Posts Tagged ‘electricity’
“There are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before have been burned as wizards”*…
Climate change continues. There is broad evidence (and consensus) that our environment, thus our ways of life, our livelihoods— indeed, our lives— are threatened. On the heels of a call from Trump to world leaders to abandon the climate fight, followed by a disappointing COP30 conference, it’s easy to be discouraged. But that, of course, is no answer.
Rather, we have to find ways to mitigate the damage that we’ve already locked in, even as we acclerate a transition to clean energy… which begins by (re-)framing and (re-)focusing the challenge. Ember, a clean energy think tank, suggests a candidate that, while it speaks to the moral obligations addressed by one of the models it means to augment/replace, has a more positive orientation…
Humanity is graduating from burning fossil commodities to harnessing manufactured technologies—from hunting scarce fossils to farming the inexhaustible sun, from consuming Earth’s resources to
merely borrowing them.This isn’t a marginal climate substitution. It’s an energy revolution.
The magnetic centre is the electron: we are revolutionising how we generate, use, and connect
electrons. Solar and wind are conquering electricity supply. EVs, heat pumps, and AI are electrifying major new uses. Batteries and digitalisation are connecting supply and demand.Three reinforcing shifts. One energy revolution. The electrotech revolution.
At its core, this revolution is driven by physics, economics, and geopolitics. After all, the arc of energy
history bends towards solutions that are leaner, cheaper and more secure.Short-terms setbacks matter, but fundamentals matter more. And the fundamentals are stacked in electrotech’s favour.
Physics. Electrotech makes a mockery of setting fossils on fire and losing two-thirds of the energy to heat. Electrotech is three times as efficient.
Economics. Technologies get cheaper with scale. Commodities get more expensive the deeper you dig.
Geopolitics. Three quarters of the world is dependent on fossil imports. 92% of countries have renewables potential over 10x their current demand.
Electrotech has grown exponentially for decades. The difference today is that it’s too cheap to contain and too big to ignore. If current exponentials hold for five more years, global fossil demand will fall off its plateau.
Welcome to the Age of Electrotech…
A long and meaty presentation: “The Electrotech Revolution- the shape of things to come,” from @ember-energy.org.
One notes that the electrification that Ember pushes has other advocates, many of whom have been vocal for years; c.f., e.g., Saul Griffin. Still, another voice in the chorus is welcome.
* Bram Stoker
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As we plug in, we might send charged birthday greetings to Franz Aepinus; he was born on this date in 1724. A mathematician, scientist, and natural philosopher, he is best known for his research, both theoretical and experimental, into electricity and magnetism. Aepinus’ Tentamen theoriae electricitatis et magnetismi (1759; “An Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism”) was the first work to apply mathematics to the theory of electricity and magnetism. And his experiments led to the design of the parallel-plate capacitor, a device used to store energy in an electric field.
“A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.”
As AI, clean tech, climate response, and other uses grow, concerns are rising that the U.S. and the world are going to run out of electricity (and here). As John Ellis reports, there’s a controversial potential answer closer to hand than many had thought…
Commercial nuclear fusion has gone from science fiction to science fact in less than a decade.
Britain’s First Light Fusion announced last week that it had broken the world record for pressure at the Sandia National Laboratories in the US, pushing the boundary to 1.85 terapascal, five times the pressure at the core of the Earth.
Days earlier, a clutch of peer-reviewed papers confirmed that Commonwealth Fusion Systems near Boston had broken the world record for a large-scale magnet with a field strength of 20 tesla using the latest high-temperature super-conducting technology. This exceeds the threshold necessary for producing net energy, or a “Q factor”, above 1.0.
“Overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40,” said Professor Dennis Whyte, plasma doyen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The March edition of the IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity published six papers ratifying different aspects of the technology.
A poll at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s forum in London found that 65 percent of insiders think fusion will generate electricity for the grid at viable cost by 2035, and 90 percent by 2040.
The Washington-based Fusion Industry Association says four of its members think they can do it by 2030. If the industry is anywhere close to being right, we need to rethink all our energy assumptions…
firstlightfusion.com, cfs.energy, telegraph.co.uk, web.mit.edu, ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp
From New Items (@EllisItems)
For a series of less-optimistic takes on the prospect of power from fusion: “Why are nuclear fusion reactors difficult?
* Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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As we ponder power, we might spare a thought for Irène Joliot-Curie; she died on this date in 1956. A chemist and physicist, she followed in the footsteps of her mother (Marie Curie), sharing the Nobel prize in Chemistry (in 1935, with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie) for their discovery of induced radioactivity, making them the second-ever married couple (after her parents) to win the Nobel Prize, and making her and her mother the first (and so far only) mother–daughter pair to have won Nobels.
Sadly, Irène also shared her mother’s fate: she died of leukemia resulting from radiation exposure during research.
