquid range. And that's not a lot of range. So the advantage being, I can do flash steam turbines against 500 degree Celsius salts just as easily as I can do against 800 degree salts and so forth. 00:27:05.860 --> 00:27:08.980 And so they carry heat long enough that you can bridge nighttime with it. 00:27:08.980 --> 00:27:12.680 Right. So that's even a form of storage, in a sense. But in the coast, yeah. 00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:19.560 There is a mechanism, like, if we have more solar than we know what to do with, why don't we switch it to heaters to heat the salt up? 00:27:19.560 --> 00:27:23.420 Because after it gets past a certain temperature threshold, it'll generate a lot of electricity. 00:27:23.420 --> 00:27:30.460 Now, it's not, because of that floor, that minimum temperature, molten salt storage is not as efficient as battery storage. 00:27:30.560 --> 00:27:44.200 Battery storage comes in at 90%. Molten salts come in at 70%. On the other hand, they're very persistent. They are less, you know, they've got a lot fewer risks. They're a well-known technology. So if you have the materials, it's a good solution. 00:27:44.200 --> 00:27:53.240 But there are more, right? Like, for years, we've been using pumped hydro storage, where you use that excess electricity to pump water up a hill. And then when you need it, you let the water come back down. 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:59.400 Right. So, yeah. So let's talk about some of the ones that are not straight of battery, right? So, like you said, that one's been pretty popular. 00:28:00.040 --> 00:28:01.040 Been around a long time. 00:28:01.040 --> 00:28:13.040 Yeah. I was really blown away when I first heard about that. So the idea is you might be at the face of a mountain, and there might be a mountain lake up right there. So you could have a lake at the bottom and a lake at the top. 00:28:13.040 --> 00:28:21.660 And as you generate the energy, all the extra just pumps the water to the top. And then when you let it out, you run it through some kind of hydroelectric thing on the way to... 00:28:21.660 --> 00:28:32.200 Put it through a turbine on the way back down, you get the power. And that's got about an 80% return. So more efficient than molten salt, not as efficient as battery. It's terrain specific. You need to have a handy mountain. 00:28:32.660 --> 00:28:44.020 Now, there's another gravity solution that doesn't need a mountain. It's called crane-based storage, where they use a very tall crane, and they use the electric power to lift concrete blocks and stack them higher and higher and higher. 00:28:44.560 --> 00:28:51.260 And then when you want to discharge the power, you pick the block up and let it come down and spin a turbine, spin a generator to generate electricity from it. 00:28:51.260 --> 00:28:54.560 That's kind of nouveau. The current efficient... 00:28:54.560 --> 00:28:54.560 Yeah. 00:28:54.560 --> 00:28:59.680 Nobody's built one to scale yet, but the experimental ones, again, coming in in the 80% range. 00:28:59.760 --> 00:29:09.480 So there's challenges with the water one, right? You're moving water up high, and what if the dam or the pipes were to break and to flood the city that it was near? 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:09.920 Yeah. 00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:11.640 Or there's a drought, all sorts of things. 00:29:11.640 --> 00:29:17.320 It's also, there's only so much water you can pump up. Like, what happens when you run out of water? What happens when you run out of room? Like, now it's going to over... 00:29:17.320 --> 00:29:22.220 Typically, they're dammed water storage. Like, the dam can only hold so much, too. So it has limits. 00:29:22.220 --> 00:29:39.280 Where the crane-based ones, as long as the crane can reach the blocks and doesn't get past its leverage moments, you can put a lot of blocks in place. You can build the crane larger. You can put its arm out longer. So that's interesting. Although they're going to be more expensive and have more maintenance than your typical hydro pump solution. 00:29:39.280 --> 00:29:49.400 Yeah. You can build more cranes. You could dig a hole in the ground and have this giant block of concrete or whatever go up and down, you know, hundreds of meters underground, right? 