Electrify
"Saul Griffith lays out an accessible, rigorously-researched plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy in time to address climate change. His plan, in short, is to "electrify everything." Griffith uses his deep understanding of U.S. energy flows, materials, and clean energy technologies to show that decarbonizing in time to meet climate goals is not only possible, but can be done without major sacrifices in our lifestyles, creating more jobs and a cleaner, healthier environment. Unlike many books in the climate space, Griffith's Electrify is optimistic, drawing on historical precedents to show that we are up for meeting the challenge of global warming-if we act decisively, and fast"
Stats for nerds
4recommend
10mentions
9people
2022–2026years
40% recommend60% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Not true. Plastic has a huge carbon footprint because huge amounts of greenhouse gases, in particular nitrous oxide, are emitted by the process of manufacturing it.
(Source: Saul Griffith's excellent book Electrify, which cites this report: https://www.ciel.org/plasticandclimate/)
- That's a big takeaway I got from the book Electrify by Saul Griffith (a really good read). The book only really looks at US carbon emissions, but a substantial chunk of emissions comes from refining and transporting petroleum projects -- these are emissions that occur just to prepare gasoline to be burned! Switching to electric cars (or just fewer cars) has the same double bonus as you mentioned in that there's less tailpipe emissions and less petro processing and transportation emissions as well.
- Electrify by Saul Griffith's is an up to date survey of where we are.
- > Hell, eleven percent of the energy that America currently uses, according to Saul Griffith’s excellent book Electrify, simply goes to finding more energy.
That's a pretty shocking stat too!
The energy transition is about to thrust us into a world where for long periods of time, we have massive energy abundance of zero-marginal cost energy generation. It won't be free to transmit that energy, and the intermittent nature of the abundance will play hell with most capital intensive uses (eg crypto mining), but I'm super curious to see what new capabilities that people figure out for humanity.
- Enernet power router is the name for the hardware that my small research institute developed since 1997. You find partially similar power router designs at the Fraunhofer institute and in several scientific papers. A power router routes "packets" of electricity around (converting from low voltage DC to high voltage DC or AC and vice versa), packets of internet data and packets of matter (like hot water in a district heating system). It is a fully software defined electricity network and internet router, power meters, firewall, inverters/converters, ground vault protection, vibration measurement and electrocution prevention cable monitoring system.
I'm referencing all the prototypes I built over the years, the final mass manufactured model will be an order of magnitude cheaper because it will from only CMOS and SiC chips that we designed. Current 4x25Gbps/40kW models cost under 800 euro's (936 dollars excluding VAT and import tariff), the mass produced custom chip based model will be under 100 euro's.
A power router replaces your breaker box, your solar panel and battery inverters and obsoletes all the power supplies in your house. It starts your washing machine, dryer, fridge, freezer, heatpump and optionally runs a small datacenter in your hot water vat from which you shower or brew tea. A power router saves more than 10% electricity now lost in your power inverters. It bypasses the national grid and the laws, taxes, grid costs, profit margins and transmission losses and the price for electricity generation. It saves thousands of euro's per year on your energy use and internet bills and optionally your water and sewage bills.
A power router rewires the electricity infrastructure of the planet, energy expert Saul Griffith references it in the names of his organisations Rewire America and Rewire Australia, his youtube lectures, his books Electrify, Plug in and the Big Switch. Amory Lovins references it in his books and talks and Eben Moglen in two of his talks.
It is a bunch of chips in a network of conductors (metal cables) and optical fiber that connects buildings together in a neigborhood.
You directly connect a network of solar cells (there are between 60 and 122 solar cells in each solar panel) to mppt dc-dc inverter chips that output around 3 volts directly to a network of battery cells (that form a battery pack) and that aggregate flows into a runtime programmable first stage dc-ac-dc inverter module that than outputs (power routes) high voltage AC to legacy machines, USB-C low voltage to charge all your electronics and high voltage DC to cables to the neighborhood (a replacement of the national grid) or to the ev cars and trucks.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merik-Voswinkel/publica...
- 10u152, I don't know where you live, but you seem to be quoting US solar prices. Tragically, US prices are 2x-3x that of Australian residential solar prices. Generally Australian prices are $10k-AUD for a 10kw array or roughly $6.6k USD for 10kw,[1] compared to the $20-25k USD in the US depending on location.
High US residential solar prices are a policy/political choice the US makes! [2]
[1] Austrialian solar prices, article from Jan. 2023. https://www.canstarblue.com.au/solar/solar-installation-cost...
According to google Australian dollar is $0.66 US Dollar
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Electrify-Optimists-Playbook-Energy-F...
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