My favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
I have a startup in cleantech software, and often I feel very alone on HN. Every time the energy transition or climate change comes up on HN, it seems like most of the replies are either armchair-quarterbacking ("What they should do is..."), dismissive ("They don't take into account..."), or futile ("This isn't going to be fixed because...").
What I don't see is gravity for the magnitude of what's going to happen in the next few decades. Over 80% of the world's energy currently comes from fossil fuels[1], and the vast majority of that will switch to clean sources within our careers. It's a $10.2 trillion dollar transition that will happen in just a few decades[2].
So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd? There's fuck ton of money to be made in the energy transition, and I'm betting that much of it is going to be in software. Intermittent solar/wind generation + storage requires a ton of software to (1) deploy enough to displace fossil sources and (2) actually work reliably. The energy transition isn't a research problem anymore, it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity.
Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
Anyway, it's always sad to see the 2nd largest industry in the world (the 1st largest is killing people over energy) always get so categorically poo-pooed on HN. I'll keep posting[3][4] and hoping that attitude will eventually change, because we could very much use your talent in making this transition happen.
0. (We've met briefly; I work at a clean energy startup that relies on Utility API; I posted this.)
1. It is too late to prevent civilization-impacting warming, but it is not too late to have an enormous effect on how much impact happens how quickly.
2. "Optimism isn’t principally an analysis of present reality. It’s an ethic. It is not based on denial or rosy thinking. It is a moral posture toward the world we find ourselves in." [1]
3. Ken Caldiera thinks that the tool-building you have done is the right kind of work. [2]
4. Ya, HN has noisy nay-sayers. A lot of them simply have outdated mental models and excessive self-confidence. Can't do much about the latter, but posts like yours can chip away at the latter.
5. If you need a dose of fact-based optimism, check out recent editions of Chris Goodall's amazing mailing list. [3]
Howdy! Thanks for the links. I didn't mean to come off as so fatalistic. I'm still very optimistic about our future, whether or not other people in tech participate (it will just take longer, and we'll suffer more consequences).
My point was to mostly to impress that problems exist outside of web tech, that web tech experts could help solve. The smartest people I know are in the oil industry. They know how to literally go into Nigeria, bribe the right gangs, and get the oil out. They are way better at "getting shit done" than anyone I know in silicon valley. These are the people those of us in cleantech are up against, so we're severely out-gunned.
We truly do need all the help we can get, even if it is from tech elites. I'm willing to make that deal with Worry Free[1].
- Most people are not willing to change and to let the government invest in change. Most people are used to inertia and more of the same. Drastic change and massive public investments in science and useful technology is not what most people are used to. Daily news bombard the people but not what is really important. Harmful military budgets are increased. Trump even proposed that NATO members should spend 4% of their GDP for harmful military. Animal products are still allowed. Politicians and their voters argue against electric cars because they are expensive and enough electricity is not yet delivered by wind and solar. They do not realize that all related industries and practices must change ASAP. Politicians and their voters enforce monetary austerity because public ownership and public investments for a different world is the worst that could possibly happen in their imagined world.
Annual global fossil fuel subsidies were amounting to $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP).
That’s somewhat just the three modes of communication on HN. I see far too much elitism and general negativity here.
Politics are at play how ever. My understanding of renewables is they require multi-year, billion dollar projects. The desert I live in, for instance, has a political faction devoted to tourism development. And to develop geothermal here would come up against NIMBYs.
Personally I can program, build super computers, read and communicate math (bs in math). But I don’t know how I could really be hired to help.
As for salaries, energy companies represent some of the largest companies in the world. Just look at what energy money has done for Saudi Arabia. Or all the oil rig drillers who work 4 years and retire a millionaire.
Most of the supercomputers in energy are currently at grid operators (in California, it's called CAISO[1]). Lots of interesting neural networks stuff being done to drive the energy futures wholesale markets and grid services events. Those sorts of companies usually go to Grid <whatever>[2][3][4] conferences, so that's a good place to look for companies/agencies hiring (look at the speakers, sponsors, and exibitors). ERCOT in Texas has been particularly innovative with it's wholesale market operations.
Hey, this was really useful. Maybe you can help me (and many other potentially interested software engineers) by sharing another key missing piece: what are online places to lurk and gather initial information in this sector?
It is a bit difficult for most people to just know that they like working in some sector, or even to get in contact with the sector's community. Even more so, how to expect prospective software entrepreneurs to even get an idea to work on without contact and info. Of course, they can get out of their house, start going to industry meetings etc. but this requires lots of effort, money, and even moving to another city. Are there "energy HNs" to just follow for some time and try to get to know the business before a more serious involvement?
Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
Since you're asking, and I can only speak for myself, I don't like taking that path because at some point you'd need to communicate with some sort of local/national authority and/or politicians and I'd rather eat ear wax than go down that road.
Heh, seems like a good adaptation for the old saying. Politics and regulation is like third rail of tech, no one wants to touch it. But that's where the power is.
> So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd?
1) Because VC's want returns measured in months, not years. So VC funding is right out.
2) None of this is high-growth. You are selling into a market with a fixed budget. To win, you have to displace something else. That's expensive and difficult and doesn't scale.
3) You are effectively selling to the government with all the downsides. Worse, you are selling to a set of things that are government constrained without the upside of being actual government.
4) Nobody inside cares. There is no short term 15% bonus to most of the people with their hands on the levers. The people in charge won't move until there is so much residential solar installed and the power grid is in such bad shape that individuals start disconnecting from the grid.
1) You're right. Every time VC tries to get involved in energy, they lose their shirt (with some rare exceptions). Luckily, there are many other more established funding options in energy (strategics, grants, private equity, experienced angels, etc.). The same is true with other traditional engineering sectors (defense, infrastructure, etc.). High growth software != VC.
2) I'm confused, isn't this negated by market size? Energy market sizes are measured in trillions, so displacing incumbents is still an extremely profitable venture. However, what's lacking is the potential of a monopoly. Energy is a commodity, so there's always heavy competition, which I guess is another strike against the VC model, but not against the high growth possibility.
3) While governments are often customers, they are rarely the only or even the majority customer. However, what is true is that the energy sector learned long ago that lobbying earns a 22,000% rate of return[1], so they use that tool. A lot. That' doesn't mean it's not a place for software. It just means you have budget that in.
4) I'm not sure what "inside" means? Do you mean politicians? Energy CEOs? Software engineers? Mind explaining this point more? I can tell you that every leader I've met in the energy industry cares a ton about the incoming disruption, even if they are incentivized to do anything about it (e.g. your 15% bonus).
P.S. This was fun. Are you in the bay area? I'd love to grab coffee to hear more from your perspective!
2) A lottery ticket payout can also be very large, but it still doesn't make it a good bet. The problem is that you will have to go a long time with zero income and then suddenly you hit the jackpot (or go bankrupt). That's not conducive to running a business.
4) The leaders only "care" about this disruption in the sense that they may lose their jobs when people start protesting or disconnecting from the grid. They certainly don't have any fear of a competitor showing up and blowing them out of the market. So, there is no incentive to make a move that requires them to spend significant money.
The fact that the big commercial property owners in Southern California were doing massive arbitrage with their energy storage during the last heatwave tells me that CAISO is WAY behind the ball. There is no reason that CAISO shouldn't be doing arbitrage to itself. This was also matched by information from some of the local universities who have cogeneration but don't actually push energy back to the grid because the grid operators we too far behind the curve.
I see these same issues in other industries, as well. Cold chain, for instance. Lots of people at the top want better tracking, but everybody's business processes are ossified in concrete. And nobody is authorized to actually spend money. And extra information will simply make life worse for the people at the bottom actually carrying out all the work. You will spend years throwing yourself at the wall in that industry until something finally breaks. Or, at some point, someone like Amazon says "Thou shalt track everything and report it to us" and suddenly the entire cold chain industry has a heart attack. However, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
I actually don't get up to the Bay Area much anymore, but if I'm ever in that part of the world I'll give you a plink.
"So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd?"