00:29:49.560 --> 00:30:05.240 Yeah. Well, lots of blocks, right? So when you have excess power, your lifting blocks is stacking them high and then, and more and more and more of them. And then when you need the power, you're letting them come back down one after the other. You have to levelize the power. Like, there's some tricks to it. It's not a simple solution, but it works anywhere that you've got some flat land. 00:30:05.240 --> 00:30:08.320 Yeah. Which, with a bulldozer, is almost anywhere. 00:30:08.320 --> 00:30:11.860 Yeah. With some enthusiasm and some dynamite, you can make anything flat. 00:30:11.860 --> 00:30:19.540 That's right. So that seems like a really good solution. And so this is the thing that I really am excited to talk to you about. 00:30:19.540 --> 00:30:36.040 Because I get so frustrated when I hear things like, well, it would be great if this pipe dream you had could come true and you could run stuff on solar and wind, but it's never going to work because I want to watch TV at night and not be cold at night. 00:30:36.040 --> 00:30:36.540 Right. 00:30:36.540 --> 00:30:51.800 So it doesn't work. It's never, it's unstable. And there's all this creative stuff going on like pumped hydro, like molten salt, like we could just dig a hole in the ground and use some really complicated, like transmission. Yeah. 00:30:51.940 --> 00:31:04.980 You know, you take the mixture of the iron-based batteries, the $20 per kilowatt hour battery with winded solar, which are now so cheap and have grown a lot through the pandemic too. 00:31:04.980 --> 00:31:07.720 They're now the second largest source of power. 00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:09.960 And, you know, they've had the biggest growth. 00:31:10.580 --> 00:31:17.100 Admittedly, the largest renewable is still hydroelectric, but solar and wind are growing rapidly and had been very, very successful. 00:31:17.100 --> 00:31:17.400 Yeah. 00:31:17.400 --> 00:31:23.200 That the offshore wind power movement is an interesting one where they're getting not just in the water. 00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:31.300 Right now, when they go in the water with wind power, they're doing nearshore, not too deep, 100 feet, 200 feet, stuff they can anchor to the bottom on. 00:31:31.700 --> 00:31:37.760 But they've now hit a point where they're ready to start using more of the oil rig technologies to do floating turbines. 00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:43.900 So now you can go a couple of hundred miles offshore or more off the continental shelf and run the turbines out there. 00:31:43.900 --> 00:31:59.300 Yeah. Two of the challenges that I saw when I was thinking about that was one, you've got to dig down into the ground and you're disturbing the ecosystem of oysters and whatever, right, that like might be there if you're going to mount these things to the ground. 00:31:59.420 --> 00:32:02.500 The other is with these giant windmills. 00:32:02.500 --> 00:32:10.280 And when I was in Germany, we were around these huge windmills all over and just the sense of being near them is really crazy. 00:32:10.280 --> 00:32:10.540 Oh, yeah. 00:32:10.540 --> 00:32:11.160 They're ominous. 00:32:11.160 --> 00:32:22.180 And believe me, the offshore ones, I mean, twice the wingspan of 747, like these 10 megawatt turbines, they're so big, you can't even get your head around how big they are. 00:32:22.180 --> 00:32:22.480 Yeah. 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:24.160 They're just titans. 00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:26.420 They're just incredibly large. 00:32:26.540 --> 00:32:34.060 But to have them on a floating platform away from everyone where the noise isn't, where the sea life is not as plentiful, where the seabirds are not as plentiful. 00:32:34.060 --> 00:32:34.160 Yeah. 00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:41.400 That's what I was going to say is the other one is people would say, look, these are harmful to all the birds because there's so many bird strikes. 00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:44.500 But, you know, 10 miles offshore, there's not that much bird traffic. 00:32:44.620 --> 00:32:46.680 Well, now we're talking 200 miles offshore. 00:32:46.680 --> 00:32:46.920 Okay. 00:32:46.920 --> 00:32:47.700 Even further. 00:32:47.700 --> 00:32:50.600 You're well, you're off the end of the continental shelf. 00:32:50.600 --> 00:32:51.900 So you're way out there. 