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable”*…
Over the last decade there has emerged a growing and influential intellectual movement focused on progress— how it happens and how to speed it up. Fomented by thinkers like Tyler Cowan and Patrick Collison, the movement has raised tantalizing prospects… and some real fears about the risks that experimental, entrepreneurial efforts to accelerate advancement might entail: will enthusiasm outrun safeguards? And who gets to define what represents “progress” anyway?
Jason Crawford, another leader of the progress movement addresses these concerns…
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview.
The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more advanced by some standard. (In this sense, progress can be good, neutral, or even bad—e.g., the progress of a disease.) The question is always: advancement along what path, in what direction, by what standard?
“Scientific progress,” “technological progress,” and “economic progress” are relatively straightforward. They are hard to measure, they are multi-dimensional, and we might argue about specific examples—but in general, scientific progress consists of more knowledge, better theories and explanations, a deeper understanding of the universe; technological progress consists of more inventions that work better (more powerfully or reliably or efficiently) and enable us to do more things; economic progress consists of more production, infrastructure, and wealth.
“Scientific progress,” “technological progress,” and “economic progress” are relatively straightforward. They are hard to measure, they are multi-dimensional, and we might argue about specific examples—but in general, scientific progress consists of more knowledge, better theories and explanations, a deeper understanding of the universe; technological progress consists of more inventions that work better (more powerfully or reliably or efficiently) and enable us to do more things; economic progress consists of more production, infrastructure, and wealth.
But this form of progress is not an end in itself. True progress is advancement toward the good, toward ultimate values—call this “ultimate progress,” or “progress in outcomes.” Defining this depends on axiology; that is, on our theory of value.
[Crawford unpacks humanist and biocentrist values as examples…]
… What are we talking about when we refer to “progress” unqualified, as in “the progress of mankind” or “the roots of progress”?
“Progress” in this sense is the concept of material progress, social progress, and human progress as a unified whole. It is based on the premise that progress in capabilities really does on the whole lead to progress in outcomes. This doesn’t mean that all aspects of progress move in lockstep—they don’t. It means that all aspects of progress support each other and over the long term depend on each other; they are intertwined and ultimately inseparable…
David Deutsch, in The Beginning of Infinity, is even more explicit, saying that progress includes “improvements not only in scientific understanding, but also in technology, political institutions, moral values, art, and every aspect of human welfare.”
Skepticism of this idea of progress is sometimes expressed as: “progress towards what?” The undertone of this question is: “in your focus on material progress, you have lost sight of social and/or human progress.” On the premise that different forms of progress are diverging and even coming into opposition, this is an urgent challenge; on the premise that progress a unified whole, it is a valuable intellectual question but not a major dilemma.
“Progress” is also an interpretation of history according to which all these forms of progress have, by and large, been happening.
In this sense, the study of “progress” is the intersection of axiology and history: given a standard of value, are things getting better?
In Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, the bulk of the chapters are devoted to documenting this history. Many of the charts in that book were sourced from Our World in Data, which also emphasizes the historical reality of progress.
Not everyone agrees with this concept of progress. It depends on an Enlightenment worldview that includes confidence in reason and science, and a humanist morality…
[Crawford reviews critiques of “progress” and unpacks the disastrous history of “progress” thinking– which contributed to totalitarianism– in the 20th century…]
… To move forward, we need a wiser, more mature idea of progress.
Progress is not automatic or inevitable. It depends on choice and effort. It is up to us.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
Material progress does not automatically lead to moral progress. Technology within an evil social system can do more harm than good. We must commit to improving morality and society along with science, technology, and industry.
With these lessons well learned, we can rescue the idea of progress and carry it forward into the 21st century and beyond…
Agree? “What is Progress?” from @jasoncrawford.
* Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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As we analyze advancement, we might spare a thought for George Westinghouse; he died on this date in 1914. An engineer, inventor, and industrialist, he built his first fortune marketing the railroad air brake that he invented. But he soon turned his attention to the emerging electrical industry– of which he became a pioneer. He acquired the rights to inventor Nikola Tesla‘s brushless AC induction motor (the initial “engine” of everything electric from industrial motors to household appliances) along with patents for a new type of electric power distribution, polyphase alternating current… which put Westinghouse into direct competition with Thomas Edison, who was promoting direct current. (In the end, AC came to dominate.)
“Infrastructure is much more important than architecture”*…
.. much, much more important, as Debbie Chachra explains in a piece featured once before in (R)D. It’s excerpted here again, with special emphasis on our power grid…
We use exogenous energy every day to exceed the limits of what our bodies can do. Artificial light compensates for our species’ poor night vision and gives us control over how we spend our time, releasing us from the constraints of sunrise and sunset. So valuable is artificial light that it’s a reliable correlate of wealth and economic development: researchers use the growing brightness of regions over time, as quantified from satellite images taken at night, as a proxy measure—more resources, more light. The southern half of the Korean Peninsula and the ocean surrounding it is ablaze with light; while North Korea has just faint threads of light leading out from Pyongyang, a result of decades of imposed scarcity.