I can't speak for the "crowd", but personally I've lost more money in solar stocks than any other sector I can think of. And I didn't even get burned by gambling on specific stocks like SunEdison, just by a broad solar ETF.
Just because something is the wave of the future doesn't mean it's a good investment. If you invested in the solar ETF called TAN[1] back when it came out ten years ago, it's down over 90%. It just keeps shrinking and shrinking, although it has bounced around a little.
Why should producing a commodity efficiently be lucrative from a profitability standpoint? Competitive markets should reduce the profit of a safe activity anyone can do to almost zero. And investors who are willing to invest without regard to profits should reduce investment returns to zero or below.
My guess is that a lot of people have become jaded over time because energy contains such a high degree of business and politics.
Another hurdle might be that it's difficult for pure software developers to enter the field because most problems require a combination of hardware, software, infrastructure and regulation in order to be solved.
Many utilities are interested in enrolling their customers in programs that would allow software to control the energy demands their customers put on the grid.
For instance, if you are a high-energy consuming factory, you may have a fixed amount of energy that you need to use each day, but have some flexibility as to exactly what time of day it is used.
There are companies right now writing software that takes into consideration all the constraints around the electrical usage of the various customers of a utility, and then vary the customer’s electrical usage in real time as the energy demand/production fluctuates on the grid.
Think of it this way. You can either put a battery on the grid to supply energy when the grid needs it OR, you can ask customers to stop using as much energy at that moment. Either way, the supply meets demand.
Although the problem you described can be solved with software, is it really "high growth"?
Put another way, can this grid flexibility problem be solved purely with a (currently popular in tech, especially among startups, as the GP alluded) cloud-based SaaS offering?
Or will it require some significant non-software portions to the solutions, such as co-locating hardware and/or high-reliability low-latency networking?
I realized my (own) sibling comment sounded like a bunch of rhetorical questions, since they were asked from the standpoint of my skepticism/suspicion based on what I read.
However, they actually are questions, and I'd appreciate knowing the answers (or best approximations) from an insider.
The wikipedia doesn't provide much insight into the technical underpinnings to draw any conclusions.
Perhaps there's something of an answer to the OC's general question, just in this inscrutability: the details are so foreign/unique but so important that software/computer people would have no intuition on how or where their skills would fit.
You seem to have missed the word 'exclusively'. Obviously software is an (important) part of a solution but it will need a lot of hardware and hardware knowledge in order to be able to be solved well. Your typical high-growth hacker wantrepreneur wouldn't touch a project like that with a 10' pole.
I think maybe the problem is that energy is broadly a solved problem as far as US is concerned. You guys have enough energy that you need and the means to pay for it. The world might move to solar/wind but it doesnt really matter to the average joe in the US because things are pretty good already.
Countries like India, Solar is huge. We don't get enough energy even in our richest cities. Most people cant afford to pay as much as they do. Using coal to fire electricity plants is clogging up the air. Solar has the potential to change a lot here.
It's always nice to hear from someone else in cleantech on here :)
I work for a startup that's focused on making it easier for utilities to integrate DERs into the distribution grid. We make software to simulate the grid, gain real time visibility, and unlock new business models.
I think that software interest in these kinds of industries will be coupled to a maturation of the software profession. When the software industry recognizes the need for professional licensing (like a P.Eng for engineers) in certain disciplines then energy will be much more appealing.
Yes, I agree that software engineering is still in its infancy compared to other engineering fields. I always keep in mind the final passage of They Write the Right Stuff (1996):
"And that’s the point: the shuttle process is so extreme, the drive for perfection is so focused, that it reveals what’s required to achieve relentless execution. The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn’t even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering."
> it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity.
From the perspective of someone who's not a software engineer but rather an ops engineer (a software concierge [1]), I find the idea of a scaling problem to be far more attractive than a software (writing) problem, for obvious reasons.
> Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC?
> Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
The above two combined would be enough. As sibling comments have pointed out, the nature of the industry means that the players involved will be very large and/or political.
It's not that the above three qualities are somehow magical. It's that they're generally necessary (but not sufficient) to create that small, startup (usually high-growth) company environment that appeals to a certain subset here.
Focussing on just one aspect of such an environment without understanding the totality of the appeal (and/or effectiveness) can end up turning into cargo-culting, as with (if you'll forgive the caricature) large, bureaucratic companies attempting to attract talent by refurnishing their common areas with brightly-colored beanbags chairs.
The issue with such software is that it's mission-critical. In other terms, it needs to be zero-downtime, bullet-proof, audited and certified by external actors and to be supported for the next 30-50 years.
Historically, all those limitations make the "move quickly and break things" approach popular in the current wave of startups impossible and the code with this kind of requirements has historically been implemented by large corporation already working in the industrial domain.
If anything, this feels a domain where GE and large contractors will be chosen to write mission-critical code over startups.
We're building an API to interact with utilities. Most interactions with utilities (data requests, interconnection requests, etc.) are still manual processes, adding significant customer acquisition and asset management costs and slowing down deployment for distributed energy resources (DERs) and energy efficiency (EE) vendors. Automating those interactions removes a huge friction point, allowing DERs and EE to scale much more effectively.
I got into this because I was a project engineer for a commercial energy consultant, and I was spending half my time wrangling utility data instead of actually working on designing and deploying projects. So I started UtilityAPI.
Are the utilities giving you access to their db? How are you translating API requests over to the utility if they don't already have an API? Don't take my questions as criticisms as I think it's interesting.
It varies, but by and large we do not have arbitrary access to utility customer data. For most utilities, customers are empowered to give written authorization for a party to act on their behalf to access/manage their utility data, so we have an online form they can fill out to grant that consent within the US-DOE DataGuard Privacy Guidelines (think GDPR for energy data). For some utilities, they are beginning to provide OAuth-style access for customers (I'm actually on the board of this "Green Button Connect" standard, and we'll be coming out with our own OAuth-style solution utilities can buy next year).
Overall, it varies from utility to utility and regulatory authority to regulatory authority. There's an incredible amount of politics and policy involved, but mostly it revolves around clear consent (which isn't ever a problem since the utility customer is the one wanting the energy audit or quote). The complexity of the regulation/policy is what prevents a good fit for most VC models, and other financing options are more experienced and comfortable at this than VC.
Just adding my voice to "you're not alone!". I've been helping build a software solution to make the indeterminacy problem of solar a somewhat predicable one [0] by working to build an API that focuses on solar radiation and PV power production anywhere in the world updating every 10-15 minutes. Software will play a huge part in address these issues with the grid and clean electricity supply, and due to the recent economics of solar and wind, this is only going to accelerate. So I have also been surprised by the lack of competition in this space given the massive industry, real need of solutions, and the scale of money involved [1].
> Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
I was convinced that this is where I wanted to take my career from reading Bret Victor's piece on a technologists role in address climate change [2], originally thinking that this will never be a huge industry but more and more after reading this piece, realizing how large the opportunity is for software and technologists. The domain is so large there are so many angles, however, I think why VCs might be largely passing on based on your last point "the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic" as it is somewhat true but there seems to be a growing appetite to 'get things done' but I think this is more recent(?).
Something else that might be seen as a risk (certainly occurred to me) is that targeting an industry with so much money, one of them might just solve this problem themselves and they are already an insider to the industry. As much money as VCs have, it's pretty hard to outspend energy giants trying who really want problem X solved.
> Because it really is too late.
This scares me as well, from what looks like a start of a biodiversity crash [3], islands starting to disappear [4] and projecting out what all this means in over the next 50-100 years, it is "too late", however, I'm always reminded how things that look bad can always get worse so it's worth trying to do what we can now.
It's funny (in a sick way) how the joke that VCs always use the tag line of "to change the world", yet these problems are staring us in the face and that same drive seems to be largely missing, maybe cause "playing a small part to make things less horrible in the future" doesn't have the same ring to it..
And yet in that very example, that scale of money is involved for a battery solution. Notably lacking is how software, or computer technology of any kind, contributed to that dollar amount.