00:32:51.900 --> 00:32:54.400 The bird traffic is substantially lower. 00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:58.260 And that's a far less disruptive technology all around. 00:32:58.260 --> 00:33:00.180 It increases costs. 00:33:00.180 --> 00:33:02.100 But the equipment's getting cheaper. 00:33:02.100 --> 00:33:04.040 And the power generation is valuable. 00:33:04.040 --> 00:33:06.480 And it's, you know, minimally disruptive. 00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:09.380 They're smart enough to survive severe weather. 00:33:09.620 --> 00:33:12.660 So, you know, that's continuing to grow dramatically. 00:33:12.660 --> 00:33:13.140 Yeah. 00:33:13.140 --> 00:33:13.780 For a reason. 00:33:13.780 --> 00:33:21.320 And taking the known technology for working offshore and turning it into automated platforms for wind makes a lot of sense. 00:33:21.320 --> 00:33:21.660 Yeah. 00:33:21.660 --> 00:33:22.280 Absolutely. 00:33:22.280 --> 00:33:32.520 So when I, circling back around, when I hear people in the news or whatever say, oh, we can't have this renewable future because there is so much fluctuation and uncertainty. 00:33:32.520 --> 00:33:36.020 I feel like it's just a lack of creativity. 00:33:36.380 --> 00:33:37.580 These are old arguments. 00:33:37.580 --> 00:33:39.260 We've been solving them steadily. 00:33:39.260 --> 00:33:39.760 Exactly. 00:33:39.760 --> 00:33:44.200 Like, we put people on the moon with, like, wristwatch level computing. 00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:44.980 Surely. 00:33:44.980 --> 00:33:45.300 Yeah. 00:33:45.300 --> 00:33:49.440 We can build some cranes or build some batteries and put. 00:33:49.440 --> 00:33:49.820 Yeah. 00:33:49.820 --> 00:33:52.040 Well, and we also did it in a very dangerous way. 00:33:52.040 --> 00:33:54.000 The way we sent people to the moon was extremely risky. 00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:54.760 That's why we stopped. 00:33:54.760 --> 00:33:55.700 Yeah. 00:33:55.700 --> 00:33:57.500 We want power that's safe and reliable. 00:33:57.500 --> 00:33:59.260 And that's fairly hard. 00:33:59.260 --> 00:34:01.800 And we'd be remiss not to talk a little bit about nuclear. 00:34:01.800 --> 00:34:04.420 Because nuclear can be safe. 00:34:04.420 --> 00:34:04.900 Yeah. 00:34:04.900 --> 00:34:06.340 It just hasn't been. 00:34:06.340 --> 00:34:08.000 We stopped spending money on it. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:13.200 We stopped spending money almost at the moment that we were moving beyond. 00:34:13.200 --> 00:34:14.200 Yeah. 00:34:14.200 --> 00:34:19.880 Like, water-based nuclear, where stuff would fail safer rather than Fukushima-type fail. 00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:20.400 Sure. 00:34:20.400 --> 00:34:22.320 Well, here's the funny thing about Fukushima. 00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:24.920 There was actually six reactors in Fukushima. 00:34:24.920 --> 00:34:27.320 We only, and people only talk about one to four. 00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:30.380 Four was offline, and one through three melted down. 00:34:30.380 --> 00:34:31.920 Nobody talks about five and six. 00:34:32.120 --> 00:34:34.240 Five and six were exactly the same design. 00:34:34.240 --> 00:34:37.900 But they had been modernized to have passive cooldown. 00:34:37.900 --> 00:34:47.780 And so when they were scrammed the same way one through four were, and then they lost their generators, just like one through four were, they cooled down on their own without events. 00:34:47.940 --> 00:34:48.380 Oh, interesting. 00:34:48.380 --> 00:34:49.260 I didn't realize that. 00:34:49.260 --> 00:34:49.800 That's cool. 00:34:49.800 --> 00:34:50.160 Yeah. 00:34:50.160 --> 00:34:52.800 And they're undamaged, right? 00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:55.500 Now, the question is, why didn't one through four have passive cooldown? 00:34:55.500 --> 00:35:06.140 Because one through four were several years older, and the upgrade kits to make them passively cool down were expensive and took two years to install. 00:35:06.540 --> 00:35:13.900 And since the plants only had about five, six years of lifespan with them, it was a financial decision not to install the passive cooldowns by TEPCO. 00:35:13.900 --> 00:35:16.240 Probably something they want to take back if they could. 