Although offshore wind has been booming for decades in Europe, it has gotten a slow start in the US. But that’s about to change. From a single 30 MW offshore wind farm today, offshore wind capacity in the US is expected to reach 1 GW in just two years, and grow by a factor of 40 over the next two decades to 30 GW under a new target set by the US Government.
In today’s episode, we speak with Patrick Gilman, a Program Manager in the US Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office. For the past 14 years, Patrick has led a wide range of analysis, research and development, and deployment activities to help advance wind’s role in the US energy sector. We talk about the global state of the offshore wind sector; the technical and practical potentials for offshore wind in the US; how offshore wind can reduce the need for transmission capacity and balance out the production from land-based wind and solar farms; and how it can create good jobs and stimulate manufacturing. We’ll also look at some of wind's unique advantages over land-based resources, like easier paths to deploying transmission capacity. Wind might even be a good way to produce hydrogen we can use to decarbonize the hard-to-decarbonize sectors.
Join us for this comprehensive look at the present and future of offshore wind in the US. It may be the most exciting sector in energy over the next two decades.
In this lagniappe episode, we ask: what are some unanswered questions about the energy transition from five years ago, but that seem answered today? And what are the new questions that have emerged over the past five years which remain unanswered today? Those are the topics of this first-ever joint production of the Energy Transition Show and the Interchange podcast, which is being delivered to the audience of both shows. And because it’s one of our two annual Energy Transition Show lagniappe episodes, we’re running the full show in front of the paywall, so that all of our free listeners can enjoy the whole thing as well!
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Since we last covered Australia one year ago in Episode 39, a lot has changed…it has deployed the largest utility-scale battery system in the world, made numerous technical upgrades to prevent future outages, and placed some incredible leaders in key agencies where they are working hard to accelerate the country’s energy transition. It is also actively investing in new energy technologies that aren’t even commercial yet, to see how they can perform. In short, Australia is breaking new trail on multiple fronts in energy transition, and demonstrating some truly interesting findings to the rest of the world, for how a grid might function self-sufficiently, at scale, with significant shares of variable renewable power and large battery storage systems.
Our guide to the current state of affairs today is Ivor Frischknecht, a subscriber to this show and the CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). A widely acknowledged expert and innovator in the energy industry, with deep knowledge of the grid’s needs in Australia, and a far-reaching vision for what it can become, he’s one of the top experts on the energy transition Down Under, and can explain it all in a very accessible way.
There’s nothing to give you a little perspective on what’s happening on planet Earth like getting off it and seeing its beauty—and it’s human-caused destruction—from space. In this wide-ranging interview, former astronaut Jay Apt, a professor of technology and business at Carnegie Mellon University, shares some insights from his voluminous body of research on energy transition topics, including: what the power grid of the future could look like; how we’ll balance it with increasing levels of renewable energy; how to smooth out the fluctuations in wind farm power output; utility business model evolution and resource adequacy planning; what the optimal amount of storage on the PJM Interconnection might be; the economics of behind-the-meter battery systems; the potential future for EVs providing services to the grid; whether carbon capture and sequestration technology and geoengineering can play significant roles in addressing climate change; the new era of electricity de- and re-regulation; and of course, what it’s like to look down on Earth from space. You’ll never see an hour go by as quickly as this one.
This is a special, free "extra" episode recorded at RMI’s eLab Annual Summit in December 2016 in Austin, Texas.
Grid architecture is evolving, with loads becoming increasingly indistinguishable from generators, and local generators and other distributed resources increasingly supplying the services that were always provided by large central generators in the past. Meanwhile, an ever-evolving set of regulations for wholesale market operations is both enabling new market participants and challenging the security of old market participants. Lorenzo Kristov of the California Independent System Operator returns to the Energy Transition Show to share more of his view of the future in an interview from RMI’s eLab Annual Summit 2016.
This is a special, free "extra" episode recorded at RMI’s eLab Annual Summit in December 2016 in Austin, Texas.
How is Hawaii managing one of the most rapid energy transitions in history to variable wind and solar generators, while maintaining a balanced, isolated grid and actually reducing long-term costs? It’s no accident: They have developed a transition roadmap and they are working hard to adopt the latest technology while preserving social equity…not just for grid power, but for electric vehicles as well, toward a goal of reaching 100% renewable electricity by 2045. Lorraine Akiba of the Hawaii PUC shares her perspective in an interview from RMI’s eLab Annual Summit 2016.