I don't doubt that opportunities do exist, and some have been outlined elsewhere in the thread. I'm just unconvinced that the overall money involved has anythign to do with the money available to pure software solutions.
Even in computing, not all problems can be solved with software.
Right, maybe that is a reason it has been avoided by VCs? Not many 'purely' software options?
Most of these problems probably do require a hardware component for the solution. Battery arbitrage (quite a bit of software involved here than you might think, forecasting generation, demand/supply etc) is probably on the extreme end of a software:hardware ratio (towards hardware investment). Software I'm helping to build is probably on the other extreme and we've still got some (very small) hardware components that we are directly involved with but also a very large one, latest generation geostationary weather satellites, however these are externalized (eg we didn't put them up there, maintain them etc).
There is plenty of scope of problems in the energy world, but yes I'd agree that money for 'pure' software solutions is probably a very small part of the pie. I think this comes down to fact that the electricity grid or its components are at the center of all of it, so integration points have to exist. Maybe also seen as high risk, energy supply is ignored when working well but becomes very obvious when it's not.
Glad to see in this thread there are more people on HN than I thought working in this area, a lot of effort is still needed.
> that is a reason it has been avoided by VCs? Not many 'purely' software options?
This does strike me as reason enough, yes, not that it's necessarily rational. Although there are certainly VC dollars available for non-software startups, including consumer hardware (which strikes me as exceedingly risky) and biotech, when it comes to software, there seems to be a trend to keeping it pure, even avoiding buying computer hardware and staying on cloud, despite the tremendous cost premium (especially when scaling!).
I suspect the overall instinct is from the enterprise (or even consumer) software days, where the engineering cost to produce the software is completely decoupled from the revenue it can generate. Add a significant hardware component and the VC imagines they'll be permanently coupled, with profit forever limited by that hardware cost. Of course, this is also true for SaaS, perhaps more so when the hardware is rented at a markup from someone else. I remain mystified, but it's mostly speculation, anyway.
Here's a comment on what specific software needs there are in distributed solar[1], and here's a comment on where to look around for interesting energy companies that may be hiring software engineers[2].
The answers to your questions are basically "all of it" and "whatever makes the system work." The Department of Energy is pouring millions into 'smart grid' R&D, which includes everything from good old cybersecurity all the way up through nuclear power research, stopping at coal, diesel, steam, solar, and wind along the way.
Unfortunately, that essentially contradict's the GP's "isn't a research problem anymore" assertion.
Similarly, millions, even tens of millions, isn't an impressive amount of money by VC-funded high-growth tech startup standards, so that also belies the notion that it's not just research any more.
I feel like you're looking for a hole to poke. It seems pretty obvious that R&D funding is still good even when existing technologies are good-enough-to-deploy-in-mass.
Ford got past the R&D stage for the Model-T a long time ago, but they continue to pour money into R&D to make better cars. The same happens for energy technology. We have clean energy systems that can compete with fossil fuels today, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep seeking new innovations that make them even better.
I wasn't suggesting that research can no longer exist, just that the OC's whole point was that this field is no longer about just research and attempting to open up the discussion to a broader interest group, of software engineers, based on that premise of mass scaling.
Since the GP was a direct reply to the comment with that premise, asking about the kinds of work and technology, it seemed to me like a borderline-disingenuous to respond with something related to research and not mass scaling, especially since that response was "all of it".
I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I'm glad to see so many comments here in response to one of the Utility API founders.
Just wanted to note something very important:
As a co-founder of a very new cleantech software startup, and as a guy coming into the energy industry initially with only a background in software, you need to understand that the energy industry (especially in the US) is incredibly diverse and is really an ecosystem in itself.
The market is not just regulated utilities and their customers. There are unregulated markets, power generators, ISOs, cleantech vendors, project developers, installers, financiers, insurance companies, and plenty more players in the space. Each of these actors serves a different role in the process of getting a solar array or battery up and running on a building or out in the field.
And to echo some other comments, the hardware is pretty much all there by now, with prices getting lower by the month, and the only thing that's missing is the right software to help scale deployment of capital, energy assets, installation labor, etc.
[Impending plug is coming]
In fact, this is exactly what my company, Station A (https://stationa.com), is doing. We've realized that in the commercial and industrial sectors, renewables are seeing slower penetration because the high soft costs associated with project development for the medium-to-small energy consumers. This stems primarily from a lack of access to critical data, biased sales tactics (solar developers only want to sell you solar, even if it won't make a difference), and the inability for project developers to really find the right locations to develop with the right technology in a scalable fashion.
This sector is ripe for disruption purely with software, as the hardware has become so much more commoditized.
At our 40 acre walnut orchard in Northern California, we water via two wells (30 foot water depth) powered by two PG&E-powered electric pumps (60hp and 20hp). There is an agricultural discount if we run them nights and weekends, so we typically run them on weekends for 12-24 hours. Summer daytime temps are often 90-95 degrees F. Nighttime watering is also helpful due to less water evaporation.
But given the duck curve, I expect PG&E will at some point encourage 10am to 3pm power usage. Then it might be cheaper, electricity-wise, to run the pumps 3 times a week, during the heat of the day, instead of overnight on weekends.
Bad: More evaporation, so more water use.
Good: Maybe cheaper, and since trees reduce their photosynthesis when it gets too hot (to decrease water loss), daytime watering may increase growth by keeping the air temperature lower.
You’re in an interesting spot. You could generate your own power, since you don’t need to store it.
I’d take a long look at how much power you need, and when 5 years of electric bills are more expensive than your own installation. Maybe never, but prices do keep falling.
For those of you skeptical that software can address this problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_power_plant
Adding storage to the grid is one solution, but adding software that can better influence the demand various customers put on the grid is also surprisingly effective.
>software that can better influence the demand various customers put on the grid is also surprisingly effective.
Every time the smart grid comes up, I imagine the power company turning off my air conditioning because the ability to turn off my air conditioning made them feel safe to under-provision.
Anecdotally, we are paid $10/mo for the utility to have the option to disable our A/C for up to a couple hours a day. They do not pay us for the time they actually disable A/C, but I don’t it hasn’t actually happened yet, so we are “winning” that bet. I think that customers would bid this option lower than $10, given the option, but agree others wouldn’t touch it. I hope that the price mitigated the real risk of supply planning skew mentioned by the GP.
I would only do it if either I actually controlled the software that did the turning off or there were a third-party that could be trusted to monitor and provided an escrow account with a huge financial penalty payable to me if the utility ever broke the rules.
I have absolutely no reason to trust them unless their incentives align with mine, and, here, they do not.
Even in that case, I would only agree to the 75F limit, because, for the other ones, it would take way too much time (and possibly too much energy, as well) to get back down. Air conditioning isn't instantaneous, and one can't just turn it on when one needs it, if there's more than a trivial temperature (or humidity[1]) drop.
[1] For some areas of the country, that's another, bigger problem with allowing an outsider to turn off the AC: go too long without and the humidity goes up too high. Now you have to buy a thermostat with a humidistat, just in case, even if you didn't need one before.
That's sure one way to do it. Another one is to have strict on- device limitations for how much control the power company does have. E.g. maximum delay of one minute for the air conditioning, one hour for the ice maker. A little flexibility goes a long way in load management.
Your residential AC is a long, long way down the smart grid priority chain.
The steel foundry down the road is a lot easier to convince - their profits are directly tied to the cost of energy, and it is relatively easy for them to scale energy use up or down.
If they are expecting to lower energy costs then why do they want more subsidies? Or on the other end a carbon tax to penalize competitors? I'm sure there are policy prescriptions other than subsidies that can be beneficial to the industry but the ones that seem to get the most discussion are production tax credits and carbon tax.
They get deprecation like everyone else which helps subsidize the building of facilities as well as certain on going capital expenditures. Why do they need a production tax credit also (industry specific)? Talking simply renewables so coal & gas is another discussion.
Power sector isn't ready, nor anyone else. Developing power to heavy usage areas from available generation areas is like building new railroads. Success will arise from new, large, government-granted monopoly operations and be slow and pricey without political support at local levels and paying to or seizing from the many literal NIMBY people affected.