00:35:16.240 --> 00:35:16.800 Yeah. 00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:18.920 But, you know, that's true of a lot of things. 00:35:18.920 --> 00:35:27.240 You know, I'm pretty sure in Three Mile Island, the operators had asked for an indicator of light for the pressure relief valve to show it was open or closed. 00:35:27.240 --> 00:35:30.240 And they put the light in, but they wired it to the switch, not to the valve. 00:35:30.240 --> 00:35:31.940 So when you push the button, the light turned on. 00:35:31.940 --> 00:35:33.060 You push the button, the light turned off. 00:35:33.060 --> 00:35:34.260 Nobody knew what the valve was doing. 00:35:34.260 --> 00:35:34.660 Yeah. 00:35:34.660 --> 00:35:41.960 The valve sat open and allowed water to escape from the vessel until the point where the core was exposed and partially melted down. 00:35:41.960 --> 00:35:42.200 Yeah. 00:35:42.200 --> 00:35:43.940 You know, people make mistakes. 00:35:43.940 --> 00:35:46.560 But part of this is reactor size. 00:35:46.560 --> 00:35:53.620 The push to make reactors in the 300 megawatt class because that's the size of the coal power plants. 00:35:53.620 --> 00:35:55.520 They knew how to operate that size. 00:35:55.520 --> 00:35:56.900 They knew how the turbines worked. 00:35:56.900 --> 00:35:59.260 So they made these bigger nuclear reactors. 00:35:59.260 --> 00:36:02.200 And that's problematic because they are hard to cool down. 00:36:02.200 --> 00:36:04.400 Now, we've learned to cool them down with more modern versions. 00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:10.360 But as soon as you shrink them down to a more natural size, to the 60 megawatt class, you just don't have that problem. 00:36:10.360 --> 00:36:10.620 Yeah. 00:36:10.620 --> 00:36:16.800 And those are the reactors you find in aircraft carriers and in submarines, those kinds of places. 00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:22.140 And that's what you're seeing in small modular nuclear reactors are the 60 megawatt class. 00:36:22.140 --> 00:36:27.240 And these are the kind of reactors that you build in a factory rather than build on site. 00:36:27.240 --> 00:36:28.740 So they're not bespoke. 00:36:28.740 --> 00:36:29.620 They're standardized. 00:36:29.620 --> 00:36:31.000 They're built with machines. 00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:31.940 They're consistent. 00:36:31.940 --> 00:36:33.520 They're easy to test and validate. 00:36:34.140 --> 00:36:35.380 And so they're very reliable. 00:36:35.380 --> 00:36:37.060 You fuel them once. 00:36:37.060 --> 00:36:39.660 They run for 20 years on the fuel. 00:36:39.660 --> 00:36:41.300 So no refueling every year. 00:36:41.300 --> 00:36:43.320 You run them solid for 20 years. 00:36:43.320 --> 00:36:45.720 They are passively shut down because they're small enough. 00:36:45.720 --> 00:36:48.360 If you put the control rods in place, they will simply go cold. 00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:52.020 And so the folks, I think, are furthest along in the modular nuclear. 00:36:52.020 --> 00:36:54.500 They actually got their clearance contracts. 00:36:54.660 --> 00:36:59.880 They got certified by the Atomic Energy Association last year is new scale. 00:36:59.880 --> 00:37:04.420 And they actually have a contract in Utah to build out the first modular plant. 00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:15.000 And their plan is to actually put 12 of these together on the site so that you get that same kind of 300, 400 megawatt power generation that is normal in grid. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:20.580 But they just have multiple small redundant reactors that they can swap them out as they need to be replaced. 00:37:20.580 --> 00:37:23.440 And when you at the end of 20 years, you don't refuel it. 00:37:23.700 --> 00:37:24.340 You remove it. 00:37:24.340 --> 00:37:25.840 You lift it back out of the ground. 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:29.480 You take it back to a factory where it is reprocessed. 00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:30.760 And you put a new one in place. 00:37:30.760 --> 00:37:31.040 Yeah. 00:37:31.040 --> 00:37:32.780 This is a very different approach to nuclear. 00:37:32.780 --> 00:37:33.060 Yeah. 00:37:33.060 --> 00:37:36.800 Going to have to break a lot of stereotypes and fears. 00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:37.220 Yes. 00:37:37.220 --> 00:37:37.520 Right. 