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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Modify that. 1hr before markets close this coming Friday announce 50 Grippens, and technology selection of our next large nuclear of CANDUs.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Today would be a great day to announce the procurement of 60-90 Grippens...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Friday fun: Electoral reform My theory is the root of our current dysfunction is the misalignment of authority and accountability we have between voters, party members, candidates, caucus, and leadership. How do we fix this along with the other big issues with FPTP? (🇨🇦)

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I’m now convinced that a buildout of AP1000’s in Canada would represent an unacceptable risk of being “Gordie Howed” via export controls or direct USG stake in WEC by the time the project would be nearing completion. Act accordingly. 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Here is an interesting wat to visualize how well Wind and Solar can cover for each other. This is often pointed to as a reason they can be for almost all base supply. Data is For Ontario, and plots the daily average CF of each against each other across 2 years. 🔌💡

Wind vs Solar daily capacity factors. Note r^2 of only 0.15

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The outright threats coming from a broad swath of prominent US politicians over forest fire smoke are the most blunt evidence of how the US is not going back to what it was post Trump. This is *not* temporary, the character of the country has changed, and not for the better!

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Proportional Representation: I have my misgivings about further centralization of power in the leadership, loss of local representation, and tendency towards extreemism. I think I found a version I can get behind!

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the wake of this energy crisis, everyone 'energy secuity' minded should add a sliding imports tarriff from any energy outside the 'reliable' supply zone. Something like ($100-purchase price)*25% for oil. This would push towards more resiliant energy supply chains. 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

What if the US decides to stop the war, but the remnants of the IRGC just *don't*? If they keep taking potshots at ships and infrastructure, what then? If there was ever a war where Pottery Barn rules apply...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Retail rate structure has become a big topic. Let's logic this out. The old system depends mostly on fueled resources, where the fuel cost is the majority of the cost. Between marginal pricing and inframarginal rents, the fixed costs of the facilities were paid for. 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Let's talk about peak heating. During winter storm Fern, Enbridge (the gas utility) has stated peak gas delivery was 90GWt. We had ~8GW of gas power (say ~15GWt consumption), and there is ~15GW of non-weather responsive gas demand, leaving ~60GWt peak weather responsive demand. 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

I have been banging on this, especially in the context of the risks with a high capacity, low utlization natural gas supply system.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

And of course wind drops off right as we get to the coldest weather of the system... It had been having a great week prior to that but anouther example with very low capacity value in ELCC defining conditions. 🔌💡

Wi d at 15% CF when it's <-20C outside, and goes down further as we get to morning high demand

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Found in my files from March, 2016. I think it holds up quite well...

There is a large segment of the US that feels betrayed by the political establishment, with considerable justification. The establishment has primarily been concerned with issues of ideological purity (both left and right) while failing to address working and middle class concerns with economic stagnation.
This has given rise to a series of anti-establishment movements and candidates (tea-party, occupy, etc) that have tended to be co-opted by the establishment or drifted to ideological purity concerns that continue to fail to address economic stagnation. This has been amplified with new, ever more anti-establishment candidates each cycle.
At the start, Trump gained support as a big middle finger FU to the establishment choices, with the appearances of a protest vote. His support has continued to grow with the logic of “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done”. The problem is the confusion attacking a symptom of the deeper issues (establishment betrayal) with actually doing anything to address them (economic stagnation).
Trump is not a candidate that will improve economic security by addressing stagnation. He is the candidate of mood affiliation (we are upset and he is angry therefore, him) without substance. He does this with strategic use of ambiguity through never actually having a position and tossing out word salad answers that can be read any way supporter desires, even if contradictory from day to day or outright nonsensical. He found a deep strain of xenophobia that has been magnified by economic uncertainty to start building an in-group, that is being pressed to show commitment in ways that makes partial support impossible (right hand solutes, public vote pledges). The psychology of the in-group (like sport team fans) presses supporters to forgo any intellectual independence and to adopt the positions (when they have the coherence to be even called positions) even as they flit about from moment to moment and mood to mood.

