Reposted by Blair WillcoxAllison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 09/10/2026Regardless of the legality of posting armed national guard members at drop boxes, whether the boxes were open yet, or whether drop boxes qualify as polling sites under the law; the optics are what matter. Lawful or not, it’s overt, intentional voter suppression. 17263691995
Reposted by Blair WillcoxFree DC @freedcproject.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Soldiers positioned at voting locations is not legal behavior. These are Mississippi National Guard troops at a DC ballot dropbox yesterday. We demand the governors of Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia get your soldiers OUT NOW. 15238135
Reposted by Blair WillcoxEd Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Germany: a two-hour battery earned €215k/MW/yr in September, with day-ahead spreads the widest since 2022. But revenues still fell 40% on the year. Wider spreads added money, nowhere near enough to replace what saturating aFRR markets took away. The ancillary premium is shrinking. 163
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 05/10/2026Or we move renewable generation payments fully outside of the market and we just need to decide who holds the bag and how it’s paid for. But we aren’t going to see consumer surplus as capacity price increases will outpace savings, regardless of how cheap elec gets during highly renewable hours 000
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 05/10/2026That would enable a lot of interesting contracts to create price floors for renewables, reenabling some chance for profits as a PPA holder or merchant IPP. 100
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 05/10/2026We can set floors on those prices, at least for a while, if we can dispatch load where there is a clear avoided cost of non-electricity inputs (methane for heating or gasoline for vehicles). But these loads must be truly dispatchable and we must have elec price signals that ~match wholesale costs. 100
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 05/10/2026Renewable generation can’t be financed without a PPA, even with potentially massive load growth. Price cannibalization eats all profit and subsidies. We will (have?) stall out the transition if relying on existing markets. Electricity during highly renewable hours will necessarily -> $0 200
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 06/09/2026Not sure why Michigan’s all-maize uniforms have tails 000
Reposted by Blair WillcoxRedditCFB @redditcfb.com · 05/09/2026Colorado Mines vs Washburn is officially a tie in D2! While getting ready for OT, the air temperature hit 99° with a heat index of 108°, conference rules prevented resumption of play as long as wet bulb temperatures remained in an unsafe range and it wasn’t set to let up. 35316
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 19/08/2026But take a look at the recent think pieces in the UK trying to remove natural gas from the pricing merit order. There are significant savings from doing so, but the renewable offtakers always end up taking big losses and reduce the incentive to build more renewables. 010
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 19/08/2026Sure and I’d argue that the Biden power plant regs pushed that vision by trying to eliminate base load natural gas and hours for peaker plants. But it’s hard to choose your marginal producer as you push through the merit order. Absent some fun anticompetitive withholding 100
Reposted by Blair WillcoxDavid Roberts @volts.wtf · 06/08/2026In July, on ABC, CBS, and NBC, there were 194 segments on the extreme heat waves rolling across the US. Number that mentioned climate change: 0.mediamatters.orgABC, CBS, and NBC aired nearly 200 segments about three U.S. heat events without mentioning climate changeFrom late June through July, successive heat waves swept across large portions of the United States, breaking temperature records and placing more than 100 million people at a time under heat alerts. ... 541551708
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 06/08/2026Ugh but that’s not how infrared camera work. Surface temp yes! Interior temp no! 010
Reposted by Blair WillcoxVice Mayor Burhan Azeem @burhanazeem.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Most of our district, including the triple deckers everyone loves, was technically illegal to build. That's not an accident. It's the result of decades of rules that quietly banned the cheapest housing we ever built. Cambridge changed it last year. Every city in Massachusetts can too. 66923
Reposted by Blair WillcoxJan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 19/05/2026The world’s largest sand battery got through Finland’s harshest winter in years. 2,000 tonnes of sand, heated to 500-600°C by cheap power, feeding district heating in Pornainen. And it worked. Result from one install: oil down 100%, emissions down 70%. Industrial process heat is the real prize. 198115023756
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 15/05/2026I don’t see any possible parallels. www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/banki... 120
Reposted by Blair WillcoxRebecca Dell @rebeccawdell.bsky.social · 14/05/2026It turns out the LNG export capacity has been in the works for a long time. From EIA: 49512
Reposted by Blair WillcoxAri Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 12/05/2026This is absolutely outrageous. SCOTUS reinstated Texas gerrymander 15 weeks before primary because they claimed it was too close to election to block it but now allowing Alabama to gerrymander one week before primary after trial court found map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters 20460432409
Reposted by Blair WillcoxDavid Roberts @volts.wtf · 08/05/2026Today on Volts: how do you coordinate the behavior of millions of distributed energy devices so that they work to the benefit of the larger grid? My guest today argues that real-time, dynamic retail prices -- communicated directly to devices -- are the customer- & privacy-friendly answer.volts.wtfThe case for using prices rather than VPPs to coordinate distributed energyResearcher Bruce Nordman explains how dynamic, real-time pricing can do the work of coordinating DERs. 6319
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 08/05/2026priicer.com might be an optionpriicer.comPriicer - Set What You Want to Pay for ElectricityPriicer uses real-time electriciy prices to help you automatically consume electricity when power is cheap 010
