For my second year chairing the energy storage committee at POWERGEN International, I really wanted us to focus on practical topics to help developers get projects on the ground. A big component of that was getting the policymakers who help design the markets that make storage projects worth pursuing.

The U.S. is divided into several Electric Power Markets. You have “traditional” wholesale electric markets (Southeast, Southwest and Northwest), are typically vertically-integrated, where the utilities manage the generation/transmission/distribution and energy sales. The Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) are more decoupled (“deregulated”) and were designed by FERC with the intent of 1) bringing more independent generators into markets and increasing price competition, and 2) ensuring reliability across large geographic areas.

Today, there are seven RTO/ISOs in the U.S. For my panel on markets for energy storage, I was privileged to have current and (1) former “market design managers” from the three largest ISOs:

–Mike DeSocio, Founder and CEO, Luminary Energy, LLC (formerly Director of Market Design, NYISO)

–Danny Johnson, Market Design Sector Manager, CAISO

–Sai Moorty, Principal, Market Design, ERCOT

While all three have made great strides to foster strong markets for energy storage, it’s still early days. My guests’ presentations indicate that energy storage projects did not come online in a big way until 2021.

Listen to the podcast:

My guests discuss a wide range of tools to get storage developers paid. For simplicity stake, let’s focus on these three:

1. Energy Markets: Participation on the wholesale market as a generator. Charging at a lower price and discharging at higher wholesale energy prices is commonly called “arbitrage.” Examples of these energy markets are “day-ahead” and “real-time” markets.

2. Capacity Markets: Paying for pay a resource to be available in the future (not to be confused with Day-ahead Markets). This tool has been used for years to maintain “resource adequacy” on a wholesale market for traditional forms of energy generation. Currently only NYISO offers a version of this for energy storage.

3. Ancillary Services: A wide-ranging basket of functions that essentially help maintain the reliability of the grid, especially as more renewable energy comes online. Examples include voltage regulation, frequency response, contingency reserves, and spinning reserves. All 3 ISOs ask storage operators to participate in these services (CAISO, ERCOT, NYISO).

California, New York, and Texas have diverse climates and political landscapes, and the same goes for the priorities of these three ISOs.

“If anyone puts a battery on the ERCOT grid…they’re out there to make money,” says Sai. He points to the ease of getting projects built in Texas and the spreads in prices for arbitrage, but says this open market has led to a shortage of storage that might be needed in the future (i.e. most storage is only 1-hour duration).

NYISO, despite its sophisticated market designs and generous incentives, is still waiting for the market to develop, in a sense. “There are more megawatts of energy storage in the queue than load to serve,” says Mike. He also says New York’s grid, predominantly natural gas, leads to price spreads too small for arbitrage most of the time.

CAISO boasts the largest storage buildout in the country, over 8GW to date more than all other states combined. But with so much dependence on renewable energy, making sure the batteries can deliver what they promised is key. “For us right now it’s really working with our market participants to figure out how we accurately capture that state-of charge [SOC] in the day-ahead dispatch,” he says.

That’s important because most energy storage developers want to maximize their “value stack,” As Sai puts it, ancillary services in Texas are the bread and butter, “and energy arbitrage is just gravy on top of it.”

But what happens if a storage developer has over-discharged and can’t deliver ancillary services the ISO thought they procured? Alternatively, what if a developer held back on ancillary services (a safer bet), and prices didn’t increase based on the day-ahead forecasts?

The ISOs are rightly afraid to go too far with these constraints,” says Mike. “It becomes how much of the asset are [the ISOs] controlling versus letting the market just decide how they want the asset used.”

I was curious if these market experts had any advice for energy storage policy, regardless of the political/physical climate.

Danny and Sai – Texas and California – both agree that policy should be technology-agnostic. If you think you can make money, go on in.” says Sai. We just have to make sure that the rules are nondiscriminatory.”

Mike believes incentives like credits should only be used for so long. He believes the best way to incentivize behavior – and not pick winners, is to put a price on carbon.