The incitement to violence in his rallies further solidifies this in-group by changing the out-group from merely being intellectual opponents to perceived physical threats.
In the end what is on offer is a narcissist who is extremely vindictive with both threats of mob violence and threats to use wealth and power to crush any who oppose him. Where his ideas have been coherent they will cause the collapse of global trade (agree with it or not, but the sudden change will be catastrophic), pogroms, massively increased international tensions (what are the odds of a war with China if the already unsteady Chinese economy is hammered with punitive tariffs?), loss of allies, and collapse of any pretense of civil liberties. His claim is that he will use his ‘superior’ negotiating skills to get better deals. But he has so little understanding of anything he wouldn’t even know what a good or bad deal looked like. Negotiating with sovereign rulers is not like giving orders to contestants on reality TV. He may have been a good negotiator in the past, but has become insulated in bubble where almost everyone he deals is on his payroll.
To the supporters who are attracted to Trump because the establishment does not address your concerns – I understand why you are angry, but Trump is counter-productive in actually improving your situation. You are being sold a carefully crafted con, but it is all a performance. Don’t think that ‘your’ authoritarian strong-man won’t turn on you when you are inconvenient.
To the intellectual conservatives who have put their support behind Trump – You have shown your priorities to be partisanship and power over intellectual ideology. This is someone who ether stands against almost anything you stand for, or is so void of understanding as to be insulting. Your integrity is at stake, and should be always remembered and weighed against your future positions.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Do one doubts that you can make a firm dominant grid work. They have enough hydro and biomass capacity to cover their firm demand, but not enough water to cover their annual GWh. This is a great use of VRE as a resevoir extender, but doesn't scale / extend unless you have the hydro resource. 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Some thoughs on Yesterday. -The US was arguably hegemonic but not imperial previously. It is now imperial. (In attitude at least). -There is a major mismatch between the MAGA project aims and US corporate interests. Expect corporate independence to be challenged to ensure they follow along.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

And this is a big chunk of why I'm not enthused about the 'default plan' of a natural gas firm system, with solar and wind 'fuel saving' as much as they economically can...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

With this, we should have a lifetime capitol gains exemption. That is X$ of capitol gains you can exempt from income tax. This exemption replaces tax-free saving accounts, primary residence capitol gains exemptions, and inheritance tax exemptions. The remaining amount grows with inflation.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Heterodox opinion: There should be no corporate income tax.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Pick at least one of: -Mass scale H2 from intermittently available energy used for power (TW and 10's+TWh) -Mass scale CCS AND DAC (GT/y+ scale for each) -Mass scale nuclear (TWs) Or -Shallow Decarbonization (~10GT/y). More likley pick 1 as a major and anouther as a partial.

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Kevin Milligan @kevinmilligan.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

A few comments on the @mark-carney.bsky.social platform released today. You can find it here: liberal.ca/cstrong/. I provided some 'sounding board' advice here and there to those working on the platform. As always: I disclose, but you can decide what weight to put on that. Thread below...

liberal.ca

Canada Strong | Liberal Party of Canada

Download our plan

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Canada here. We want Hegseth right where he is.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

And interesting part is that the Canadian Government is providing a backstop for utilities to expand orders and guarantee the future demand for the factory, so it's been expanded there, where without that, a US factory remains closed. Wish they had the lead time diff for each country though...

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Ed Conway @edconway.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

🚨TARIFFS🚨 Here's a story that tells you lots about the reality of tariffs: both for those paying them & those hoping to benefit from them. A story of ships, storms, bad luck and bad policy. It begins a week and a bit ago, with a man frantically refreshing his web browser...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Here is a really interesting thread on 'practical drift', 'normalization of deviance' and 'slack'. Slack (and 'harvesting slack') is a very important consideration I think is under appreciated broadly including in our energy systems #energysky

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 03/02/2025

This sort of top-down analysis is incredibly naive and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how auto OEM businesses work. They are all heavily dependent on profits in North America, and North American auto supply chains are all dependent on the flow of components across to/from CA/MX.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Gonna be a whole lot of people reading up on incoterms tonight, and reading through their contracts to see which ones they used...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Should we be setting a climate action level target like we set a NATO defense spending target? Say a target of 2% of GDP. As a security issue the same as the defense spending target? #energysky

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Gareth Hanrahan @mytholder.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Not done with this one.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

I like the concept (in hydrogenous neighborhoods anyway - not sure if it would be as effective in all residential). A few questions though -What is the overall cost per unit served? Sure if can be financed via the utility but still an important consideration.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