I'm not really in favor of an energy production mandate for new homes, but even if I was, I wouldn't want to be locked into solar, or even solar roof tiles specifically by law or statute.
"The US electricity system is at an extremely sensitive and uncertain juncture. More and more indicators point toward a future in which wind and solar power play a large role. But that future is not locked in. It still depends in large part on policies and economics that, while moving in the right direction, aren’t there yet. And so the people who manage US electricity markets and infrastructure, who must make decisions with 20-, 30-, even 50-year consequences, are stuck making high-stakes bets in a haze of uncertainty."
Anyone looking at the past 10 years of solar and wind growth and price declines who is still "unsure" what the future will bring in the next 10 years and what they should be betting on doesn't deserve to run the given power companies.
Obviously there is going to be an increased amount of solar and wind coming online in the near future, and I don't think that anyone running a power system network at the distribution or transmission level is going to dispute that. However there definitely is uncertainty about how much, and there is even more uncertainty about what our loads are going to look like with large amounts of EVs coming online and potential battery deployments. These things could have a big impact on the size and timing of grid peaks and inertia which can require big investments to manage appropriately. And as with any big investment, you want to make it at the right time, and you want to be sure that you are going to make a return on that investment.
It's also important to note that the value of solar/wind on a grid declines as they become a larger percentage of the power. These power sources are much less consistent and storage technology doesn't exist yet. And if it did, it would require big investments, which obviously dilutes any cost advantage.
Since this is a discussion mentioning software a lot, it's worth mentioning that big battery cars can be a storage source if they're plugged in at work and at home -- a prediction of whether the owner wants to be full combined with a prediction of near-term renewable generation and you've got a lot of storage without having to pay for it.
OK if you know the answers - what % of cars in the US will be fully electric in 10 years? 20 years? Will offshore windfarms be allowed in the US? Will household electricity consumption rise or fall? Will Trump subsidize coal? People really don't know the answers to those questions. Of course they're unsure.
Its over- any attempt to delay solars victory with regulations, will result in solar being deployed elsewhere (offshore/ south-america) and then delivered at combat prices to the border, deforming a future energy grid even further.
Indeed. Energy in chemical form is astonishingly cheap to transmit (and store), but, as electricity, it's completely different. The storage problem is part of the point of the article, of course.
I always thought this was one of the advantages of rooftop solar, that it would reduce transmission costs by bringing generation closer to consumption, especially at peak, and not necessarily because of costs due to losses in the transmission lines, but costs due to maintaining the necessary capacity in those lines (a challenge for both the SFBA and NYC, IIUC).
I wish there was some way to unionize dis-aligned interests. The whole public and all of the industry pays for such mobster schemes, but is unable to rally a viable defense against one little lobby, because...?
Of course, that's dependent on permitting, which can fine you or require you to tear everything down on a whim. It also has huge up front capital costs, with battery replacement being additional burdens going forward, and you probably need to change your lifestyle significantly and rework your house structurally to be more power efficient.
Certainly some of the local legislation regarding such permitting is affected by local electric companies wanting to dissuade that. But I would hope that the tides are turning in the direction of easier personal energy independence over the long term.
The problem is wasted potential. Why stop at some arbitrary capacity that may very well change with time? Better to cover the entire roof with solar panels. Use as much as needed and sell the excess energy. Why should people have to deal with energy storage? Let the power companies worry about that. The power grid can act as a backup.
The utilities foresaw this and didn't make net metering available to me. I presume my business model threatens the utilities somehow. They invented a kWh credit system to "pay" people with, and these credits expire every year if unused. Under these conditions, it'd be stupid to produce excess energy since I'd get nothing for it. Even if I were to somehow match production with consumption, I'd still have to pay them for the infrastructure.
It's a benefit to still being connected to the grid. Though I'm sure you'll find "service fees and taxes" eating up a majority of the power bill you thought you were cutting (e.g. my natural gas bill costs $20 monthly to run @ 0 usage, regardless of only using it for emergency heat for the furnace).
FWIW, Tesla's (crude) Powerwall calculator suggests 3 powerwalls would account for an instance of this with 100% power generation via solar (7 + days backup, it says). Of course I'd hate to see that installation invoice, though.
It's basically one half of Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm turned sideways and powered by wind instead of gravity.
Imagine a conductive screen, like an aluminum screen door and, upwind of it, a spray nozzle that emits mist. There is a conductive ring around the nozzle that is DC-biased so that the mist droplets carry a charge. The wind moves the droplets to the screen, collecting the charge.
There are no moving parts so you wouldn't injure birds.
I don't know that fatalism and hopelessness are motivating for decision makers (who are seeking greater margins regardless of policy and lobbies).
Is our transformation to 100% clean energy ASAP a certain eventuality? On a long enough timescale, it would be irrational for utilities to not choose both lower cost and more sustainable environmental impact ('price-rational', 'environment-rational').
We should expect storage and generation costs to continue to fall as we realize even just the current pipeline of capitalizable [storage] research.
They wouldn't be "coming" nearly as fast if the government didn't plunder to subsidize them.
The article calls for more state meddling into what market should sort out in its own. Every meddling makes it messier and the solution is of course more meddling, etc. until one day the US turns into a failed centrally planned economy similar to most of Europe today.
My favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
I have a startup in cleantech software, and often I feel very alone on HN. Every time the energy transition or climate change comes up on HN, it seems like most of the replies are either armchair-quarterbacking ("What they should do is..."), dismissive ("They don't take into account..."), or futile ("This isn't going to be fixed because...").
What I don't see is gravity for the magnitude of what's going to happen in the next few decades. Over 80% of the world's energy currently comes from fossil fuels[1], and the vast majority of that will switch to clean sources within our careers. It's a $10.2 trillion dollar transition that will happen in just a few decades[2].
So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd? There's fuck ton of money to be made in the energy transition, and I'm betting that much of it is going to be in software. Intermittent solar/wind generation + storage requires a ton of software to (1) deploy enough to displace fossil sources and (2) actually work reliably. The energy transition isn't a research problem anymore, it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity.
Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
Anyway, it's always sad to see the 2nd largest industry in the world (the 1st largest is killing people over energy) always get so categorically poo-pooed on HN. I'll keep posting[3][4] and hoping that attitude will eventually change, because we could very much use your talent in making this transition happen.
Because it really is too late.
[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11951
[2]: http://sdg.iisd.org/news/investments-in-renewable-energy-to-...
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250336
[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154
Hi Dan!
0. (We've met briefly; I work at a clean energy startup that relies on Utility API; I posted this.) 1. It is too late to prevent civilization-impacting warming, but it is not too late to have an enormous effect on how much impact happens how quickly. 2. "Optimism isn’t principally an analysis of present reality. It’s an ethic. It is not based on denial or rosy thinking. It is a moral posture toward the world we find ourselves in." [1] 3. Ken Caldiera thinks that the tool-building you have done is the right kind of work. [2] 4. Ya, HN has noisy nay-sayers. A lot of them simply have outdated mental models and excessive self-confidence. Can't do much about the latter, but posts like yours can chip away at the latter. 5. If you need a dose of fact-based optimism, check out recent editions of Chris Goodall's amazing mailing list. [3]
Your work matters. Keep on keeping on! Best, Sam
[1] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/observations-on-the-day... [2] https://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/on-choosing-pro... [3] https://us9.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=a336c39e55a6260d59a...
Howdy! Thanks for the links. I didn't mean to come off as so fatalistic. I'm still very optimistic about our future, whether or not other people in tech participate (it will just take longer, and we'll suffer more consequences).
My point was to mostly to impress that problems exist outside of web tech, that web tech experts could help solve. The smartest people I know are in the oil industry. They know how to literally go into Nigeria, bribe the right gangs, and get the oil out. They are way better at "getting shit done" than anyone I know in silicon valley. These are the people those of us in cleantech are up against, so we're severely out-gunned.