“I have the view that we can’t subsidize this forever, that cash will go away at some point,” says Mike, “and these markets will be the only thing left to keep these assets around.”

Useful Links:

“ISO Trio” – PPT Slides

CAISO – Official Site

ERCOT – Official Site

NYISO – Official Site

About the Author: Jay Dauenhauer, CSM, PMP is a project manager based in Houston, TX. He currently serves as a PM developing next-generation energy storage projects. He created and hosts Energy Cast, a regular podcast featuring some of the top experts across all links in the industry chain. In addition to Energy Cast, Dauenhauer has served on planning committees for RE+, POWERGEN International, and T&D World.

But in the latest Energy Cast podcast, host Jay Dauenhauer says we we’re asking too much of lithium. He asks: Shouldn’t something so energy dense be reserved for the roads? And what about stationary storage? Does that really matter?

This podcast comes from the December 2021 PowerGen+ series panel: “Breaking Through the Electron Ceiling: Alternatives to Lithium-Ion in Stationary Storage” and focuses on alternatives for stationary battery storage.

Panelists include:

Dan Lambert—Senior Product Manager—ZincFive

Ed Porter—Business Development Director—Invinity Energy Systems

Gautam Yadav—Director of Advanced Battery Development—Urban Electric Power

Click here to listen to the podcast:

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Dauenhauer was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

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Energy Cast is a regular podcast featuring some of the top experts across all links in the industry chain. Those include coal, nuclear, efficiency, renewables, oil and gas, as well as top government researchers. Longtime project manager Jay Dauenhauer created it and has been hosting Energy Cast for several years. Learn more about the podcast here.

Today we are talking about the right storage for the grid.  I’m a huge fan of energy storage, and I probably bring it up more than renewable energy, which is the biggest driver for it.

The big questions for leaders in the utility space is what storage technology works best?  Storage is expensive when you think about it.  It’s not generation, it’s been built for the other generation that you can’t depend on to be there when you need it.  Storage is the investment in reliability so that you can be more dependent on cleaner energy.

What we’re starting to see as my guests suggest, is the shift to storage that can produce power for longer durations, typically more than 4 hours.  Batteries are great for these shorter stints.  They can cover the times when wind and solar may not be producing when you expect them to be on, and they can produce power for those twilight hours of peak demand just as the sun sets.

But that is really only good by itself if you have up to about 20% renewables.  Utilities and the public are chomping at the bit for nothing but green energy, 50% and up.  Here’s where you need massive amounts of storage to cover those gaps.

In Episode 60 we visited the Bath County Pumped Storage facility in Virginia, which is a hydroelectric facility that is the world’s biggest battery.  But it’s two lakes that pass water between them.  Geographically challenging to replicate.  In Episode 57 we discussed a compressed air energy storage project in Texas, where energy could be stored in an underground salt dome.  There’s a lot of opportunities for that in the South for instance.

One of my guests today is storing liquified air as a storage medium.  Theoretically it could be located anywhere and at any volume.  And of course you’ve heard me talk about many non-battery storage options in other episodes.

As some utilities phase out conventional generation, commonly referred to as thermal like coal gas and even nuclear (which I’m not a huge fan of doing preemptively), in favor of intermittent renewables, you’re going to see a ton of storage projects come online.  And that creates some exciting opportunities for those companies, both large and small.

And let’s not forget that storage can optimize these thermal resources so that they run more steadily, with storage eating up the surplus till later.

It’s one of the reasons the future is bright for this energy industry within the energy industry.

My guests today include four leaders in the energy storage space:

• Ken-Ichi Hino; Director-Energy Storage, National Grid Renewables.  Formerly Geronimo Energy, they specialize in matching storage with renewable energy.
• Salvatore Minopoli; Vice President, Highview Power.  This is the liquified air company I was telling you about.
• Erik Steimle; Vice President, Rye Development.  The specialize in electrifying dams, and have recently moved into the hydro pumped storage space
• Kurt Waldner Director, Product Management & Strategic Marketing, GE Energy Storage, an industry leader focusing on battery storage

This was recorded as part of the PowerGen Plus Series of virtual conferences.  I’ve hosted panels for PowerGen in the past and it was an honor to get such a qualified group of panelists together.