I have been playing around with an interesting concept here - the tradeoff curves of capacity vs storage. First for a completely clean + storage system. This is what we need for Ontario for a no FF system with current demand profile, assuming starting from scratch for clarity. 🔌💡

First the linear graph - this shows how many hours of *Load* is needed for storage vs the ratio of clean energy produced to energy demanded. The plots are various ratios of nameplate, also shown as % of the energy produced by source

Zoomed into the nuclear + others section.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Do you have a megaproject you'd like to see, regardless of it being a good/feasible idea? Mine is the proposal for a Bering Strait train crossing. I want to take a month-long train ride from Argentina to Scotland.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Not going to comment on the politics of it, but this looks to be serious and sober analysis for how nuclear could fit in for Australia. www.frontier-economics.com.au/economic-ana... This sort of 'whole system analysis' is the minimum necessary to do a credible analysis comparing resource mixes.

frontier-economics.com.au

Economic analysis of including nuclear power in the NEM

This is the second independent report in this series on modelling the economics of including nuclear in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

I have seen lots of wishful thinking on dunkelflaute *management*, but I have never seen outright dunkelflaute *denialism* before. Always something new!

This is based on some pretty wild assumptions.
What data are you using to identify that there are periods of high load and low VRE?

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David Fisman. @dfisman.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Sure! Probably the first thing to know is that there is a whole range of particle sizes that we produce when we use our lungs, voice boxes, mouths and noses (our respiratory tract). Some of those are “big” and heavy: maybe you get splattered by a person talking to you.

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Post Normal Times @barinemiliano.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Was this in any way inspired by the work of Charles Forsberg and colleagues at MIT? Here a couple of examples, a lot of the research focuses on the potential synergies of a nuclear reactor/heat storage/CT system supplying ⚡&🔥 www.researchgate.net/publication/... www.researchgate.net/publication/...

researchgate.net

(PDF) Coupling Heat Storage to Base-Load Nuclear Reactors for Variable Heat, Electricity and Hydrogen

PDF | Nuclear reactors have high-capital-costs and low-operating costs; thus, they must be operated at high capacity factors to minimize the cost of... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

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worst-case scenario engineer @worstcaseeng.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Pinned thread for my attempts at "EnergySky protection class" - I'll be going through various protection topics and relay types as I think of them, for anyone who's interested in knowing about one of the grid's lesser-discussed features. Hope it helps!

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worst-case scenario engineer @worstcaseeng.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Ok! EnergySky protection class (is that too arrogant of me to say? I'm trying to make it light) day 2 - over current relaying! I need to clean this up better but this is a vintage Westinghouse Type CO I salvaged a while back and we can use it to see some things

Westinghouse Type CO over current relay - it's really old and has a full glass case, you can see the disc that turns inside, the pickup setting, and the time dial that's used to adjust it.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

How do we make nuclear the anchor for flexibility and firm capacity? Here is my basic proposal. Let’s start with a 350MW Gen IV reactor. This is basically the Natrium in round numbers, but we could use others, and we can adjust the ratios of turbine / core etc to suit the system. *ANY* ~500C+ works

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 25/11/2023

Here is my steelman case for SMR's being able to be competitive with GW scale plants: This of course remains to be proven, but gives us an idea of what factors would need to come into play for this to happen.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

How could we actually structure a market system that is actually capable of deep decarbonization? Energy only markets are going to get stuck on cannibalization and undervaluing reliability. Vertical utilities tend to be slow and under capitalized...

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 17/10/2023

www.kincardinenews.com/news/local-n... This is a crucial pilot for a future deep decarbonized Ontario. We probably won't have the excess power to deploy at scale until the 2030's, but we should use the results of this to design this into a future Naticoke NGS at many multiple GW scale.

kincardinenews.com

Bruce Power backing study exploring hydrogen production from electricity

The feasibility study by Kinectrics and FuelCell Energy was one of a number that the Independent Electricity System Operator announced on Thursday.

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Let's try anouther re-up now that there are more people here: bsky.app/profile/embe... 🔌💡

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Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Re-upping an old thread on how things get specified and how that can lead to wasteful margins... bsky.app/profile/embe...

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