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Scott Fines

@hyalinetech.bsky.social
17 followers 9 following 58 posts

Understanding Power generation. hyaline.tech

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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
Not a defense of the indefensible, but the 400k/year job is probably after stock grants(mine at Apple def. was). In cash it was probably substantially less, and living near Google campus is _very_ expensive
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Are we sure that Nvidia isn’t doing mark-to-market, and booking future sales as current profit?
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 03/11/2025
Absolutely amazing: they've got so much solar in Australia that they need more people to use more of it, so the gov't has instructed energy retailers to offer *at least three hours of free power* during the middle of the day. Meanwhile fossil-addled US struggles with an energy-price crisis ...
abc.net.au
Energy retailers to be directed to offer free power three hours a day
Saying there is enough solar power for everyone in the daytime, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen will direct retailers to provide three hours of free power every day to consumers.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
A statistician and an engineer went hunting. The first shot went three feet to the right. The second shot missed three feet to the left. The statistician cries “we got it!”
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
Turns out that raising rates so that you can guarantee a profit on gas and coal plants is bad for consumers, Actually: www.ksdk.com/article/news...
ksdk.com
Ameren cut off nearly 15,000 Missourians from electricity in September as data centers threaten to raise prices more
Data centers are projected to raise electricity prices even more, as current prices are already unaffordable for thousands of families across the state.
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South Side Weekly @southsideweekly.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Let us be clear: The President of the United States is levying war against American cities and American citizens—and we cannot rely on the other branches of government to save us. It’s up to us.
southsideweekly.com
It’s Up to Us to Protect One Another
As Trump sends troops to Chicago, we will continue to investigate and report. Readers have a role to play, too.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
If I were doing it, I would do multiple substations and bring them online in phases over time. You’re not going to get 1GW from a single grid connection anyway(you’ll congest upstream substations); better to pull from multiple independent grid ties.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
There are two main factors: transformer build time, and interconnection. Planning a (much smaller) substation in the past, we assumed 12-24 months for transformers, and 12-48 months for interconnect--it takes a long time to run new transmission, and 1GW will need a bigger wire than 200MW will.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
My town is on the map! I don’t care if the rest of the map is garbage, they got that part right
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
It’s the maximum power required by the entire facility at any moment during a single year. It originated from power providers who use it to plan transmission and generating capacity. It’s almost certainly being misused by techbros who don’t actually understand what they are doing or why.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
I think there’s pretty good evidence that the AI bubble has peaked, and will start a sharp downturn relatively soon. But I don’t see much to indicate that the Datacenter mania has peaked yet; I’m guessing another 6 months at least.
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Jesse D. Jenkins @jessedjenkins.com · 02/10/2025
The world's first carbon border tax is about to go live, roiling — and possibly reshaping —global trade share.google/yTtxujzkAx8a... 🔌💡
share.google
The world's first carbon border tax will soon go live — shaking up global trade
The European Union is poised to fully implement its carbon border tax from Jan. 1.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
The datacenters will not be built. The power demand will not materialize.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
When the AI bubble burst, a lot of hard asset companies will feel the effects: datacenter operators, construction firms, and power utilities have all hitched their wagon to a continued, never-ending growth in AI. And when the AI fails, all these other companies are going to start eating it. Hard.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
The AI bubble is probably better thought of as two distinct bubbles: LLMs in general (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), and the associated datacenter buildout bubble. Useful to remember that the dot-com was actually two bubbles as well: the dot-coms, and the telecoms. Telecoms was much worse.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
We switched from a gas-fired furnace to an air-source heat pump with electric backup last year, and my winter-time humidity was higher, but not by a huge amount. OTOH no gas in my home, and my local utility offers a discount rate for heat pumps, so I ended up saving quite a bit.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Wait: openAI is going to rent a chip that depreciates in 18 months? and then what? does nvidia take the chips out of the data centers or something? Someone make this make sense
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Altman sounds very much like a guy who doesn’t understand what a gigawatt actually is.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
This is pretty funny, because it doesn’t take a lot of mathematical sophistication to know intuitively that this had to be true: no probabilistic system will ever be deterministically correct.