Before we got into the Q&A I asked the panelists to provide a few slides about their technology, which you can find a link to in the show notes.

I hope you enjoy my panel, “Next-gen Tools: Building an Energy Storage Ecosystem.”

That was my four storage power panelists from National Grid Renewables, Highview Power, Rye Development, and GE.

I want to thank all these companies for setting this up, as well as Larissa Fair at Energy Storage Association and Rod Walton and Teresa Hansen at PowerGen for letting me host this event.

You can find plenty of pictures for this episode, as well as the slides from the panel, on energy-cast.com, as well as on Instagram and Parler at host energy, and Twitter at Host Energy Cast.

All guests are sent the raw and completed audio the week of release.  So far no complaints.

Be sure to leave us a positive review on iTunes.  That gets the word out.

Music was produced by Shawn Stroope at Stroope Loops.

That wraps up Episode 101.

Be sure to join us next week–when we discuss an off-grid solution for electric vehicles.

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

In some skeptics’ eyes quite a few years ago, the fear of cyber attacks on the nation’s grid and power plants was remote and really considered more alarmism through a true fire danger.

Hardly anyone rational would think that now. The Russian hack on the Ukraine power plant in 2015 got the world’s attention. Every year, utilities are increasing their capital spend on protecting their assets from bad actors.

Energy Cast podcast host Jay Dauenhauer recently chatted with Michael Toecker, senior engineering consultant for the RADICS program at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Listen to more Energy Cast podcasts here.

“The RADICS scenario imagines a pretty long period where there is no electric power, and as part of that, are we going to have Internet access?” he asks.  “If we presuppose all of these things, we basically need to take everyone back to the Stone Age and build it back up again.”

To simulate an attack like this, the DARPA team have taken over part of New York’s Plum Island.  The island itself is a bit of a mystery to the public, in large part to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which tests live viruses.  In 2008, an unidentifiable animal washed ashore across from Plum Island, and was quickly christened the Montauk Monster.

Click here to see Jay’s podcast with Michael Toecker of DARPA:

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

When you include transportation fuels, fossil fuels make up approximately 80% of U.S energy usage.  However, to hear many people tell it, days are numbered for coal, oil, and natural gas.

That may not be entirely accurate, and according to the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, these fossil fuels could play an important role in a near-zero carbon future.

Steven Winberg, my guest and Asst. Secretary for Fossil Energy, got his start as an engineer working on coal-fired boilers.  He says coal’s future, especially in the U.S., will focus on three categories:

1. Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small, Transformative)–An initiative to make coal-fired units smaller and more flexible.  In the future, coal fired units may be backing up more renewables as wind and solar play a larger role in the mix.
2. Coal for products–Using coal for its “carbon value” rather than it’s heating value.  Products could include graphene, 3D printing materials, and alternatives to lumber.
3. Hydrogen production–H₂ produced from coal or natural gas (“blue hydrogen”) is more cost-effective than the renewable variety (“green hydrogen”).  Combined with carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), this blue H₂ could be carbon neutral.

Steve believes the United States can help lower global emission through technologies like Coal FIRST, as well as high-grade coal from the western united states.

“The reality is this,” he says, “With the high-quality coal that the U.S. has, if we export that coal, we will be displacing lower-quality coal from other countries.  The net benefit is there will be lower CO₂ emissions.”

I also asked him about the role the Department is playing with CCUS, and how might the U.S. speed up its adoption.  Steve says carbon capture is 75% of CCUS’ cost.  They are trying to cut those costs in half, to about $30/ton capture cost.

“When I got to this job,” he says, “One of the first things that I asked us to get moving on was reducing the cost of carbon capture.”

Listen to more Energy Cast podcasts here.

In fact, Steve believes that enhanced oil recovery, reduced capture costs, and recent 45Q tax incentives can make CCUS attractive without a punitive tax on carbon emissions.  “That starts to make economic sense,” he says.

