As an engineer I’ve been contemplating climate optimizations of our energy systems for over 50 years now. I’ve read countless reports just like the one you suggest. I’ve come to recognize that no matter how much you change it with smart tech, the electrical grid it will always be a JIT delivery machine in so far as when a load is connected it is met with an instantaneous supply.
With this viewpoint, grid storage is nothing other than a load (charging) that can time shift surplus supply (discharge). Grid storage has, and will always be, a capital intensive item. As such our current grid storage tech has a time shift cycle measured in hours in order to justify capital cost. To overcome seasonal supply deficits that all renewable systems I’ve studied exhibit, one needs enormous storage with duty cycles measured in months.
I’ve also recognized early in my journey that broken price signals are what got us into our climate mess. As such price optimization is not going to get us out of the climate crisis. Similarly the endless debate about renewables=good, nuclear=bad is largely a waste of cognitive resources. The fact is we need to build both as fast as we can to have any hope of supplanting fossil energy use and slowing the climate damage.
As such I’ve focused my cognitive energy on climate optimization recognizing that both the optimum, the path we chose and the speed at which we can reach that optimum are all equally important.
If one does a climate optimization for our increasingly available renewable resources (as I did for Ontario in post below) it is quickly obvious that simply dumping those electrons onto the grid to offset fossil (mostly gas) is far from an optimum use. From a CO2 accounting analysis is at least 2x better to leave the grid to the existing gas turbines and divert all of our renewables to green steel. I came up with the concept which I call a virtual wire which could quickly enable this.
The fact is if we just allowed ourselves to look, there is a better path forward.
https://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/
https://energyasicit.ca/VirtualWire/
Icanbob
npub1r5…99asx
2026-09-03 12:44:28 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…rh6x
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2026-09-03 12:44:28 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "As an engineer I’ve been contemplating climate optimizations of our energy systems for over 50 years now. I’ve read countless reports just like the one you suggest. I’ve come to recognize that no matter how much you change it with smart tech, the electrical grid it will always be a JIT delivery machine in so far as when a load is connected it is met with an instantaneous supply. \n\nWith this viewpoint, grid storage is nothing other than a load (charging) that can time shift surplus supply (discharge). Grid storage has, and will always be, a capital intensive item. As such our current grid storage tech has a time shift cycle measured in hours in order to justify capital cost. To overcome seasonal supply deficits that all renewable systems I’ve studied exhibit, one needs enormous storage with duty cycles measured in months.\n\nI’ve also recognized early in my journey that broken price signals are what got us into our climate mess. As such price optimization is not going to get us out of the climate crisis. Similarly the endless debate about renewables=good, nuclear=bad is largely a waste of cognitive resources. The fact is we need to build both as fast as we can to have any hope of supplanting fossil energy use and slowing the climate damage.\n\nAs such I’ve focused my cognitive energy on climate optimization recognizing that both the optimum, the path we chose and the speed at which we can reach that optimum are all equally important. \n\nIf one does a climate optimization for our increasingly available renewable resources (as I did for Ontario in post below) it is quickly obvious that simply dumping those electrons onto the grid to offset fossil (mostly gas) is far from an optimum use. From a CO2 accounting analysis is at least 2x better to leave the grid to the existing gas turbines and divert all of our renewables to green steel. I came up with the concept which I call a virtual wire which could quickly enable this.\n\nThe fact is if we just allowed ourselves to look, there is a better path forward.\nhttps://energyasicit.ca/EnergyVision/\nhttps://energyasicit.ca/VirtualWire/",
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