Last year, watching the evolving energy marketplace in the U.S. and Mexico and the huge inroads solar PV and wind are capable of making, it was both exhilarating and a bit distressing. Exhilarating due to the huge strides being made in lowering costs of renewable energy. Distressing (selfishly) in that my being a mechanical/process engineer, there is not a ton of technical scope in those particular types of projects for my specific skill set; doesn’t take a guy like me to set up a PV panel and plug in, if that is the way the industry is headed. So it forces us to review what skills should be essential for a wide variety of energy generation technologies, or even on the demand side.

Perhaps some of you have similar concerns – are the talents you are acquiring now going to be needed in the energy landscapes of tomorrow?

As one fragmentary example of how desperately the wide range of your talents are needed now, and likely for all the years of your upcoming career, you’d have to first read this linked post about horror and the author H.P. Lovecraft.

Open at your peril

If some fragment of sanity remains after reading that, we can discuss further.

Continue reading

To lead with the usual disclaimer – I really have no axe to grind with cryptocurrencies per se, and they may well be some next generation pseudo-anarchic way to bypass governments that will usher in the next wave of social reorganization. Fine. Nor do I speculate in them, because they are not boring enough. This focus here rather is on their energy use aspects, especially in light of our amazing recent advances in Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE) for renewables and their intermittent and wacky impact on daily power prices.

It all comes back to the duck

From the viewpoint of responsibly matching energy production and use, it’s worth compiling some thoughts on how renewables and consumption avenues such as cryptocurrencies might complement each other (or not). These may have implications for our investment philosophies – be it time or capital. Let’s start with two seemingly unrelated problems, and then discuss a myriad of opportunities.

Continue reading

The Alpha Strategy (The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense) is a rather interesting book from the 1980s. The basic precepts outline strategies to protect your wealth from various erosive effects such as inflation, taxation and theft, primarily by storing “future consumables” as a hedge. Invest in a garden or cache food to reduce your vulnerability to inflation. Buy a chainsaw and stockpile wood and you don’t worry as much about interruptions in a natural gas supply.

The opposite trends seem to be prevalent these days, with subscriptions to cell phone services, leased cars, Netflix, cleaning services, and other monthly charges becoming commonplace for households and making us more rather than less dependent. If instead we can make investments in permanent assets that can decrease these outflows, we build ourselves a more resilient foundation. If you are curious and would like to listen to some commentary on the Alpha Strategy, try this podcast here.

Now, what in the world does this old dusty book have to do with renewable energy? Well, let’s consider a number of strategies for investments in a solar-photovoltaic (PV) system or indirect means to offset your energy bills. Since I’m not a financial advisor, this is more about the psychology of options, rather than a detailed look at system costs, taxes and internal rates of return. I’ll use approximations to my own energy use and setting as crude examples.

Continue reading