Energy Matters

  With What Shall We Cook Then? Gas or electric cooking--which makes more sense, energy-wise?  What about those weirdly fast induction stoves--do the Europeans know something we don’t? These are questions that might haunt the obsessive cook who hasn’t found the time to research them. Cooking uses energy to generate the heat needed to induce chemical reactions that get the food cooked.  How you get that energy into the food is the question here. In the U.S., cooking uses less than 1% of our total energy footprint and maybe 3-5% of our household energy.  Still, if one is trying to reduce one’s overall energy usage and carbon footprint, every energy use makes a contribution, right?   Two types of electric stoves - standard coil burners and induction ranges - operate quite differently. Induction ranges heat up crazy-fast, and cool down almost instantly. An induction stove produces an oscillating magnetic field that directly heats the pan you are cooking with. W...

  Some Changes in the Solar Landscape  If you are puzzled by the solar infrastructure spreading across the landscape these days, you are certainly not alone. Former hay fields and other treeless areas are populated virtually overnight with legions of metal figures in battle formation - poised, perhaps, for the assault on climate change! -- but in the meantime, no one seems to be providing the drive-by observer much practical information about what’s going on. First of all, some of the larger installations popping up are simply industrial scale solar power to be fed into the regional power grid, being developed in response to demand for renewable energy.  The falling costs of solar are making it competitive, period.   But also significantly, in June of 2019 Governor Mills signed several bipartisan bills into law (LD1711, LD1430 and LD1494) making major changes to how Mainers can get their electricity from solar power (photovoltaics or PVs). These changes incentiv...