Brendan Pierpont

No way their generation cost is that low. I know you mention it doesn’t include authorized rate of return (WACC, not just ROE). Does it include depreciation alongside all the operating expenses?

Came across the phrase "cognitive DDOS" to describe our present culture.

Understood instantly what it meant.

Probably not for this early deployment. But long run they’re targeting somewhere around $2000/kW for a 100 hour battery, which can charge at the cheapest few percent of hours a year and provide firm capacity whenever needed. Seems like that would have a lot of value.

Gigantic Form Energy battery to power Google data center in Minnesota The startup has struck a deal with Xcel Energy to build a 30 gigawatt-hour battery plant that will deliver clean energy, round the clock, to a Google…

Google and Form are planning to build 30 GWh of energy storage for a data center. This turns data centers into an ultimate flexible load: www.canarymedia.com/articles/bat...

In 2025, the U.S. added 53 GW of new electricity capacity, the most since 2002. In 2026, it's on track for 86 GW, mostly solar/storage. To put that in perspective, the U.S. is expected to add more capacity in the next two years than it did in an entire decade of the 2000s combined.

They don’t need more tax breaks. They do want to get online faster. Maybe the state could direct these resources into getting clean energy online faster, scaling up distributed solar and batteries and efficiency and demand flexibility, and protecting low income customers from rising rates.

Law Dork | Chris Geidner | Substack The Supreme Court, law, politics, and more. Click to read Law Dork, by Chris Geidner, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote, strikes down Trump’s tariffs as not authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

Roberts writes the court’s opinion.

More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com

Valuing wildfire smoke–related mortality benefits from climate mitigation | PNAS Human-induced climate change has increased wildfire risks, associated air pollution, and health damages in North America. Despite its large potenti...

🚨🔥 NEW: Increasing mortality from wildfire smoke is directly traceable to greenhouse gas emissions. In our new paper in @pnas.org , we show that every megaton of CO2 emitted costs the US more than 10 million dollars in health costs from wildfire smoke. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Early last year a bunch of coal plants got an exemption from needing to comply with new Mercury and Air Toxics rules. Turns out most of those plants had the technology and ability to meet the new standards, they just didn't want to use them. www.edf.org/media/trump-...

Unlocking industrial electrification in California A new study finds that California can achieve cleaner air, lower utility bills, and fewer climate emissions by modernizing the design of electricity rates.

Great stuff from @industriouslabs.bsky.social on rate design solutions to encourage electrification of industry in California. industriouslabs.org/archive/unlo...

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports The East African country is making use of cheap hydropower and Chinese electric vehicles to ditch the internal combustion engine.

“Our transition to EVs is aimed at ensuring our energy sovereignty,” said Ethiopia’s state minister for transport and logistics. “As a net importer of fuel, we are affected by global supply and price fluctuations. In contrast, EVs use electricity, which we produce locally and can price ourselves.”

The Storage Gap BBESS Report While Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) deployment is increasing across the U.S., growth remains concentrated in California and Texas. This report examines why Eastern markets, including PJM, MISO,...

Great piece on barriers to deploying battery energy storage across U.S. electricity markets: gridlab.org/portfolio-it...

Amazing graph right here. Also makes me wonder how this variable relates to infrastructure costs / build, healthcare costs and a ton of other things.

Energy modeler pals, do you think energy modeling is a science? As a field, do its theories make testable predictions? Does it have mechanisms to discard theories whose predictions don't match observations? If it's not a science, what role does or should it play in society? Should people trust it?

Wild - long duration storage procurement in Aus. goes entirely to lithium ion with 9-12 hours of duration. No flow batteries or other chemistries.

Morning Digest: For the first time ever, New Mexico Republicans won't field a Senate candidate It's one of three statewide races that the GOP is forfeiting this year

New Mexico Republicans have made history, just not in a way anyone wants to: For the first time since the Land of Enchantment became a state in 1912, Republicans won’t field a candidate in a U.S. Senate race.

And 45X for the manufacturing - in both cases as long as you can get through the FEOC maze. I think the ITC is subject to recapture if the asset goes out of service before 5 years though. But maybe!

Interesting.... I feel like energy density is such a premium in vehicles that I have a hard time seeing it work, but maybe at the right price! Like would you take a new EV with 200 mile range if it were $20k? Maybe!

Ah.... different*

Fair, the governance side of the equation and the incentives it creates is completely difference. Just trying to highlight that public power entities are not actually 100% debt financed.

They went ahead an built a massive battery plant in NC and now they intend to use it (instead of abandoning ship or retooling for LFP grid batteries like other automakers).

That "proprietary capital" is effectively equity. They don't raise it from investors, it's accumulated retained earnings or sometimes contributed by federal appropriations. But using it up has an opportunity cost.

+ If you look at their balance sheet, it's about $20 billion of long term debt, $20 billion of other liabilities, and $20 billion of "proprietary capital" (mostly retained earnings), which total up to their $60 billion in assets: d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-00013769...

Good question. Not sure the underlying drivers but global competition from Chinese automaker and finally making investments in battery manufacturing where they have line of sight into the actual costs have to be part of the story.

TVA may be somewhat unique in that they have a fairly explicit public credit guarantee. But even there credit rating agencies look at leverage metrics in their evaluation: www.fitchratings.com/research/us-...

No, they don't raise equity that demands a return in the traditional sense. But maintaining an adequate debt service coverage ratio and financing some of the investment from retained earnings implicitly functions like equity.

A while back I did this analysis of NYPA. Borrowing capacity is not unlimited, and while they can issue new debt to finance expansion (and NYPA has significant room to lever up), eventually that buffer kicks in to maintain their credit rating. publicpowerny.org/wp-content/u...

Maybe it’ll trickle down

Public power entities set rates at a level that gives them a buffer above debt service (to manage their credit rating). It implies a cost of equity around 6-8%, but usually debt is like 70-80% of total capital. So, much lower cost of capital but it’s not equal to the cost of debt.

And currently, that weighted average cost of capital is like 6% (in Australia, which has similar interest rates and slightly higher inflation as we do). Vs. typically utility weighted average cost of capital in the US of 7-8%, mostly driven by our high ROEs.