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David Pomerantz @davidpomerantz.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Marissa Gillett, possibly the best utility regulator in the country, resigned from the Connecticut PURA this morning. She was forced out by Connecticut’s investor-owned utilities, who finally won their years-long, scorching campaign to oust her. A thread here about Gillett:
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
I think the point of mentioning this is that CF isn't actually "solving" the problems with CCS or anything; they are just offloading their emissions to Exxon. Is this *better* than not doing it at all? Sure, I buy that. But it isn't really saying anything about CCS that we didn't already know.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
I'm not particularly opposed to CCS, but worth mentioning that the actual mechanism that CF is using for CCS is enhanced oil recovery in partnership with Exxon. I don't actually know if CCS-EOR is systemically carbon negative or not, but worth pointing out.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
“ I believe in the municipal ownership of these monopolies because if you do not own them they in turn will own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt your institutions and finally destroy your liberties.“ -Tom L Johnson #energysky
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Just on a purely academic level, this is absolutely the coolest technology I’ve ever seen. 3 of these windows will run my fridge! #energysky
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
This is incredible, but (to me at least) it raises a big question: why now? #energysky ember-energy.org/latest-insig...
ember-energy.org
The first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa | Ember
There has been a major pick-up in solar panel imports into Africa over the last 12 months - a shift that is likely to impact almost every country on the continent.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
It’s on land they already own and will attach to their existing transmission infrastructure too; it will probably take longer to get the PSC to approve it than it will take to actually build.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Ameren Missouri wants to build a 250-MW solar field by the Callaway Nuclear plant. A surprising request, tbh, considering they recently got approval for a 750MW gas plant. Still, I’m not complaining about a good thing: #energysky abc17news.com/news/top-sto...
abc17news.com
Ameren seeks 250-megawatt solar facility in Callaway County
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) Ameren Missouri applied last week with Missouri's utility regulators to build a 2.5-megawatt solar power facility in Callaway County. The utility is asking for a Certificate of Co...
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
A 1929 headline  “Stock Market Invincible: Buy, Buy, Buy! Experts Advise”
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
Obviously cant’t know for certain, but I suspect the difference comes down to how leaky you think pipelines are and how much you attribute oil-field extraction damage to CH4 vs petroleum.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
One of the more surprising conclusions that I have been coming around to is that clean energy will eventually force a reckoning with our current economic superstructure. You just can’t run things the way we have when there isn’t a stranglehold on the energy supply _somewhere_
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Ben Paulos @paulosanalysis.com · 30/08/2025
Holy crap, a 26 MW wind turbine! 185 meter hub height! 310 meter rotor diameter! electrek.co/2025/08/29/c...
electrek.co
China installs the world's most powerful wind turbine
China’s Dongfang Electric has installed a 26-megawatt offshore wind turbine, snatching the "world’s most powerful" title from Siemens Gamesa.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
It sure seems like all these demand-increasing forecasts that utilities are putting out are highly dependent on datacenter load that may or may not ever actually show up. But of course it's easy to gamble when you're playing with someone else's money: 🔌💡 www.hyaline.tech/the-datacent...
hyaline.tech
The Datacenter Trap
On August 20, 2025, the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved Entergy's request for 3 new gas plants specifically to handle a single datacenter for Meta. This datacenter hasn't been built yet, ...
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
yeah, it's not a risk *I* would want to be taking, if I were Nvidia; CoreWeave is a ticking time-bomb of debt that should be obvious to anyone with eyes.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
I don't want to be a downer, but my understanding is that using Mark-to-market is pretty standard accounting practice when handling stock holdings. It does mean that Nvidia is dependent on CRWV stock prices; all that CRWV debt coming due is going to be a significant problem for Nvidia soon.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Shocking absolutely nobody: the 10 or so transmission companies that dominate MISO also own gas pipelines. Power markets do not serve everyone equally. 🔌💡
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
It is amazing to me how often people suggest shifting the risk of wholesale markets to the people least equipped to handle them. Price gouging is so much easier when your counterparty doesn’t understand what’s happening. #energysky pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/08/27/d...
pv-magazine-usa.com
Dynamic pricing is superior to virtual power plants, says dynamic pricing pioneer
As California pursues dynamic pricing of electricity to help integrate renewable generation, industry pioneer Edward Cazalet says dynamic pricing can meet California’s demand flexibility needs better ...