00:37:37.520 --> 00:37:42.060 But, you know, the Atomic Energy Association has now signed on with that one. 00:37:42.060 --> 00:37:43.220 So because it has passed. 00:37:43.220 --> 00:37:52.040 And so the Utah project, by the way, is struggling now for new scale for the simple reason that costs have gone up. 00:37:52.500 --> 00:37:57.520 And so some of the municipalities that signed on to buy power for them are now finding out the new power price is higher. 00:37:57.520 --> 00:38:01.220 And they're like, hey, I can get a natural gas plant for less than that. 00:38:01.220 --> 00:38:03.020 Like, why am I paying for this? 00:38:03.020 --> 00:38:04.940 And that's part of the challenge here. 00:38:04.940 --> 00:38:05.920 Price is everything. 00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:07.800 And solar is getting cheaper. 00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:08.860 Wind is getting cheaper. 00:38:08.860 --> 00:38:10.760 Natural gas has always been cheap. 00:38:10.760 --> 00:38:18.360 So these guys are always struggling with, as they develop these new technologies, they're trying to get those costs absorbed by their early sales. 00:38:18.360 --> 00:38:19.580 And people don't want to pay for it. 00:38:19.580 --> 00:38:19.780 Yeah. 00:38:19.780 --> 00:38:21.660 It's a tough chicken and egg, right? 00:38:22.040 --> 00:38:23.700 So let's talk about some more storage. 00:38:23.700 --> 00:38:29.320 I do think the nuclear side is really interesting because it's been shunned so badly since the 70s. 00:38:29.320 --> 00:38:31.440 But it is carbon. 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:33.400 It's zero carbon, right? 00:38:33.400 --> 00:38:34.000 Yeah. 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:34.920 I mean, you've got to mine. 00:38:34.920 --> 00:38:35.860 It does not emit carbon. 00:38:35.860 --> 00:38:36.140 Yeah. 00:38:36.140 --> 00:38:36.560 Yeah. 00:38:36.560 --> 00:38:37.060 Exactly. 00:38:37.060 --> 00:38:41.300 You know, it consumes carbon to if you're going to mine uranium, refine uranium, ship uranium. 00:38:41.300 --> 00:38:43.040 Like, those are issues. 00:38:43.040 --> 00:38:44.420 It still has a consumable. 00:38:44.540 --> 00:38:50.120 Although the efficiency of that consumable, it's hard to get your head around how efficient it is in comparison. 00:38:50.120 --> 00:38:50.460 Yeah. 00:38:50.460 --> 00:38:57.740 How little you refine uranium it takes to run a power plant compared to the amount of coal or natural gas it takes to run a power plant. 00:38:57.740 --> 00:39:01.600 And the problem is that the reactor design that's most mature that most people are familiar with. 00:39:01.600 --> 00:39:07.520 So pressurized water designs, light water designs, were really meant to produce plutonium. 00:39:07.720 --> 00:39:12.660 Like, the reason that the United States matured that technology was to make bombs. 00:39:12.660 --> 00:39:13.940 They make electricity. 00:39:13.940 --> 00:39:16.500 While they're making electricity, they get plutonium out of their cores. 00:39:16.500 --> 00:39:24.140 And so it was designed to be disassembled every six months, have the cores reprocessed, get the plutonium out, make new cores, and load them back in again. 00:39:24.140 --> 00:39:26.240 And then they stopped reprocessing cores. 00:39:26.240 --> 00:39:34.700 During the Ford administration, when Carter was running against them with anti-nuclear proliferation, Ford's attempt to get reelected, he said, 00:39:34.780 --> 00:39:37.620 I'll do what Jimmy wants us to do and stop reprocessing cores. 00:39:37.620 --> 00:39:39.820 And America has never reprocessed a fuel core since. 00:39:39.820 --> 00:39:41.840 They just store them at the plant. 00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:43.260 And it was just a political game. 00:39:43.260 --> 00:39:43.860 No. 00:39:43.860 --> 00:39:51.140 The French, who 80% of their power comes from pressurized water and nuclear, have continued to modernize their plants. 00:39:51.140 --> 00:39:52.980 They always have reprocessed their cores. 00:39:52.980 --> 00:39:55.720 In fact, they now reprocess plutonium into their cores. 00:39:55.720 --> 00:39:56.940 It's called a MOX core. 00:39:56.940 --> 00:39:59.040 And so they're actually burning plutonium. 00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:02.260 And so they don't have the radiation storage problems. 