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 07/05/2026Taking these loads off grid would be such a missed opportunity for the grid and an indictment of our electrical system. The grid has lots of excess power and will have more and more excess renewables. Heat batteries are an obvious dispatchable load that could absorb those excesses. 010
Reposted by Blair WillcoxOilfield Witness @oilfieldwitness.bsky.social · 30/04/2026This Is Not A Drill is out and free to watch on Patagonia's Youtube channel. @txsharon.bsky.social is one of three activists featured in the film.youtube.comThis Is Not a Drill | Patagonia FilmsYouTube video by Patagonia 1279
Reposted by Blair WillcoxIan Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 30/04/2026www.axios.com/local/nashvi...axios.comBlackburn pitches 9-0 GOP map for Tennessee after Supreme Court decisionSen. Marsha Blackburn wants Tennessee to redraw its U.S. House map to help President Trump. 1911
Reposted by Blair WillcoxIan Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 30/04/2026bsky.app/profile/tani... 144
Reposted by Blair WillcoxIan Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Just hours after the ruling... These folks waste no time to advance racial disenfranchisement. 16526
Reposted by Blair WillcoxDavid Roberts @volts.wtf · 28/04/2026"Electrifying industrial heat in India is now cheaper than producing heat from natural gas and oil across all temperatures, and cheaper than coal in three of five temperature bands, representing 55 percent of the country’s industrial heat needs."energyinnovation.orgElectrifying Industrial Heat in IndiaCheap solar prices mean electrifying industrial heat in India is cheaper than producing heat from most fossil fuels, cutting costs and air pollution. 10437162
Reposted by Blair WillcoxTerraWatts2010 @terrawatts2010.bsky.social · 22/04/2026Cache Energy’s pilot project harnesses excess wind power from UMN Morris’ two turbines to heat a carpentry shop and could be expanded across campus. 🔌💡 www.canarymedia.com/articles/lon...canarymedia.comA new thermal battery could help this Minnesota campus electrify heatCache Energy’s pilot project harnesses excess wind power from UMN Morris’ two turbines to heat a carpentry shop and could be expanded across campus. 032
Reposted by Blair WillcoxPM2.5 Kills ~9 Million People Each Year Worldwide @tkovach.bsky.social · 18/04/2026"In PJM alone, consumers are already on the hook for $16.6 billion in capacity costs tied to data center demand forecasts that industry experts widely expect to be wrong."linkedin.comThe Data Center Reckoning: Why Communities Are Saying No — And What Has to ChangeSomething significant is happening in the space between the AI hype cycle and the real world. Communities are pushing back. 197
Reposted by Blair WillcoxMark Z. Jacobson @mzjacobson.bsky.social · 16/04/2026Firebrick storage powered by WindWaterSolar electricity has huge potential to replace fossil furnaces at low cost web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/j... A Scotland distillery claims a world first - it produces & stores 1,200C heat with low and 0 carbon electricity, not fossils www.bbc.com/news/article...web.stanford.edu 1147
Reposted by Blair WillcoxThe National @scotnational.bsky.social · 14/04/2026A Scottish distillery is to use otherwise wasted wind power to heat its stills in a 'world-first' decarbonised heat project 👇thenational.scotWhisky distillery to use wasted wind power to heat stills in 'world-first' 02912
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 13/04/2026Also worth understanding why we aren’t building wind (it’s not cost effective because of how the merit dispatch order works and price canibalization). Solar will not avoid this fate despite everyone’s excitement. The pricing system is not set up to support a 100% renewable future. 120
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 13/04/2026Many residential heat pump evangelists are supporting hybrid systems and we really need to get the C&I community on board. 020
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 13/04/2026Yeah. For the time being a hybrid natural gas + electric system is required for practicality and going to have lower system emissions during super cold operations. And you get to start arbitraging on price and avoid huge peak capacity upgrades. 110
Blair Willcox @currenttech.energy · 11/04/2026AtmosZero is primarily air source but can take other heat sources such as waste heat from cooling processes. Taking heat from condensate return wouldn’t really make sense unless you were dumping the condensate, which you’d want to avoid. 020
Reposted by Blair WillcoxJaap Burger @jaapburger.eu · 11/04/2026The French government has announced the measures of its plan to accelerate electrification: - a ban on gas boilers in new houses from the end of 2026 - increased support for replacing old heating with heat pumps - 100 regions will pilot comprehensive heat transition plans to phase out gas by 2030info.gouv.frÉlectrification : les mesures annoncées par le Gouvernement | info.gouv.frVIDÉO. Leasing social, pompes à chaleur, voitures électriques… : la France accélère son électrification pour réduire sa dépendance au gaz et au pétrole et renforcer sa souveraineté. Le soutien à l’électrification atteindra 10 milliards d’euros en 2030. 10464180
Reposted by Blair WillcoxJan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 10/04/2026Heat batteries are a game changer for decarbonising heat. Polar Night Energy and Lahti Energia Oy have partnered to construct what is expected to become the world’s largest sand-based thermal energy storage system, to be built in Vääksy, Finland. www.environmentenergyleader.com/stories/worl...environmentenergyleader.comWorld's Largest Sand Battery to Supply District Heat in Finland - Environment+Energy LeaderA Finnish energy company is heating 2,400 tons of sand above 500°C to store renewable energy at scale. Can sand replace natural gas in district heating? 18715254
Reposted by Blair WillcoxKarl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 07/04/2026I am not one of those who believes that history repeats, but consider the following from Herodotus: the Oracle at Delphi told the fabulously wealthy King Croesus that if he invaded Persia he would "destroy a great empire." Croesus invaded and lost--the empire he destroyed was his own. 572738786
Reposted by Blair WillcoxBrandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 07/04/2026The military must not follow any orders to destroy "a whole civilization." Sane members of Congress should say this loudly now. 23809222