In addition to carbon capture from coal, the Office of Fossil Energy is nearly equally focused on natural gas CO₂ capture.  They are also exploring capture from industrial gases and direct-air capture (DAC).

DAC could be especially effective for enhanced oil recovery in remote areas like oilfields.  “We can install those DAC facilities right on top of the oilfield and then we don’t have to build pipelines,” says Steve.

I also asked Sec. Winberg about recent fluctuations in oil prices, especially following the COVID-19 outbreak.  He blames an “almost unprecedented demand destruction,” yet adds oil markets have been resilient despite this disruption.

“I think we’re seeing volatility in oil–mostly low prices–because there are a lot of producers out there.  That is one of the beautiful things about the unconventional oil and gas plays.”  He adds that the shale revolution has led to many smaller producers entering the market.

Much like we discussed in my episode with the American Petroleum Institute, Steve also pointed to the benefits of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).  Steve says Congress declined to authorize fuel purchases in March 2020.  However, the SPR agreed to store oil from small producers in April, less a small percentage of oil to remain as a “rent or lease payment.”

“I don’t think there’s much else that the U.S. government does that would give a return to the taxpayers like that,” says Steve.

What about an eventual Strategic Petroleum Reserve for Hydrogen?  Steve says while he believes hydrogen production will be more distributed than oil & gas production, he says, “Maybe it would be more distributed.  Wouldn’t just be two facilities in Louisiana, and two in Texas [like the SPR].”

As someone who once worked on an integrated Natural Gas Vehicle program, he believes hydrogen could see an easier path to adoption.

“With hydrogen, if the driver is significant CO₂ emissions reductions, I could see hydrogen moving forward,” he says, “Maybe with an easier path than NGVs or even electric vehicles.” (This podcast originally aired in August 2020.)

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

I have been wanting to cover a story on “The War of the Currents” for a while now.  About a year ago, I read Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night, a historical fiction, so I had some background on this important episode in world history.

The Current War, a new film based on an original screenplay by my guest, Michael Mitnick, covers that 13-year period, from 1880-1893.  Michael began writing the script as a play while in grad school at Yale (his first play featured then-student and future Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o).

After it was completed as a screenplay in 2011, it was selected for the Hollywood “Black List” of the best still-unproduced screenplays.  A year later it was optioned as a feature.  Cameras rolled in 2016 and the film was set for release November 2017, produced by The Weinstein Company–as in Harvey Weinstein.

Mitnick says a close friend called him three-days before the infamous New Yorker story broke.  “At that moment on the phone I knew, ‘Oh, the movie’s done,” he says.

The story broke a month before the film’s release.  “While we were editing, we’d get the sense that something unusually bad was happening at The Weinstein Company, though we didn’t know what it was,” says Michael.  “Notes started to come in that had no relation to reality. Why is someone obsessing over a minor word in a sentence that has no significance either way?”

He described the episode as “devastating,” adding, “I began to wonder if can even come out because people will associate it with [Weinstein], even though he had nothing to do with it, other than initially raising money.”

In 2019, Martin Scorsese, the film’s executive producer, rescued the film, exercising final cut.  This allowed the filmmakers to re-shoot and edit the picture (hence the reason it’s called “The Director’s Cut” on posters).  Michael called Scorsese’s role getting the film released “unbelievable.”

The movie itself covers two American titans, Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon).  Tom Holland stars as Edison’s assistant Samuel Insull and Nicholas Hoult plays Nikola Tesla.

The two currents at the center of this “war” are alternating and direct current.  Edison, coming off the invention of the light bulb, was a strong DC supporter.  It was low voltage and required power stations close to the customers, which of course Edison provided.

Enter alternating current. This was championed by Westinghouse.  By transmitting over longer distances at higher voltages, you could then step-down (transformers) AC voltage closer to the sources that used it.  The format was clearly superior, so Edison’s only hope was to allege that AC was deadly.  There’s a subplot in the movie involving the first electric chair.

