John Smillie
@johnsmillie42.bsky.social
4.5K followers 880 following 8.9K posts
Husband, father, dog owner, hiker, climate action advocate, amateur energy nerd, heat pump evangelist, audiobook enthusiast.
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johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Yes, very low for typical integrated steel mill as well if you wanted to decarbonize, would take more like 4000MW.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Wind won't save you money if you keep paying it feed in tariffs like this
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
The numbers don't tie
unenthusiast.com
In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/
hammancheez.bsky.social
"The chancellor approved it"
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Got a wind farm nearby? some do tours
Reposted by John Smillie
jennifernuzzo.bsky.social
Some of these people have now been fired and rehired TWICE since January. The current state of dysfunction is mind boggling.
sherylnyt.bsky.social
OOOPS! UPDATE: Two HHS officials tell me that disease detectives, measles response officers, global health officials and the MMWR staff were laid off by mistake and will be reinstated. But Washington office is still RIFed
sherylnyt.bsky.social
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
Reposted by John Smillie
kjephd.bsky.social
Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...
The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.

A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
That's what I like about the geogrid concept
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Yeah now that I think about it, never mind
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Yes, it was supposed to be about people like flight attendants having to be nice to jerks at work
Reposted by John Smillie
lenasun.bsky.social
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
My Great Gandmother spanned Teddy Roosevelt to Obama
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
God, we are so screwed for the next pandemic
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Very easy to eat up 50MW at a steel mill
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Heat is harder to move, so doing fracking right next to a town or industrial facility would be required for Fervo. Closed loop geothermal like XGS and Eavor are more well suited.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Somewhere between Manhattan (still quite noticeable) and Whittier, AK, where everyone lives in one building.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
He also claims to be able to eliminate T&D costs, which isn't really the case unless you are an on-site user who can absorb the 30-50MW minimum viable scale...

Less T more likely than less D, though doing district heating could certainly avoid D build out.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Heat pumps get them close for low temp, but can create expensive demand spikes and may necessitate large distribution grid (or building efficiency) build out. The more heat you take off of the electric grid's plate, the better.
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
I've heard a few pods with Araque. Here he mentions he believes they can be competitive with gas at $3/mmBTU for heat, which would be huge. Other renewables are competitive for electricity, but not high temp heat.
volts.wtf
Today on Volts: geothermal startup Quaise is using microwaves to pulverize rock, drill down miles, & access levels of heat that cause water to go supercritical, so it holds exponentially more energy. The promise is geothermal power with 10X the productivity -- enough to lure FF giants into the biz.
Super-deep geothermal drilling ... with microwaves
I talk with Quaise CEO Carlos Araque about a technology that could persuade the oil and gas industry to drill for heat instead of fuel.
www.volts.wtf
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
yeah fair, rock grinding is quite simple, probably only makes sense as a byproduct of another application vs. doing it the old fashioned way
johnsmillie42.bsky.social
Listening to it now and one of the byproducts seems to be efficiently pulverized rock. Perhaps a tool for efficient ERW?