00:40:02.260 --> 00:40:04.180 They're not because they're reprocessing their fuel. 00:40:04.680 --> 00:40:12.700 And, you know, by the way, when Germany decided to stop using their nuclear plants after Fukushima, to have enough power, they bought nuclear power from France. 00:40:12.700 --> 00:40:14.920 Like, that's how that worked. 00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:15.280 Yeah. 00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:16.260 Modernizing. 00:40:16.260 --> 00:40:18.900 Not that, you know, nuclear plants have their problems. 00:40:18.900 --> 00:40:20.300 And they need to be modernized. 00:40:20.300 --> 00:40:22.140 And they need to be more efficient than they are. 00:40:22.140 --> 00:40:25.080 And there are better technologies that still should be matured. 00:40:25.080 --> 00:40:32.000 But these small modulars deal with most of that and with relatively little new research needed to be done. 00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:33.180 And still it's a struggle. 00:40:33.180 --> 00:40:33.460 Yeah. 00:40:33.460 --> 00:40:34.520 Super interesting. 00:40:34.800 --> 00:40:37.280 So we only have about five minutes left. 00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:50.280 But I do want to talk about some more energy storage stuff that's really interesting that people maybe don't think about is, what if I just got a giant, really balanced piece of steel and spun it really fast? 00:40:50.280 --> 00:40:52.260 Or something like that. 00:40:52.260 --> 00:40:53.060 The flywheel solution. 00:40:53.060 --> 00:40:53.560 Exactly. 00:40:53.820 --> 00:40:56.900 Well, and modern flywheels are better than ever. 00:40:56.900 --> 00:40:59.020 These days they use air bearings. 00:40:59.020 --> 00:41:02.220 Some of them have even seen versions that have superconductive bearings. 00:41:02.220 --> 00:41:04.640 So that they, and then they're in vacuum. 00:41:04.640 --> 00:41:09.020 So the whole trick with a flywheel is minimizing friction. 00:41:09.020 --> 00:41:12.020 Like, how fast can we get it spinning and stay in shape? 00:41:12.020 --> 00:41:14.120 And how long do we extract it? 00:41:14.120 --> 00:41:15.780 Now, they're not as efficient as batteries. 00:41:15.780 --> 00:41:16.520 They're close. 00:41:16.520 --> 00:41:17.700 80, 85. 00:41:17.700 --> 00:41:21.300 They have their own mechanicals, like the stuff that needs to be taken care of. 00:41:21.300 --> 00:41:23.620 But essentially they're a part of a motor. 00:41:23.620 --> 00:41:27.600 Like, you only have to put a field coil around that flywheel to extract power from it. 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:30.320 So they're expensive to manufacture. 00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:32.400 And they take specialized operators to run. 00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:35.800 Batteries in some respects, while expensive also, are easier. 00:41:35.800 --> 00:41:38.920 But these are, flywheels have been around a long time. 00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:45.900 When I was a kid and trying to get computer time in the university, that computer's backup system was a flywheel for power. 00:41:45.900 --> 00:41:46.360 Oh, wow. 00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:46.680 Really? 00:41:46.680 --> 00:41:48.020 200 kilowatt set of flywheels. 00:41:48.020 --> 00:41:48.300 Yeah. 00:41:48.300 --> 00:41:49.880 We went down to the flywheel room one time. 00:41:49.880 --> 00:41:52.540 And you talk about that threatening hum. 00:41:53.060 --> 00:41:57.080 Flywheels hum in a way that lets you know, if something goes wrong here, you're not even going to feel it. 00:41:58.080 --> 00:42:02.280 When flywheels disintegrate, that's a lot of mass moving in a hurry. 00:42:02.280 --> 00:42:02.600 Yeah. 00:42:02.760 --> 00:42:05.340 So they are interesting machines. 00:42:05.340 --> 00:42:07.320 And they're an interesting approach to storing power. 00:42:07.320 --> 00:42:14.040 I think each of these power storage solutions, you know, has merit depending on where you are and what materials are expensive at the time. 00:42:14.040 --> 00:42:17.940 You know, flywheels count on heavy ferrous metals being inexpensive. 00:42:18.460 --> 00:42:24.340 And those sophisticated bearing systems to allow them to spin well and good field coil control so that they can spin them up and spin them down. 00:42:24.340 --> 00:42:24.620 Yeah. 00:42:24.620 --> 00:42:26.000 They're absolutely viable. 