Monday: The Electrical Grid
- “The Grid” is the interconnected electricity generating facilities that carries this electrical power to all the consumers. The internet is to information as the grid is to electrical power. Read about it on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
- Please know what the Independent System Operator is: http://www.caiso.com/
- Check out today’s anticipated electrical load for California, and in particular, take a look at the net load at the bottom (net load = electrical load – renewable electricity = electrical power necessary from conventional electrical generation)
- Please watch Electrical Grid video and see Grid Slides.
- Learn about how electricity is purchased with the video Electricity Markets and see slides from first part of Markets/Crisis/Smart Grid
- Slides from Lecture 9 on Grid and Electricity Markets
Wednesday
- See video: California Energy Crisis and the Smart Grid with slides from grid video.
- What is “the internet of things”, and what might it have to do with “smart grid”?
- Take a look at these articles… you can read them briefly or intensely as you like, but certainly make sure you understand the California Duck Curve and what we are doing to mitigate the challenges to stabilize the grid with increasing renewable energy. Read The Duck Has Landed. Here’s a more recent article April 24, 2017… the Duck is Underwater! Consider the question, “what is the marginal electricity at 9 PM? in the middle of the day? Is it ever nuclear?
- What we will learn is that California has not been acting as a regular state. On some levels, California has lead or been in direct opposition to Washington DC. Jerry Brown has brought this to a head with respect to Climate Change and Immigration: read CNN.
- This is not new. As recently as REPUBLICAN Arnold Schwarzenegger initiated “international” climate change mitigation talks with UK’s Tony Blair saying that President George W. Bush was “late to the after party party”
- Please read about the interesting legal struggles in our near future regarding states’ rights and climate change
Friday: Peak Oil
- Please see Peak Oil and the Peak Oil Slides
- Please see Getting Tight Oil and Gas and the Tight Oil Slides
- Please read Fracking and Earthquakes NPR
- NPR new reserve found
- Haas publication of fracking and learn by doing This is a learning curve article (how things get cheaper with increased practice), but also mentions the future of nuclear.
- US Gasoline Consumption Back Up Again
- Consider the statement, “we’re running out of atmosphere faster than we’re running out of oil.”
- Political Tension? What happens when the world’s most powerful country tells Saudi Arabia to increase oil production and they respond, “no, the problem is your budgetary mismanagement.” Take a look here.