Energy in the form of mechanical work also replaces our body’s labour, from the domestic scale—all the technologies for textiles, for example, from spinning and weaving to sewing and laundry—to scales that are nearly impossible for human bodies alone, like building skyscrapers and bridges. And we use mechanical energy to move our bodies and ferry goods around: transportation. Exogenous energy also makes our living environments more comfortable; for a long time, this was mostly limited to heating, but in the twentieth century, the technologies of refrigeration and air conditioning became widespread. The newest uses of energy are telecommunications technologies—from Morse code to TikTok, they turn electrons into bits of information, facilitating human connections on a global scale.
In fact, this ability to access more energy than our bodies themselves can provide is—all but literally—baked into being a human. All cultures eat cooked food (and no animals cook their food). While it’s not required to survive, strictly speaking, heating food breaks it down, making the nutrients more bioavailable; in essence, the food becomes more nutritious. Learning to cook our food is thought to have been an important contributor to the development of our calorie-dense brains and all that followed, helping to free humans from the ongoing labour of foraging and eating that occupies most animals. But the near-necessity of cooking food then requires a different labour: for most women on most of the planet, obtaining fuel for cooking remains their primary daily occupation.
“Care at Scale”
How is that we in the U.S. have more-or-less abundant power? Brian Potter explains the evolution of our electric grid…
Abundant electricity is a defining feature of the modern era. At the turn of the 20th century electrical power was a rare, expensive luxury: in 1900 electricity provided less than 5% of industrial power in the US, and as late as 1907 was in only 8% of US homes. Today, however, 89.6% of the world’s population has access to electricity (97.3% if you just consider urban areas), and Wikipedia’s “list of countries by electrification rate” has 123 countries sharing the top spot at 100% electrification.
Electrical service is considered critical in a way that’s different from most other services. Even a brief interruption in electrical power is considered a serious problem in industrialized countries where power outage durations are typically measured in minutes per year. To put this in perspective, the average yearly outage time in the US is around 475 minutes per year, which is considered especially unreliable despite representing ~99.9% uptime. By comparison, Germany averaged just 12.7 minutes of power outages per year in 2021—a remarkable 99.998% uptime.
Electricity’s transition from a luxury good to the foundation of modern life happened quickly. By 1930, electricity was available in nearly 70% of US homes, and supplied almost 80% of industrial mechanical power. By 1950, the US was tied together by an enormous network of high-voltage transmission lines…
“The Birth of the Grid” (and Part Two) from @_brianpotter.
Keep an eye out for @debcha‘s forthcoming book, How Infrastructure Works.
* Rem Koolhaas
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As we think systemically, we might recall that it was on this date in 1752 that Benjamin Franklin and his son tested the relationship between electricity and lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm. Franklin was attempting a (safer) variation on a set of French investigations about which he’d read. The French had connected lightning rods to a Leyden jar, but one of their experiments electrocuted the investigator. Franklin– who was, of course, no fool– used a kite; the increased height/distance from the strike reduces the risk of electrocution. (But it doesn’t eliminate it: Franklin’s experiment is now illegal in many states.)
In fact (other) French experiments had successfully demonstrated the electrical properties of lightning a month before, but word had not yet reached Philadelphia.
The Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing created this vignette (c. 1860), which was used on the $10 National Bank Note from the 1860s to 1890s
“Energy is essential for development, and sustainable energy is essential for sustainable development”*…
Adam Tooze on the challenges of a transition to clean energy…
As far as we are currently able to judge, our best chance to halt the further escalation of the climate crisis through decarbonization of the economy depends on electricity and electrification. Given the current horizon of technological expectations, electric power and electric technology offer us the best chance of reconciling the insatiable desire for energy with the stretched and frayed environmental envelope.
Electricity today is still a major driver of environmental disaster. This is because it is overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels and coal in particular. It is in fact, the largest single source of pollution, more than fossil-fueled powered transport or agriculture. Not only do they contribute to climate change, emissions from coal-fired power stations around the world are so toxic that they kill millions of people annually. But electricity is one form of energy that we do know how to generate without CO2 emissions, most obviously by solar, wind, hydro or nuclear generation. So, the path to a low-carbon future depends on greening the electricity generation system and at the same time expanding the total volume of electric power generated so that we can apply clean electric power to more purposes than we currently do.
This will involve accelerating and redirecting the process of electrification that has proceeded unevenly across the globe for one hundred and forty years…
“Repowering the world- the challenge of electrification,” from @adam_tooze in his newsletter Chartbook.
See also Electrify- An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, by Saul Griffith (@GriffithSaul) and “Mapped: Asia’s Biggest Sources of Electricity by Country.”
* Tim Wirth
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As we plug in, we might spare a thought for Hans Christian Ørsted; he died on this date in 1851. A physicist and chemist, he discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields– the first connection found between electricity and magnetism… the foundation on which electric motors operate. Considered the “father of electromagnetism,” Oersted’s law and the oersted unit (Oe) are named after him.
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