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Nigeria exports crude, and imports refined. energyinafrica.com/insight/desp...
energyinafrica.com
Despite local refining, petrol remains Nigeria's top import with 22.6% surge - Energy in Africa
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reported that refined petroleum products remained Nigeria’s top imports in the third quarter of 2024, despite the country’s increasing local refining capaci...
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John Hanger @jrfhanger.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
"Solar panel imports will reduce fuel imports. The savings from avoiding diesel can repay the cost of a solar panel within six months in Nigeria, and even less in other countries." Fossil fuels are crushing costs for poor nations. Solar is cheap! #energysky ember-energy.org/app/uploads/...
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
The premise of TerraPower is to support this through a molten salt chamber placed between the reactor and generator. This allows decoupling heat from power without wasting the heat entirely. It’s a novel design, but nobody knows if it’ll overcome the economic barriers
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Apparently, France made an explicit decision to support this early on during their nuclear build out. Given that it’s just a few hours at a time, I suspect that the plants are just venting heat and wasting it.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
It's technically feasible, but requires some design considerations and different equipment. The economics can also probably be made to work, but I'm skeptical that anyone will ever really try. Power mag actually did a pretty good write up on this back in 2019: www.powermag.com/flexible-ope...
powermag.com
Flexible Operation of Nuclear Power Plants Ramps Up
A widespread misconception persists that nuclear plants can only function as inflexible baseload sources of power—and it’s hurting prospects for the nuclear sector’s role in the world’s future power
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
This is sorta obvious if you have worked on rate design: The amount of distribution costs recovered through fixed charges likely determines the cost shift. Ironically, progressive rate designs probably see more cost shift. The solution is also sorta obvious: put solar panels on poor people's roofs.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Question for #energysky folks: Does anyone maintain a database/listing of actual proposed datacenters in the US(or other large loads)?
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
I agree that a broad strategic “reset” is necessary, but I doubt the author would agree with my stance that the reset needs to be much more skeptical and confrontational of investor-owned-utility structures
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Mathematically speaking, exponential growth looks exactly like linear growth for values close to zero. #energysky about.bnef.com/insights/cle...
about.bnef.com
Liebreich: The Pragmatic Climate Reset - Part I | BloombergNEF
As the tide on clean energy turns, Michael Liebreich makes a strong case for a pragmatic climate reset.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
They did not; they were just as excited about it as MSFT or anyone else. But Apple is a slow-moving monstrosity with politicized and secretive development groups. If they were better organized structurally, they would be just as exposed as everyone else. (was an Apple Engineer from 2021-2024)
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Again I say: all those projected datacenter power demand columns should be read _very_ skeptically. I do not believe the datacenters will be built.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
During the June heat wave, PJM energy prices reached 400$/MWh. The bulk of that went to gas plants. Meanwhile, 34 GW of solar plants, that would have reduced prices significantly, are sitting on PJM's interconnection queue. Not a _great_ look. #energysky www.hyaline.tech/power-plants...
hyaline.tech
Power plants benefit from supply shortages.
The June heat wave in PJM was a windfall for gas power. On June 24, at 6PM Eastern Daylight Time, the PJM power market hit the third-highest demand in its history: 162,401 MW. The weather forecast st...
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
This type of cross-state utility structure was banned during the New Deal(PUHCA) precisely BECAUSE it made it impossible for states to regulate their utilities. The Energy Policy Act repealed PUHCA in 2005; I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long to kill off the PSC regulatory model.
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Scott Fines @hyalinetech.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
If this action succeeds, Duke Energy will be effectively immune from state regulation by North or South Carolina public services commissions.
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