We truly do need all the help we can get, even if it is from tech elites. I'm willing to make that deal with Worry Free[1].
[1]: Reference to Sorry to Bother You: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/so...
IMO the problem is not optimism but either ignorance or fatalism and insanity:
- Most people know (at least I hope so) that drastic change is urgent. Why Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/0...
- Most people are not willing to change and to let the government invest in change. Most people are used to inertia and more of the same. Drastic change and massive public investments in science and useful technology is not what most people are used to. Daily news bombard the people but not what is really important. Harmful military budgets are increased. Trump even proposed that NATO members should spend 4% of their GDP for harmful military. Animal products are still allowed. Politicians and their voters argue against electric cars because they are expensive and enough electricity is not yet delivered by wind and solar. They do not realize that all related industries and practices must change ASAP. Politicians and their voters enforce monetary austerity because public ownership and public investments for a different world is the worst that could possibly happen in their imagined world.
Annual global fossil fuel subsidies were amounting to $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...
Why the 2C Target is Far Too High
http://www.climate-change-emergency-medical-response.org/2-d...
A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
That’s somewhat just the three modes of communication on HN. I see far too much elitism and general negativity here.
Politics are at play how ever. My understanding of renewables is they require multi-year, billion dollar projects. The desert I live in, for instance, has a political faction devoted to tourism development. And to develop geothermal here would come up against NIMBYs.
Personally I can program, build super computers, read and communicate math (bs in math). But I don’t know how I could really be hired to help.
As for salaries, energy companies represent some of the largest companies in the world. Just look at what energy money has done for Saudi Arabia. Or all the oil rig drillers who work 4 years and retire a millionaire.
Most of the supercomputers in energy are currently at grid operators (in California, it's called CAISO[1]). Lots of interesting neural networks stuff being done to drive the energy futures wholesale markets and grid services events. Those sorts of companies usually go to Grid <whatever>[2][3][4] conferences, so that's a good place to look for companies/agencies hiring (look at the speakers, sponsors, and exibitors). ERCOT in Texas has been particularly innovative with it's wholesale market operations.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Independent_System_...
[2]: https://sepapower.org/event-complex/grid-evolution-summit-na...
[3]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-innovat...
[4]: http://www.distributech.com/index.html
Hey, this was really useful. Maybe you can help me (and many other potentially interested software engineers) by sharing another key missing piece: what are online places to lurk and gather initial information in this sector?
It is a bit difficult for most people to just know that they like working in some sector, or even to get in contact with the sector's community. Even more so, how to expect prospective software entrepreneurs to even get an idea to work on without contact and info. Of course, they can get out of their house, start going to industry meetings etc. but this requires lots of effort, money, and even moving to another city. Are there "energy HNs" to just follow for some time and try to get to know the business before a more serious involvement?
I bookmarked your comment, thank you so much!
Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
Since you're asking, and I can only speak for myself, I don't like taking that path because at some point you'd need to communicate with some sort of local/national authority and/or politicians and I'd rather eat ear wax than go down that road.
Heh, seems like a good adaptation for the old saying. Politics and regulation is like third rail of tech, no one wants to touch it. But that's where the power is.
What was the original saying?
Entitlements, social security specifically, is the third rail.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics
> So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd?
1) Because VC's want returns measured in months, not years. So VC funding is right out.
2) None of this is high-growth. You are selling into a market with a fixed budget. To win, you have to displace something else. That's expensive and difficult and doesn't scale.
3) You are effectively selling to the government with all the downsides. Worse, you are selling to a set of things that are government constrained without the upside of being actual government.
4) Nobody inside cares. There is no short term 15% bonus to most of the people with their hands on the levers. The people in charge won't move until there is so much residential solar installed and the power grid is in such bad shape that individuals start disconnecting from the grid.
1) You're right. Every time VC tries to get involved in energy, they lose their shirt (with some rare exceptions). Luckily, there are many other more established funding options in energy (strategics, grants, private equity, experienced angels, etc.). The same is true with other traditional engineering sectors (defense, infrastructure, etc.). High growth software != VC.
2) I'm confused, isn't this negated by market size? Energy market sizes are measured in trillions, so displacing incumbents is still an extremely profitable venture. However, what's lacking is the potential of a monopoly. Energy is a commodity, so there's always heavy competition, which I guess is another strike against the VC model, but not against the high growth possibility.
3) While governments are often customers, they are rarely the only or even the majority customer. However, what is true is that the energy sector learned long ago that lobbying earns a 22,000% rate of return[1], so they use that tool. A lot. That' doesn't mean it's not a place for software. It just means you have budget that in.
4) I'm not sure what "inside" means? Do you mean politicians? Energy CEOs? Software engineers? Mind explaining this point more? I can tell you that every leader I've met in the energy industry cares a ton about the incoming disruption, even if they are incentivized to do anything about it (e.g. your 15% bonus).
P.S. This was fun. Are you in the bay area? I'd love to grab coffee to hear more from your perspective!
[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1375082
2) A lottery ticket payout can also be very large, but it still doesn't make it a good bet. The problem is that you will have to go a long time with zero income and then suddenly you hit the jackpot (or go bankrupt). That's not conducive to running a business.
4) The leaders only "care" about this disruption in the sense that they may lose their jobs when people start protesting or disconnecting from the grid. They certainly don't have any fear of a competitor showing up and blowing them out of the market. So, there is no incentive to make a move that requires them to spend significant money.
The fact that the big commercial property owners in Southern California were doing massive arbitrage with their energy storage during the last heatwave tells me that CAISO is WAY behind the ball. There is no reason that CAISO shouldn't be doing arbitrage to itself. This was also matched by information from some of the local universities who have cogeneration but don't actually push energy back to the grid because the grid operators we too far behind the curve.
I see these same issues in other industries, as well. Cold chain, for instance. Lots of people at the top want better tracking, but everybody's business processes are ossified in concrete. And nobody is authorized to actually spend money. And extra information will simply make life worse for the people at the bottom actually carrying out all the work. You will spend years throwing yourself at the wall in that industry until something finally breaks. Or, at some point, someone like Amazon says "Thou shalt track everything and report it to us" and suddenly the entire cold chain industry has a heart attack. However, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
I actually don't get up to the Bay Area much anymore, but if I'm ever in that part of the world I'll give you a plink.
Hacker News is interesting when actual experts decide to take part in the conversation. (Otherwise, it's no better than other places.)
So maybe this boils down to why there aren't many energy experts here? Where do they hang out, anyway?
"So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd?"
I can't speak for the "crowd", but personally I've lost more money in solar stocks than any other sector I can think of. And I didn't even get burned by gambling on specific stocks like SunEdison, just by a broad solar ETF.
Just because something is the wave of the future doesn't mean it's a good investment. If you invested in the solar ETF called TAN[1] back when it came out ten years ago, it's down over 90%. It just keeps shrinking and shrinking, although it has bounced around a little.
Why should producing a commodity efficiently be lucrative from a profitability standpoint? Competitive markets should reduce the profit of a safe activity anyone can do to almost zero. And investors who are willing to invest without regard to profits should reduce investment returns to zero or below.
[1]https://www.nyse.com/quote/ARCX:TAN
Any product that your consumer not use at leisure time, get it's profitability reduce to zero.
My guess is that a lot of people have become jaded over time because energy contains such a high degree of business and politics.
Another hurdle might be that it's difficult for pure software developers to enter the field because most problems require a combination of hardware, software, infrastructure and regulation in order to be solved.
> So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd?
Because it's not a problem that can be solved exclusively with software and marketed as a SaaS or eyeballs ploy.
There are plenty of people on HN solving hard problems but they are not too overlapping with the 'high growth' crowd.
This absolutely is a software problem.
Many utilities are interested in enrolling their customers in programs that would allow software to control the energy demands their customers put on the grid.
For instance, if you are a high-energy consuming factory, you may have a fixed amount of energy that you need to use each day, but have some flexibility as to exactly what time of day it is used.
