Energy Matters

  Grid Adventures, Part 3 You’ve heard that knowledge is power.  Well, we say knowledge of power is power. As our energy future comes into focus, we begin to understand that the future is all about electricity.  No more combustion, just channeling the energy of natural forces (wind, sun, water, tides) and distributing it as electrical current.  As we shift away from burning things, everyone, even incurious English majors, will benefit from a basic appreciation of the dynamics of electricity distribution. It’s certainly easy for anyone born in the 20th or 21st century to lack a relationship to the electricity infrastructure that has surrounded us our entire lives.  When something is part of the visual landscape and requires no response from us, our brains take it for granted and more or less block it out of conscious perception.   This is how average citizens might have absolutely no awareness of the aerial wires that are everywhere, along with transformers, insulators, substations, cir

  Smart Grid: Your Future Friend? Here’s how today’s conversation about The Grid between the English major and the Physicist began.   English Major:  Sooo, if amps are “current,” what are volts? Physicist: I can’t explain that, it’s too complicated (and I'm lazy) EM: No, I mean, isn’t there a word for what volts are, like “current” is what amps are? P: Yes, “volts.”  Volts are volts. That’s why it’s complicated. EM: Well, I mean, like what do they do?? Do they, do they - (shot in the dark:) Do they just push it or something? P: Yah, they push it, that’s what they do, fine. EM thinks: At this rate, this is going to be a lonnnggg conversation...  Last column we talked about The Grid in a simple enough way that the less technically inclined of the two of us could construct true sentences about it. While this proved interesting and the English Major may have learned something useful and perhaps even memorable, still the thrill was minimal. The Smart Grid, though a b