By Scott Hinson– Pecan Street’s Digital Dirt initiative was designed to accelerate the development of cost-effective ways to predict how land management practices can increase soil organic carbon, a promising climate solution. The next generation of high-tech sensors will surely be part of the solution, but they a still far from being something most producers can use to obtain accurate results. We see significant near-term potential for simulation models to fill this gap.
Help Save The Grid, Get Free Stuff: Our New Study Needs 50 More Participants in Austin
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Inc. – Want to reduce your home’s grid impact without turning up your AC? You may be a perfect fit for a study we’re conducting with the University of Michigan that will test automatic, on-the-fly conservation events without adjusting your thermostat.
More Clean Power in Texas will Require More Grid Transmission and DER Development
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The ERCOT power grid is back in the news. Texas experienced its hottest May on record and June has seen consistent record-breaking temperatures as well. ERCOT has been busy trying to balance extremely high grid demand with various electric generation plant outages. On June 12, ERCOT recorded its highest ever grid demand of over 75GW. That record only lasted one week before grid demand climbed to more than 76 GW on June 20. And we’re wasting emission-free wind and solar power.
When it Comes to Energy and Equity, Metrics Aren’t Enough.
Guest Blog by Justin Schott, Energy Equity Project – Measuring the impact of clean energy investment is important. But measurement alone is only part of the journey. And in isolation, it may even be dangerous. In a post last year, Meredith Fowlie wrote “What gets measured will get managed. And possibly manipulated.” So, the Energy Equity Project set out to create a national framework for measuring and advancing equity in clean energy programs and investments. Here’s a preview.
Cooling a Warming Planet: What Homes in Texas and New York Can Teach Us About Cooling Demand Around the Globe
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – We were interested to see how our homes in these two regions compared now and what will happen in the future as climate change brings warmer summers to most of the country, so we performed a series of regressions to explore differences in the cooling load between homes in Austin, TX homes and Ithaca, NY.