There are companies right now writing software that takes into consideration all the constraints around the electrical usage of the various customers of a utility, and then vary the customer’s electrical usage in real time as the energy demand/production fluctuates on the grid.
Think of it this way. You can either put a battery on the grid to supply energy when the grid needs it OR, you can ask customers to stop using as much energy at that moment. Either way, the supply meets demand.
For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_power_plant
Although the problem you described can be solved with software, is it really "high growth"?
Put another way, can this grid flexibility problem be solved purely with a (currently popular in tech, especially among startups, as the GP alluded) cloud-based SaaS offering?
Or will it require some significant non-software portions to the solutions, such as co-locating hardware and/or high-reliability low-latency networking?
I realized my (own) sibling comment sounded like a bunch of rhetorical questions, since they were asked from the standpoint of my skepticism/suspicion based on what I read.
However, they actually are questions, and I'd appreciate knowing the answers (or best approximations) from an insider.
The wikipedia doesn't provide much insight into the technical underpinnings to draw any conclusions.
Perhaps there's something of an answer to the OC's general question, just in this inscrutability: the details are so foreign/unique but so important that software/computer people would have no intuition on how or where their skills would fit.
You seem to have missed the word 'exclusively'. Obviously software is an (important) part of a solution but it will need a lot of hardware and hardware knowledge in order to be able to be solved well. Your typical high-growth hacker wantrepreneur wouldn't touch a project like that with a 10' pole.
I think maybe the problem is that energy is broadly a solved problem as far as US is concerned. You guys have enough energy that you need and the means to pay for it. The world might move to solar/wind but it doesnt really matter to the average joe in the US because things are pretty good already.
Countries like India, Solar is huge. We don't get enough energy even in our richest cities. Most people cant afford to pay as much as they do. Using coal to fire electricity plants is clogging up the air. Solar has the potential to change a lot here.
It's always nice to hear from someone else in cleantech on here :)
I work for a startup that's focused on making it easier for utilities to integrate DERs into the distribution grid. We make software to simulate the grid, gain real time visibility, and unlock new business models.
I think that software interest in these kinds of industries will be coupled to a maturation of the software profession. When the software industry recognizes the need for professional licensing (like a P.Eng for engineers) in certain disciplines then energy will be much more appealing.
Yes, I agree that software engineering is still in its infancy compared to other engineering fields. I always keep in mind the final passage of They Write the Right Stuff (1996):
"And that’s the point: the shuttle process is so extreme, the drive for perfection is so focused, that it reveals what’s required to achieve relentless execution. The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn’t even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering."
https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
> it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity.
From the perspective of someone who's not a software engineer but rather an ops engineer (a software concierge [1]), I find the idea of a scaling problem to be far more attractive than a software (writing) problem, for obvious reasons.
> Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC?
> Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
The above two combined would be enough. As sibling comments have pointed out, the nature of the industry means that the players involved will be very large and/or political.
It's not that the above three qualities are somehow magical. It's that they're generally necessary (but not sufficient) to create that small, startup (usually high-growth) company environment that appeals to a certain subset here.
Focussing on just one aspect of such an environment without understanding the totality of the appeal (and/or effectiveness) can end up turning into cargo-culting, as with (if you'll forgive the caricature) large, bureaucratic companies attempting to attract talent by refurnishing their common areas with brightly-colored beanbags chairs.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17484840
The issue with such software is that it's mission-critical. In other terms, it needs to be zero-downtime, bullet-proof, audited and certified by external actors and to be supported for the next 30-50 years.
Historically, all those limitations make the "move quickly and break things" approach popular in the current wave of startups impossible and the code with this kind of requirements has historically been implemented by large corporation already working in the industrial domain.
If anything, this feels a domain where GE and large contractors will be chosen to write mission-critical code over startups.
the real thing is that engineering is much harder and more expensive than software engineering.
> I have a startup in cleantech software,
I'd be really interested to find out more about what you're doing. How did you get into that line of work?
We're building an API to interact with utilities. Most interactions with utilities (data requests, interconnection requests, etc.) are still manual processes, adding significant customer acquisition and asset management costs and slowing down deployment for distributed energy resources (DERs) and energy efficiency (EE) vendors. Automating those interactions removes a huge friction point, allowing DERs and EE to scale much more effectively.
I got into this because I was a project engineer for a commercial energy consultant, and I was spending half my time wrangling utility data instead of actually working on designing and deploying projects. So I started UtilityAPI.
Are the utilities giving you access to their db? How are you translating API requests over to the utility if they don't already have an API? Don't take my questions as criticisms as I think it's interesting.
It varies, but by and large we do not have arbitrary access to utility customer data. For most utilities, customers are empowered to give written authorization for a party to act on their behalf to access/manage their utility data, so we have an online form they can fill out to grant that consent within the US-DOE DataGuard Privacy Guidelines (think GDPR for energy data). For some utilities, they are beginning to provide OAuth-style access for customers (I'm actually on the board of this "Green Button Connect" standard, and we'll be coming out with our own OAuth-style solution utilities can buy next year).
Overall, it varies from utility to utility and regulatory authority to regulatory authority. There's an incredible amount of politics and policy involved, but mostly it revolves around clear consent (which isn't ever a problem since the utility customer is the one wanting the energy audit or quote). The complexity of the regulation/policy is what prevents a good fit for most VC models, and other financing options are more experienced and comfortable at this than VC.
Thanks for the response. Didn't immediately see it.
I agree with your sentiment, HN is notorious for armchair-quarterbacking with this subject.
Do you know of any cleantech software that take on remote workers?
Just adding my voice to "you're not alone!". I've been helping build a software solution to make the indeterminacy problem of solar a somewhat predicable one [0] by working to build an API that focuses on solar radiation and PV power production anywhere in the world updating every 10-15 minutes. Software will play a huge part in address these issues with the grid and clean electricity supply, and due to the recent economics of solar and wind, this is only going to accelerate. So I have also been surprised by the lack of competition in this space given the massive industry, real need of solutions, and the scale of money involved [1].
> Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?
I was convinced that this is where I wanted to take my career from reading Bret Victor's piece on a technologists role in address climate change [2], originally thinking that this will never be a huge industry but more and more after reading this piece, realizing how large the opportunity is for software and technologists. The domain is so large there are so many angles, however, I think why VCs might be largely passing on based on your last point "the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic" as it is somewhat true but there seems to be a growing appetite to 'get things done' but I think this is more recent(?).
Something else that might be seen as a risk (certainly occurred to me) is that targeting an industry with so much money, one of them might just solve this problem themselves and they are already an insider to the industry. As much money as VCs have, it's pretty hard to outspend energy giants trying who really want problem X solved.
> Because it really is too late.
This scares me as well, from what looks like a start of a biodiversity crash [3], islands starting to disappear [4] and projecting out what all this means in over the next 50-100 years, it is "too late", however, I'm always reminded how things that look bad can always get worse so it's worth trying to do what we can now.
It's funny (in a sick way) how the joke that VCs always use the tag line of "to change the world", yet these problems are staring us in the face and that same drive seems to be largely missing, maybe cause "playing a small part to make things less horrible in the future" doesn't have the same ring to it..
[0]: https://solcast.com.au/
[1]: https://electrek.co/2018/01/23/tesla-giant-battery-australia...
[2]: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-...
[4]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/09/09/new-study...
> the scale of money involved [1]
And yet in that very example, that scale of money is involved for a battery solution. Notably lacking is how software, or computer technology of any kind, contributed to that dollar amount.
I don't doubt that opportunities do exist, and some have been outlined elsewhere in the thread. I'm just unconvinced that the overall money involved has anythign to do with the money available to pure software solutions.
Even in computing, not all problems can be solved with software.
Right, maybe that is a reason it has been avoided by VCs? Not many 'purely' software options?
Most of these problems probably do require a hardware component for the solution. Battery arbitrage (quite a bit of software involved here than you might think, forecasting generation, demand/supply etc) is probably on the extreme end of a software:hardware ratio (towards hardware investment). Software I'm helping to build is probably on the other extreme and we've still got some (very small) hardware components that we are directly involved with but also a very large one, latest generation geostationary weather satellites, however these are externalized (eg we didn't put them up there, maintain them etc).