00:42:26.000 --> 00:42:28.180 I feel like they've gotten modernized quite a bit recently. 00:42:28.180 --> 00:42:28.740 Mm-hmm. 00:42:28.740 --> 00:42:35.480 Well, everybody, it is the Rebco superconductive bearings that made a huge difference. 00:42:35.480 --> 00:42:38.780 Because you're floating on a baron with no friction because it's not touching anything. 00:42:38.780 --> 00:42:40.320 It's in evacuated space. 00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.280 That basically means you get up to speed. 00:42:42.280 --> 00:42:45.480 And the way you, like you said, you extract energy is through magnetic stuff. 00:42:45.480 --> 00:42:46.680 Yeah. 00:42:46.680 --> 00:42:48.000 So there's no physical contact. 00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:48.600 Yeah. 00:42:48.600 --> 00:42:49.260 Yeah. 00:42:49.260 --> 00:42:49.860 That's fantastic. 00:42:49.860 --> 00:42:50.220 Yeah. 00:42:50.220 --> 00:42:51.760 It's a very modern way to think. 00:42:51.760 --> 00:42:53.660 But they make sense at a grid level. 00:42:53.660 --> 00:42:55.260 They need to be large. 00:42:55.260 --> 00:42:58.240 They need to be professionally operated and professionally maintained. 00:42:58.240 --> 00:42:58.600 Yeah. 00:42:58.600 --> 00:43:01.740 The other one, I'm not sure if I have a picture of it here, actually. 00:43:01.740 --> 00:43:02.640 I don't think I do. 00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:09.560 The other one has to do with not storing water, but storing compressed air. 00:43:09.560 --> 00:43:10.080 Yeah. 00:43:10.340 --> 00:43:18.000 So where we see these are where they have airtight, large spaces, like old salt mines, 00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:22.200 for example, where they've done mining the salt, but effectively the space is airtight 00:43:22.200 --> 00:43:23.820 and so they can pump pressure into them. 00:43:23.820 --> 00:43:27.400 They have efficiency problems because you have sort of have a minimum pressure. 00:43:27.400 --> 00:43:31.440 So you've got to pump for a while before you get to a pressure that would spin a turbine. 00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:35.480 They come in in the 70% range, a little bit lower. 00:43:35.480 --> 00:43:40.060 But if you have the space, like the expensive part would be making the tank, right? 00:43:40.220 --> 00:43:40.420 Right. 00:43:40.420 --> 00:43:42.600 Pumps are not that expensive and not that difficult. 00:43:42.600 --> 00:43:48.600 You know, but if you've got a huge volume of airtight space, it's worth utilizing that. 00:43:48.600 --> 00:43:50.460 Let me throw one other idea at you. 00:43:50.460 --> 00:43:50.780 Okay. 00:43:50.780 --> 00:43:54.560 You know, there's one hand, there's the idea of we're generating electricity and we need 00:43:54.560 --> 00:43:56.260 to store it for when we can't generate it. 00:43:56.260 --> 00:43:59.260 Then there's also the we're generating more electricity we need. 00:43:59.260 --> 00:44:00.600 Where do we put this? 00:44:00.600 --> 00:44:00.860 Yeah. 00:44:00.860 --> 00:44:04.840 But if you didn't need it for electricity, like why would you bother storing it into battery? 00:44:04.840 --> 00:44:08.640 Can you turn excess electricity into something valuable? 00:44:09.180 --> 00:44:13.600 And so one of the areas of research going on right now is water desalinization. 00:44:13.600 --> 00:44:15.640 We have a freshwater problem. 00:44:15.640 --> 00:44:15.980 Yeah. 00:44:15.980 --> 00:44:21.800 So why not, when you have excess electricity available, use electricity to salinate water. 00:44:21.800 --> 00:44:27.480 If you're turning that excess power into something valuable, freshwater. 00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:31.120 There's a version of this, it's actually a kind of pump storage solution. 00:44:31.120 --> 00:44:38.020 So we pump seawater up to a high level and then the drain system for that to lower it back 00:44:38.020 --> 00:44:43.100 down again actually has a reverse osmosis filter on it and just uses gravity to extract the fresh 00:44:43.100 --> 00:44:43.400 water. 00:44:43.400 --> 00:44:43.820 Yeah. 00:44:43.820 --> 00:44:44.320 How interesting. 00:44:44.580 --> 00:44:50.560 So taking existing designs of pumped power storage and instead of using a turbine without 00:44:50.560 --> 00:44:53.420 water coming down, using it to extract fresh water from salt. 00:44:53.420 --> 00:44:55.480 Well, that's a lot of options. 