Sam
@SlBrandin
At a nexus of finance, energy, and technology. All opinions are my own. Also skiing.
The most important thing I’ve ever learned about wholesale power is that energy is a commodity, capacity is not.
Lanny Nickell (CEO of SPP) speaking with exceptional clarity regarding the current moment: “Elected officials at the state and federal levels are focused on helping our country become a dominant player in the energy sector and a world leader in the development of artificial…
The implications here go well beyond SPP If other markets don’t open up similar avenues for developers they are going to place extreme stranded cost risk on their rate payers due to large loads abandoning mid-stage projects for faster markets
Gamma exposures everywhere for those with the eyes to see
We need a new Marshall Plan for shipping air conditioning units to Europe
Complex systems and processes are essentially encrypted such that one needs a key in the form of an information structure to productively interact with it
It’s a capacity problem not an energy problem
Looking for an energy expert to interview on my podcast. I want to get in the weeds on what will happen the wild AI worlds. As AI actually becomes capable of substituting for human labor, your country's GDP will be denominated by your AI population size, which is downstream of…
The implications here go well beyond SPP If other markets don’t open up similar avenues for developers they are going to place extreme stranded cost risk on their rate payers due to large loads abandoning mid-stage projects for faster markets
Very significant: @SPPorg just unveiled a major new initiative to lead on hyperscale load integration w/ accelerated speed to power for flexible loads, fast-tracked for implementation within months.🧵
The only logical solution is to tariff copper
If America doesn’t unleash more affordable, reliable, and secure American energy, U.S. grids could experience 100x more blackouts in just 5 years. The Trump Administration recognizes the time to act is now. foxbusiness.com/economy/trumps…
Assuming continuous and instantaneous fidelity of data on line conditions, how dynamic could line ratings theoretically be? Is there like a polynomial approximation of line rating by duration from normal rating (indefinite) all the way to fault current (~1 cycle)?
Don’t let hydrogen people off the hook that easy
Few ideas capture the delusional state of US energy discourse quite like the belief that new nuclear reactors will materially support load growth before the mid-2030s
I hate to break it to the market purists (my own people) But if solar continues to be bought and built in the market on a purely competitive basis without ITC… that will be clear confirmation that we should’ve kept subsidizing solar for national interests
While the sit rep here isnt good for energy production, it could have a positive impact on system topology by reducing storage co-location with renewable gen Siting storage co-located with production is grossly inefficient and was largely guided by antiquated ITC policies
BESS tax credits (ITC & 45Y) remain through 2033, but wind/solar face 2027 deadline. Since ~50% of US BESS projects are paired with renewables, reduced wind/solar installations will also cut BESS deployments despite intact incentives @RhoMoIola @rhomotion
I often wonder how to resolve mistrust in institutions/experts given that it’s a fundamental limiting factor in scaling societal hosting capacity (aka increasing quality of life for the greatest number of people possible)
A company’s market cap represents how much energy, or ability to do work, is stored in the low entropy information structure of the organization