There is plenty of scope of problems in the energy world, but yes I'd agree that money for 'pure' software solutions is probably a very small part of the pie. I think this comes down to fact that the electricity grid or its components are at the center of all of it, so integration points have to exist. Maybe also seen as high risk, energy supply is ignored when working well but becomes very obvious when it's not.
Glad to see in this thread there are more people on HN than I thought working in this area, a lot of effort is still needed.
> that is a reason it has been avoided by VCs? Not many 'purely' software options?
This does strike me as reason enough, yes, not that it's necessarily rational. Although there are certainly VC dollars available for non-software startups, including consumer hardware (which strikes me as exceedingly risky) and biotech, when it comes to software, there seems to be a trend to keeping it pure, even avoiding buying computer hardware and staying on cloud, despite the tremendous cost premium (especially when scaling!).
I suspect the overall instinct is from the enterprise (or even consumer) software days, where the engineering cost to produce the software is completely decoupled from the revenue it can generate. Add a significant hardware component and the VC imagines they'll be permanently coupled, with profit forever limited by that hardware cost. Of course, this is also true for SaaS, perhaps more so when the hardware is rented at a markup from someone else. I remain mystified, but it's mostly speculation, anyway.
didn't know 'cleantech' was a term, but it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_technology
What sort of tech work specifically? What languages are used?
Here's a comment on what specific software needs there are in distributed solar[1], and here's a comment on where to look around for interesting energy companies that may be hiring software engineers[2].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250336
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154
The answers to your questions are basically "all of it" and "whatever makes the system work." The Department of Energy is pouring millions into 'smart grid' R&D, which includes everything from good old cybersecurity all the way up through nuclear power research, stopping at coal, diesel, steam, solar, and wind along the way.
> pouring millions into 'smart grid' R&D
Unfortunately, that essentially contradict's the GP's "isn't a research problem anymore" assertion.
Similarly, millions, even tens of millions, isn't an impressive amount of money by VC-funded high-growth tech startup standards, so that also belies the notion that it's not just research any more.
I feel like you're looking for a hole to poke. It seems pretty obvious that R&D funding is still good even when existing technologies are good-enough-to-deploy-in-mass.
Ford got past the R&D stage for the Model-T a long time ago, but they continue to pour money into R&D to make better cars. The same happens for energy technology. We have clean energy systems that can compete with fossil fuels today, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep seeking new innovations that make them even better.
I wasn't suggesting that research can no longer exist, just that the OC's whole point was that this field is no longer about just research and attempting to open up the discussion to a broader interest group, of software engineers, based on that premise of mass scaling.
Since the GP was a direct reply to the comment with that premise, asking about the kinds of work and technology, it seemed to me like a borderline-disingenuous to respond with something related to research and not mass scaling, especially since that response was "all of it".
I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I'm glad to see so many comments here in response to one of the Utility API founders.
Just wanted to note something very important:
As a co-founder of a very new cleantech software startup, and as a guy coming into the energy industry initially with only a background in software, you need to understand that the energy industry (especially in the US) is incredibly diverse and is really an ecosystem in itself.
The market is not just regulated utilities and their customers. There are unregulated markets, power generators, ISOs, cleantech vendors, project developers, installers, financiers, insurance companies, and plenty more players in the space. Each of these actors serves a different role in the process of getting a solar array or battery up and running on a building or out in the field.
And to echo some other comments, the hardware is pretty much all there by now, with prices getting lower by the month, and the only thing that's missing is the right software to help scale deployment of capital, energy assets, installation labor, etc.
[Impending plug is coming]
In fact, this is exactly what my company, Station A (https://stationa.com), is doing. We've realized that in the commercial and industrial sectors, renewables are seeing slower penetration because the high soft costs associated with project development for the medium-to-small energy consumers. This stems primarily from a lack of access to critical data, biased sales tactics (solar developers only want to sell you solar, even if it won't make a difference), and the inability for project developers to really find the right locations to develop with the right technology in a scalable fashion.
This sector is ripe for disruption purely with software, as the hardware has become so much more commoditized.
At our 40 acre walnut orchard in Northern California, we water via two wells (30 foot water depth) powered by two PG&E-powered electric pumps (60hp and 20hp). There is an agricultural discount if we run them nights and weekends, so we typically run them on weekends for 12-24 hours. Summer daytime temps are often 90-95 degrees F. Nighttime watering is also helpful due to less water evaporation.
But given the duck curve, I expect PG&E will at some point encourage 10am to 3pm power usage. Then it might be cheaper, electricity-wise, to run the pumps 3 times a week, during the heat of the day, instead of overnight on weekends.
Bad: More evaporation, so more water use.
Good: Maybe cheaper, and since trees reduce their photosynthesis when it gets too hot (to decrease water loss), daytime watering may increase growth by keeping the air temperature lower.
You’re in an interesting spot. You could generate your own power, since you don’t need to store it.
I’d take a long look at how much power you need, and when 5 years of electric bills are more expensive than your own installation. Maybe never, but prices do keep falling.
For those of you skeptical that software can address this problem.
Adding storage to the grid is one solution, but adding software that can better influence the demand various customers put on the grid is also surprisingly effective.>software that can better influence the demand various customers put on the grid is also surprisingly effective.
Every time the smart grid comes up, I imagine the power company turning off my air conditioning because the ability to turn off my air conditioning made them feel safe to under-provision.
What if you could set parameters under which the power company could turn off your air conditioning, and you got paid as a result?
Such as:
* You may turn off my air-conditioning for $2.00/hour as long as my room's temperature is below 75 Fahrenheit.
* You may turn off my air-conditioning for $10.00/hour as long as my room's temperature is below 80 Fahrenheit.
* You may turn off my air conditioning for a maximum of 1-hour per day for $60.00/hour, as long as my room's temperature is below 85 Fahrenheit
* You may, at no point, turn off my air-conditioning between the hours of 10pm-6am.
Anecdotally, we are paid $10/mo for the utility to have the option to disable our A/C for up to a couple hours a day. They do not pay us for the time they actually disable A/C, but I don’t it hasn’t actually happened yet, so we are “winning” that bet. I think that customers would bid this option lower than $10, given the option, but agree others wouldn’t touch it. I hope that the price mitigated the real risk of supply planning skew mentioned by the GP.
I would only do it if either I actually controlled the software that did the turning off or there were a third-party that could be trusted to monitor and provided an escrow account with a huge financial penalty payable to me if the utility ever broke the rules.
I have absolutely no reason to trust them unless their incentives align with mine, and, here, they do not.
Even in that case, I would only agree to the 75F limit, because, for the other ones, it would take way too much time (and possibly too much energy, as well) to get back down. Air conditioning isn't instantaneous, and one can't just turn it on when one needs it, if there's more than a trivial temperature (or humidity[1]) drop.
[1] For some areas of the country, that's another, bigger problem with allowing an outsider to turn off the AC: go too long without and the humidity goes up too high. Now you have to buy a thermostat with a humidistat, just in case, even if you didn't need one before.
That's sure one way to do it. Another one is to have strict on- device limitations for how much control the power company does have. E.g. maximum delay of one minute for the air conditioning, one hour for the ice maker. A little flexibility goes a long way in load management.
It works where the power company might just raise your air conditioning thermostat for a few hours.
Your Nest can already do this:
Your residential AC is a long, long way down the smart grid priority chain.
The steel foundry down the road is a lot easier to convince - their profits are directly tied to the cost of energy, and it is relatively easy for them to scale energy use up or down.
Current UK status:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Is there a US equivalent?
Worldwide map:
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=...
We monitor our national status here in the US via a single Twitter account these days. You can say things have become pretty streamlined.
Better view: https://electricityproduction.uk
If they are expecting to lower energy costs then why do they want more subsidies? Or on the other end a carbon tax to penalize competitors? I'm sure there are policy prescriptions other than subsidies that can be beneficial to the industry but the ones that seem to get the most discussion are production tax credits and carbon tax.
