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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I mean, if anything, the fact that the Oil & Gas industry uses hydrogen for refining means that there is a possible, robust market for green hydrogen to get into (don’t like this because it means oil is still the focus, when we need to consider green chemistry and stop with oil).

    The O&G industry also helped usher in solar PV at an early stage because of the needs of remote power in hazardous environments such as offshore rigs and near potential sources of release like oil tanks (I used to work as an engineer in O&G myself).

    There’s actually a lot of work by GE and Mitsubishi to start shipping new gas turbines to be capable of firing a non-zero amount of hydrogen in addition to natural gas. I think some plants are even capable of doing 50/50 hydrogen/natural gas, with that former number increasing year over year.

    Hydrogen could outstrip conventional fuels someday. The bottleneck has always been supply though.

    If renewables are so abundant and cheap, then we’ll finally have a reason to deploy hydrogen infrastructure on a massive scale (at least in the US). Hell, you look at the major inverter manufacturers for utility PV like Sungrow, and they have containerized electrolyzers ready for implementation. I haven’t done a market survey, but if they’re in the game, then so are other players.

    If you want to be convinced of the progress of hydrogen, I would look into the project that Sargent & Lundy is working on in Utah. They’re planning on using a salt cavern for hydrogen storage, and I believe there is a CCGT onsite as well to make use of the generation.

    Hydrogen is even on the minds of offshore wind developers like Siemens.

    The substance isn’t doomed like others in this thread make it out. There is active interest in the market to develop a supply chain and economy.

    Edit: The one thing I don’t see a lot of people talk about though is where the raw materials for this hydrogen will come from… Likely groundwater unfortunately. Since groundwater is already a highly sought after resource for consumption and agriculture, I’m not sure if hydrogen in this way will take off. This is why offshore hydrogen seems to be more promising, but as we see with wave and tidal power, the ocean environment just sucks for any commercialization.

    It’s an uphill battle, but the same can be said for the climate crisis in general. Hope we make enough progress before it’s too late.






  • I agree with all of this as an electrical engineer in the field. Base load is only base load because of the load profile of devices connected to the grid having either an on or off switch. Most of the time this means motors/HVACs, but the world of electronics is coming to that equipment just like how inverters have changed how we export solar PV and wind to the grid. VFDs, soft starters, and the like will make our industrial processes that much more efficient. We just need to spread awareness and ramp up implementation, just as much as for renewables themselves.







  • Yeah I thought OpenAI came out and said that they modeled the voice of a different actress, and they don’t want to share their identity out of a respect for privacy.

    It could just be a coincidence that Altman tweeted the image from Her, and people made the connection between the voice and ScarJo, especially since she did something extreme similar in that movie.

    Could be coincidental. Could not be. We don’t really have the evidence to say either way, but maybe ScarJo’s suit will affect change so that better rights are granted to people and their digital twins.








  • Charging at home is the way to go. You may be able to refinance your home if you haven’t paid it off, and rope in upgrades for new charging circuits.

    Plus, there are programs being developed - note none have been finalized - to allow EVs to give power back to the grid and so you could one day make money back from keeping your car plugged in over night. There are already time of use rates too for many markets in the US and EU. Plus there’s peace of mind knowing that your car will always be fully topped off every morning.

    As an electrical engineer that has studied the idea of Plug-in Hybrid EVs (PHEVs) and Battery EVs (BEVs), personally I always try to persuade people to look into PHEVs for personal and societal reasons, but even if you don’t go with Tesla for your BEV purchase I think it’s still worth it to go electric. Maybe consider the Chevy Bolt EUV, Nissan Leaf, or Volkswagen ID.4. On the PHEV side, there’s the Ford Escape Plug-in Hybrid and Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe. Lots of tax credits out there too for new ($7,500) and used ($4,000) so EVs are definitely still an opportunity!