At first, all electricity was used for lighting, but customers were eager to use it to power heavy machinery and appliances.  Nikola Tesla’s invention of the poly-phase AC induction motor finally solved that challenge, and the rest is history.

Michael says he spent time on set.  He gave Cumberbatch a signed photo of Edison as a present for agreeing to do the film.  Mitnick described Cumberbatch as a “sweetheart,” but of Edison, “[He] was known for a lot of things, but he was not known for being a nice guy.”

Michael, who grew up in Pittsburgh, recalls his professor/historian father describing Westinghouse, on the other hand, “as a good guy…different from other tycoons of his era.”

When the conversation turned to Tesla, Michael agreed that it was difficult reducing the character’s role to be appropriate for the story they were telling.

“[Tesla has] emerged over the last 15 years as a folk hero, and as a representation of someone who, especially as an immigrant, is perceived to have been treated worse than anyone.  And that if he had been given his fair shake, and if capitalism didn’t have its way, he would have been one of our explicit heroes, and our technology would be far more advanced than it is.”

It wasn’t lost on Michael that his small, “prestige” picture stars nearly every superhero character on screen today.  “Well, maybe this can have a life in China because we can show all the Marvel people,” he jokes.

Listen to more Energy Cast podcasts here.

Much like this podcast, I was curious how challenging it was to represent some highly technical concepts to the movie-going audience.  “The film is PG-13,” he says, “I have to make sure that a 13-year-old kid, who’s never had physics, to an older person, understands it.”

To that end, Michael says he wrote as many as 30 drafts to help explain the technology, rather than expository dialog.  One example is the map of the U.S. where lightbulbs represent cities using Edison’s DC (white) or Westinghouse’s AC (red) system.  Michael says he got the idea for this plot device after watching the stage musical 1776, which depicted delegates’ votes on a board.

Another challenge with audiences was the effort to capture the magic felt by characters seeing electric light for the first time.  He admits his drama professors questioned that challenge.

“For me it was the hope that in those scenes where we are lighting up towns, it could somehow feel like if you broke the news to everyone that time travel is possible.” (This podcast originally aired in October 2020.)

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

The future of carbon capture technologies is an international issue.

The National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Alabama, is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, with contributions from host operator Southern Co. and testing partners. But the NCCC, while concerned with keeping American coal-fired generation environmentally and economically viable, is open to others in the world who want to sustain thermal generation.

“We’re very active from the standpoint of international technology developers,” John Northington, director of the NCCC, told Energy Cast podcast host Jay Dauenhauer in the latest episode of the series. “At this point and time we’ve already worked with about 30 government, university and research organizations spanning across seven other countries. We expect that to grow over time.”

Read more about carbon capture in Power Engineering

Coal-fired power in the U.S. has fallen from more than 40 percent of the generation capacity mix to near 20 percent in the recent years. More than 500 coal-fired plants have been retired or due for retirement due to regulatory, operational and competitive generation costs.

This trend is much the same in the rest of developed world. In other developing markets such as Asia, however, coal-fired power plants are still being planned and built.

So the race to capture flue gas, utilize it cleanly or sequester it underground is on. The NCCC is situated next to a coal-fired power plant in Alabama and also has expanded its research aim to include gas-fired emissions. (This podcast originally aired in August 2020.)

Listen to the Energy Cast podcast here

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

I am a huge coal supporter.  It’s critical to our energy needs and I think it’s one of the reasons this podcast stands apart.

When I was Executive Director of the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas ten years ago, most of our members were concerned with post-combustion, taking care of pollutants after coal had been burned.

However, we had one member that had an interesting coal-refining technology.  It’s stuck with me ever since, and I wanted to see if there were any companies out there still trying to make a difference on the other side of the boiler.