It still costs money to build this stuff. And you might be asking why does coal and gas get subsidies?
They get deprecation like everyone else which helps subsidize the building of facilities as well as certain on going capital expenditures. Why do they need a production tax credit also (industry specific)? Talking simply renewables so coal & gas is another discussion.
Just to be evenhanded, the article is touting wind and solar, not really coal and gas.
Power sector isn't ready, nor anyone else. Developing power to heavy usage areas from available generation areas is like building new railroads. Success will arise from new, large, government-granted monopoly operations and be slow and pricey without political support at local levels and paying to or seizing from the many literal NIMBY people affected.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609766/how-to-get-wyoming...
Alternatively, of course, solar roof tiles get mandated for new construction and these problems go away.
I'm not really in favor of an energy production mandate for new homes, but even if I was, I wouldn't want to be locked into solar, or even solar roof tiles specifically by law or statute.
An economic mandate could be triggered by an imperative to balance climate-control costs with passive home production systems.
Are you implying there are or might be in the future other sources of home energy production than solar?
Oh, and if there are, why not just mandate that there has to be some form, rather than mandating only solar?
"The US electricity system is at an extremely sensitive and uncertain juncture. More and more indicators point toward a future in which wind and solar power play a large role. But that future is not locked in. It still depends in large part on policies and economics that, while moving in the right direction, aren’t there yet. And so the people who manage US electricity markets and infrastructure, who must make decisions with 20-, 30-, even 50-year consequences, are stuck making high-stakes bets in a haze of uncertainty."
Anyone looking at the past 10 years of solar and wind growth and price declines who is still "unsure" what the future will bring in the next 10 years and what they should be betting on doesn't deserve to run the given power companies.
Obviously there is going to be an increased amount of solar and wind coming online in the near future, and I don't think that anyone running a power system network at the distribution or transmission level is going to dispute that. However there definitely is uncertainty about how much, and there is even more uncertainty about what our loads are going to look like with large amounts of EVs coming online and potential battery deployments. These things could have a big impact on the size and timing of grid peaks and inertia which can require big investments to manage appropriately. And as with any big investment, you want to make it at the right time, and you want to be sure that you are going to make a return on that investment.
It's also important to note that the value of solar/wind on a grid declines as they become a larger percentage of the power. These power sources are much less consistent and storage technology doesn't exist yet. And if it did, it would require big investments, which obviously dilutes any cost advantage.
Since this is a discussion mentioning software a lot, it's worth mentioning that big battery cars can be a storage source if they're plugged in at work and at home -- a prediction of whether the owner wants to be full combined with a prediction of near-term renewable generation and you've got a lot of storage without having to pay for it.
Tell that to the designers of the Pentium 4. Exponential growth can't continue forever, and it's not always obvious when it's going to end.
OK if you know the answers - what % of cars in the US will be fully electric in 10 years? 20 years? Will offshore windfarms be allowed in the US? Will household electricity consumption rise or fall? Will Trump subsidize coal? People really don't know the answers to those questions. Of course they're unsure.
> Will household electricity consumption rise or fall?
It looks like it'll plateau. As we add more appliances, they just tend to become more efficient.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...
Its over- any attempt to delay solars victory with regulations, will result in solar being deployed elsewhere (offshore/ south-america) and then delivered at combat prices to the border, deforming a future energy grid even further.
That's only so if you don't take transmission losses into account. Somehow many people tend to forget that transmission isn't free or even cheap.
Indeed. Energy in chemical form is astonishingly cheap to transmit (and store), but, as electricity, it's completely different. The storage problem is part of the point of the article, of course.
I always thought this was one of the advantages of rooftop solar, that it would reduce transmission costs by bringing generation closer to consumption, especially at peak, and not necessarily because of costs due to losses in the transmission lines, but costs due to maintaining the necessary capacity in those lines (a challenge for both the SFBA and NYC, IIUC).
Unless the government start charging crazy fees for imported power...
I wish there was some way to unionize dis-aligned interests. The whole public and all of the industry pays for such mobster schemes, but is unable to rally a viable defense against one little lobby, because...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
One of the things I love most of all about Solar is it really doesn't matter how incompetent policy makers are.
Irrelevant of what they're doing, you can cover your roof in panels and stick in some storage and forget that a grid even exists.
People spend a lot of time complaining about things they should just ignore.
Of course, that's dependent on permitting, which can fine you or require you to tear everything down on a whim. It also has huge up front capital costs, with battery replacement being additional burdens going forward, and you probably need to change your lifestyle significantly and rework your house structurally to be more power efficient.
Certainly some of the local legislation regarding such permitting is affected by local electric companies wanting to dissuade that. But I would hope that the tides are turning in the direction of easier personal energy independence over the long term.
The problem is wasted potential. Why stop at some arbitrary capacity that may very well change with time? Better to cover the entire roof with solar panels. Use as much as needed and sell the excess energy. Why should people have to deal with energy storage? Let the power companies worry about that. The power grid can act as a backup.
The utilities foresaw this and didn't make net metering available to me. I presume my business model threatens the utilities somehow. They invented a kWh credit system to "pay" people with, and these credits expire every year if unused. Under these conditions, it'd be stupid to produce excess energy since I'd get nothing for it. Even if I were to somehow match production with consumption, I'd still have to pay them for the infrastructure.
Sure, until you have a week of overcast in the winter and suddenly the grid is very much occupying your thoughts.
51/52 ain't bad.
It's a benefit to still being connected to the grid. Though I'm sure you'll find "service fees and taxes" eating up a majority of the power bill you thought you were cutting (e.g. my natural gas bill costs $20 monthly to run @ 0 usage, regardless of only using it for emergency heat for the furnace).
FWIW, Tesla's (crude) Powerwall calculator suggests 3 powerwalls would account for an instance of this with 100% power generation via solar (7 + days backup, it says). Of course I'd hate to see that installation invoice, though.
Are you off-grid? It's not for everyone: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/so-you-wanna-go-off-grid...
I apologize in advance for what is pretty much a tangent, but I wanted to mention a kind of passive wind generator that has no moving parts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator
It's basically one half of Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm turned sideways and powered by wind instead of gravity.
Imagine a conductive screen, like an aluminum screen door and, upwind of it, a spray nozzle that emits mist. There is a conductive ring around the nozzle that is DC-biased so that the mist droplets carry a charge. The wind moves the droplets to the screen, collecting the charge.
There are no moving parts so you wouldn't injure birds.
At first glance it seems like this would constantly consume fresh water due to evaporation.
This link indicates the process relies on water's conductivity: http://www.amasci.com/emotor/kelvin.html
(and works in spite of the higher resistivity of fresh, or even deionized water)
It would be very difficult to spray saltwater through nozzles, the evaporation would cause salt buildup and clog them.
This is super cool. Is someone working on this and making progress?
I don't know. I learned about it from Rex Research http://rexresearch.com/
I don't know that fatalism and hopelessness are motivating for decision makers (who are seeking greater margins regardless of policy and lobbies).
Is our transformation to 100% clean energy ASAP a certain eventuality? On a long enough timescale, it would be irrational for utilities to not choose both lower cost and more sustainable environmental impact ('price-rational', 'environment-rational').
We should expect storage and generation costs to continue to fall as we realize even just the current pipeline of capitalizable [storage] research.
Solar energy is free.
I’ve mentioned it before. I think I have a new low cost approach to residential solar if anyone is interested in helping or teaming up.
At first glance I read "solar wind is coming" - which is a more alarming and perhaps even less prepared for condition.
For some perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM
Aw, I misread as Solar Wind is coming, got excited for some strange new form of electricity harvesting :(
> President Trump has embraced fossil fuels, ...
still unbelievable
They wouldn't be "coming" nearly as fast if the government didn't plunder to subsidize them.
The article calls for more state meddling into what market should sort out in its own. Every meddling makes it messier and the solution is of course more meddling, etc. until one day the US turns into a failed centrally planned economy similar to most of Europe today.