Vincent M. (he/him) is a U.S.-based journalist who types at 6,000 feet, usually while wearing all black. When he's not immersing himself in survival video games, he's probably cooking, reading, or tending to his pet rabbits.
It’s already difficult to conceptualize the scale of wind turbines themselves. It can be even harder to wrap your head around how much energy they can supply. Just one gigawatt is enough energy to power between 750,000 to a million US homes.1 Here in the United States,
We can’t control the weather (yet). But we can control how we store weather-dependent renewable energy. So how do we snatch up our lightning in a bottle? Lithium-ion batteries can only go so far…and our historical large-scale go-to, pumped storage hydropower, only works in certain locations. What if
Growing the world’s renewable energy capacity has always been a delicate balancing act, and one of the many plates we have to spin during that act is land use. Utility-scale solar and wind parks are rapidly expanding in size and prevalence all over the world, including right near my
Plastic is firmly established in our daily lives, but it’s only existed for about a century or so. As we consider the long-term harms of rapidly accruing pollution, it begs the question…would it be so bad to finally break up with plastics? And is it even possible at
I know, I know. I talk a lot about heat pumps, but there’s a good reason for it. It’s a fantastic technology that uses a little physics exploit to get more heat energy out than energy you put in. The problem is that most of the time, the
Let’s Stop Pretending AI Is New I’ve been thinking a lot about generative AI lately. It’s kind of hard not to with the latest ChatGPT announcement. The technologies we’re witnessing are powerful, impressive, and developing fast. Everything you’re been seeing on screen, for example, is
About a year ago, I first talked about the Aeromine rooftop wind turbine and its unique “motionless” design. Now, a new rooftop turbine is hitting the scene. Norwegian company Ventum Dynamics just released its shrouded wind turbine, the VX175, to the market in February.1 It’s also deployed in
If your taste in TV is anything like mine, then most of your familiarity with what analog computing looks like probably comes from the backdrops of Columbo. Since digital took over the world, analog has been sidelined into what seems like a niche interest at best. But this retro approach
Hydropower is a great source of energy that doesn’t suffer the same intermittency problems as other renewables. But dams fail. A lot. About 95% of the existing hydropower systems in the States were built before 1995, and over half operate using equipment designed over 80 years ago.1 This
Whenever I cover wind turbines many of you ask about what’s available for home applications. At the moment, I’ve got both good news and bad news. The bad news is that the current market for residential wind is…less than great. The good news? We have a lot
In the summer of 2023, the Rijnstate hospital of Elst, The Netherlands opened its doors. What makes this particular campus interesting is how it generates its energy. Heat pumps, PV panels, and an electrolyzer all work in concert to maintain a constant supply of power. The building collects energy from
What’s stopping us from converting the open ocean into a massive solar power plant? To the tune of almost 6 times more energy than the world uses every year. Several companies are trying to do just that by floating solar panels out on the open ocean, but that raises