00:44:55.480 --> 00:44:59.860 A lot of different flexibilities for where you're located. 00:44:59.860 --> 00:45:01.360 Are you by a mountain lake? 00:45:01.360 --> 00:45:03.080 Do you have an old mine? 00:45:03.080 --> 00:45:03.620 Yeah. 00:45:03.960 --> 00:45:07.340 Or do you do a standard pumped reverse osmosis is another solution. 00:45:07.340 --> 00:45:08.560 It just consumes more energy. 00:45:08.560 --> 00:45:08.840 Yeah. 00:45:08.840 --> 00:45:10.420 But if you have the excess energy, why not? 00:45:10.420 --> 00:45:11.420 And if you need the water. 00:45:11.420 --> 00:45:11.640 Yeah. 00:45:11.640 --> 00:45:13.680 Water desalinization is getting more popular all the time. 00:45:13.680 --> 00:45:16.460 You think about the drought that's going on in Southern California. 00:45:16.460 --> 00:45:20.660 The Israelis are leading the world in water desalinization. 00:45:20.660 --> 00:45:21.800 It's a desert climate. 00:45:21.800 --> 00:45:24.280 It has water problems, but they don't have a water problem anymore. 00:45:24.280 --> 00:45:27.960 About 25% of their water is now desalinized water. 00:45:27.960 --> 00:45:30.480 They use the reverse osmosis systems for it. 00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:33.940 The challenge is that most of these mechanisms take a while to get a lot of energy. 00:45:33.940 --> 00:45:34.940 get up to speed. 00:45:34.940 --> 00:45:40.840 So, you know, it can take a day to get a reverse osmosis system stabilized and pumping well. 00:45:40.840 --> 00:45:45.320 And if you're trying to use like the three-hour window where you're making too much solar, 00:45:45.320 --> 00:45:48.880 you don't have, the system's not efficient for that, for making water. 00:45:48.880 --> 00:45:49.140 Yeah. 00:45:49.140 --> 00:45:50.660 It doesn't respond fast enough, right? 00:45:50.660 --> 00:45:56.020 So there's a push to modernize, to update these systems so that you have a 20-minute uptime. 00:45:56.020 --> 00:45:58.160 Within 20 minutes, we can be making water with this. 00:45:58.160 --> 00:46:01.440 So that three-hour window in midday where we have more solar we don't do with, 00:46:01.780 --> 00:46:04.800 we can put it over to the reverse osmosis plant and make fresh water with it. 00:46:04.800 --> 00:46:05.120 Awesome. 00:46:05.120 --> 00:46:05.400 Yeah. 00:46:05.400 --> 00:46:10.040 Well, Richard, thank you so much for being here and sharing all these ideas and doing the research 00:46:10.040 --> 00:46:10.560 for us. 00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:11.000 Yeah. 00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:14.620 You said it's a pleasure when you ask me because these are all notes I'm keeping, 00:46:14.620 --> 00:46:18.340 but then I spend a few days sorting them out into a set of narratives. 00:46:18.340 --> 00:46:20.380 Like, what are the important bits of all that? 00:46:20.380 --> 00:46:21.540 So it's a pleasure for me too. 00:46:21.540 --> 00:46:22.460 And really fun to talk to you. 00:46:22.460 --> 00:46:22.660 Yeah. 00:46:22.660 --> 00:46:23.260 Yeah. 00:46:23.260 --> 00:46:24.320 It's always great to have you here. 00:46:24.480 --> 00:46:27.480 And who knows what we'll talk about next time, but it's great. 00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:30.620 Well, since Coke says there's a subject at me, you know, I'm interested in everything. 00:46:30.620 --> 00:46:31.940 I do know that for sure. 00:46:31.940 --> 00:46:32.480 All right. 00:46:32.480 --> 00:46:35.200 So thank you for being here as always. 00:46:35.200 --> 00:46:36.840 And yeah, have a good day. 00:46:36.840 --> 00:46:39.200 And hey, we actually made this work from space. 00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:39.680 Yeah. 00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:40.020 Yeah. 00:46:40.020 --> 00:46:42.980 It was a little cranky at the beginning and it seemed to held out after that. 00:46:42.980 --> 00:46:44.220 That's right. 00:46:44.220 --> 00:46:45.100 All right. 00:46:45.100 --> 00:46:45.620 Bye, Richard. 00:46:45.620 --> 00:46:46.020 See ya. 00:46:47.120 --> 00:46:49.980 This has been another episode of Talk Python To Me. 00:46:49.980 --> 00:46:52.800 Our guest in this episode was Richard Camel. 00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:55.840 And it's been 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