Clean Coal Technologies, Inc. is a New York-based company with a suite of refining technologies.  Their “Pristine” line of technologies consists of the following:

• Pristine–A coal-drying technology
• Pristine M–Uses a “Vapor Phase Deposition” process to re-introduce volatiles back into the coal to keep the moisture out and the coal intact (not friable or porous)
• Pristine SA (“Synthetic Anthracite”)–A next-generation technology the company is exploring to completely remove volatiles from the coal and essentially reduce it to pure carbon

Robin Eves, President and CEO of CCTI, came to the company ten years ago after a stint in the oil sector. “My first thought was, look, you don’t burn raw crude oil, so why are we burning raw coal?”

While the Pristine SA product could theoretically remove all pollutants and eliminate the need for scrubbers, Robin says international clients in particular are focused on economics and availability at the moment.

The existing process actually re-introduces the original volatiles or “bad stuff” found in coal, but Robin says “you’ve got a better and more efficient product and putting less bad stuff into the atmosphere.”

Despite what America does with its coal fleet, Robin says the future is overseas for America’s coal supplies.  He cites 300M Indians and 500M sub-Saharan Africans without coal, in addition to 800M East Asians who use about 1/7 the energy Europeans use.

Back when I was working for the coal groups, I once addressed the Austin City Council about the need to keep using coal in an effort to proliferate cleaner coal usage abroad.

From my 2010 address:

“Developing countries are building new coal facilities faster than we could ever mothball our own fleets. And the less we invest in new, innovative scrubber technologies for this vast, abundant resource, the dirtier those plants in developing countries will be.”

I’m glad to see companies like CCTI are making the world cleaner by using this important resource more responsibly. (This podcast originally aired in May 2019.)

See more of the Energy Cast podcasts

Goldmeer also has been a session chair and presenter at POWERGEN International.

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

Natural gas only recently became the No. 1 resource for electricity power generation in the U.S., but it’s been the most versatile for a long time.

In his Energy Cast podcast, Dauenhauer spoke with Jeffrey Goldmeer, director of gas turbines, combustion and fuel solutions for OEM giant GE. They talked about the flexibility of combustion turbines, which are not limited to natural gas but can burn waste gas, diesel, fuel oil and, in a growing movement, hydrogen.

“Gas turbines can run a whole lot of fuels,” Goldmeer said. “If it’s a hydrocarbon, we can burn it.”

Hydrogen does not contain carbon, so many companies are moving toward integrating H2 into the power generation resource. That research will take years, maybe decades, to bring to scale.

Even so, Goldmeer pointed out, gas turbines offer the opportunity to dramatically decarbonize the thermal and combustion power sectors.

Those turbines also can provide baseload and peaking power.

See more of the Energy Cast podcasts

Goldmeer also has been a session chair and presenter at POWERGEN International.

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.

Click here to see the episode:

Utility-scale renewable project development is not a game for short-timers

The goal of clean energy may be admirable, but the road there is a long, hard one full of regulatory hurdles, changing economic rationales and land use challenges. It requires patience and commitment exponentially.

“Anytime you want to go in and be a good and responsible developer, you would have done your homework,” Beth Conley, vice president of communications for U.S-based independent project developer Invenergy, told Jay Dauenhauer in a recent Energy Cast podcast.

Chicago-based Invenergy started as a gas-fired project developer and has moved increasingly into renewables. It has produced more than 160 projects, lately focusing on solar and storage, but also has done utility-scale wind including joint ventures bringing more utilities into the ownership picture.

Dauenhauer himself was previously executive director of the Clean Coal Technology Association in Texas. He also has worked as project director in power generation and transmission as well as a media analyst for TXU Energy prior to the $45 billion leveraged buyout of that company in 2007. A Louisiana native and proud graduate of Louisiana State University, his career began as a TV news producer before transitioning into the energy sector. Back behind the mic, Dauenhauer hopes to bring his experience working across several energy sectors to you in a program designed to be accessible to both the public and industry insiders. Dauenhauer also is a member of the POWERGEN International and DISTRIBUTECH International advisory committees. Clarion Energy is the parent company of Power Engineering, POWERGEN, DISTRIBUTECH.

Energy Cast Podcast is hosted biweekly by Jay Dauenhauer. Learn more about the podcast here.