Why Your Electricity Only Goes Up (While Reliability Goes Down)

Peter Brecht00:01

All right, welcome to Local Energy. My name is Peter Brecht. My co-host Wade Spear is out traveling still for the holidays if you can't believe it, but I'm here today with our guest, Meredith Angwin. Meredith, how are you doing?

Meredith00:14

Fine, thank you. Glad to be here.

Peter Brecht00:16

I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. A few weeks ago, I was probably about two months ago at this point, was reading some posts on social media and they were all about the grid and the electric grid. And I realized very quickly that I had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying on either side of the conversation. So I went on Twitter and I said, Hey, any, any books you would recommend in your book was, was shared quite quickly after.

And so your book your most recent book is shorting the grid and I know you wrote a handful of others prior to that and then you have a Substack which I love the name of the electric grandma. I love that that title. It's so fitting but you know I'm really thankful for the book that you wrote because you know every conversation now having read through it twice Wants to educate myself and then a second time to prepare for this interview

Meredith00:52

Yes.

It.

Peter Brecht01:12

Everything's starting to make more sense to me. So there was a recent headline two weeks ago. Goldman Sachs says that, eight out of 13 us regional power markets are already at or below critical spare capacity levels. And before that would have boggled my mind, but now I'm able to at least sort of have an understanding of what that means and what it means for, our power going into the winter. Maybe we could start out with a basic principle, the basics of how the, power grid works.

Something that I didn't know was that power has to be created and then consumed almost simultaneously. Is that right?

Meredith01:51

Yes, that's right. And it's something people generally don't know. Somehow they feel, there's a lot of it, and I'll just use some of it. But every time you turn on a light, at some level, a power plant responds by making more power. And if you turn off the light, the power plant makes less. Now, obviously, this isn't actually happening quite that way because there's

Millions of people turning lights on and off and hundreds of power plants. So basically it all kind of even out instead of like the light went on and now the power plants up here and down the light went off in the power. It's like a whole bunch of lights went on and so the power plant is gearing up, kind of thing. Or the grid is gearing up, but you have to keep it in balance. If you don't keep it in balance, if there's not the same amount being produced as consumed,

Then the frequency on the grid will change and the grid frequency, that is the 60 cycles per second, is held in very, very close requirements. That basically it can't go below 59.7 cycles per second or something like that for more than two minutes.

Peter Brecht03:13

Mm-hmm.

Meredith03:15

I mean, it's very, very tightly controlled. And so one of the things that happens is that if you end up with, for example, have, let's say you have a sunny day and so there's a lot of solar going on the grid for a few hours, but it could really swamp the grid and cause the,

The frequency to vary. And so what happens is that usually solar is curtailed, which means that the grid operator says to the commercial solar, get off the grid right now. And then the commercial solar has said many times, hey, yeah, you can send me to go off the grid, but you know that I can only make money only certain number of hours and you're cutting into it.

Peter Brecht04:13

Right.

Meredith04:14

So now

Peter Brecht04:14

Yeah, yeah.

Meredith04:15

The solar gets a compensation payment for the time that they're not on the grid. So to some extent, solar is in a win-win situation. They're either getting paid for being on the grid or paid for not being on the grid. So I mean, how much better can it get than that? Now, not every solar is in that situation. The home solars are different because they don't get a

Peter Brecht04:31

Right.

Meredith04:43

Curtailment payments and also it depends on what jurisdiction you're in because some RTOs are quick with the curtailment payments and the others aren't. You know some are like we don't do curtailment unless it's really bad and some are like yeah we had a curtail you here's your money you know it depends on many things.

Peter Brecht05:06

Gotcha. Yeah. I love that it depends

Answer. That's a, it's always fun, as a consumer, right? As someone that bought solar, put it on our house, two years ago, right? Cause they change even the different areas like, okay, we'll give you this rebate or that rebate. And then you sort of start working through the math and, at times it, depending on how you calculate it, feels like they're winning. And then other times you feel like you're winning and it just comes down to how long are you going to live there? Right. It's at end of the day. Right. So.

Meredith05:35

Yeah, you have to think about that. Power plants have to think about that too. No one would, I wouldn't say no one, but I think it's particularly hard to get a new gas plant built, not because it's so expensive or there isn't enough gas, but because there's this sort of anti-gas movement. And so people are thinking, well, I'll invest in the gas plant, but then they won't let me run it very much.

Peter Brecht05:55

Mm-hmm.

Right. In your book, and I actually, have a copy of it on my desk. It's pretty worn out at this point. But you described yourself as a materials person. And so I thought it was interesting, your perspective, and maybe you could share your background and sort of where you came as far as your approach for writing this book, because it is different than I think somebody that is maybe on the policy side, right?

So maybe share your backstory, your background on that and how it led you into writing this book.

Meredith06:32

Yeah.

Well, okay, I'll start by saying I'm a chemist. I have a master's in chemistry and some work toward the PhD in geochemistry. I was very interested in geology and I was also interested in geothermal energy. So when I got out of school and I wanted to work, what I wanted to do was work somehow in geothermal energy and I did get jobs in that. I learned how to...

Corrosion prevention and other things of that nature. Corrosion prevention and pollution prevention are the two big jobs for a chemist in many industries where the output is electricity. In other words, somebody has to prevent corrosion in nuclear plants and coal plants and prevent...

Pollution and so forth. This is kind of, so which means I bounced around among many different technologies as a materials person. Now what happened then is basically I sort of semi-retired and I was living in California and I was working in California and

Then I moved to Vermont. My husband had a job in New Hampshire. The kids were both on the East Coast. And so we said, okay, we'll move to Vermont and that'll be great. And it was great, but I wasn't able to get a decent job. I did a lot of gig work. Did consulting and tech writing and all kinds of stuff, but I didn't really find a job, which was...

Okay with me because I decided I wanted to do more writing. And so I wrote a book. It was a novel. It's not published. It's a novel that took place in a nuclear plant, but it was a regular mystery. That is people murdered each other for the usual reasons like adultery and drugs or whatever, as opposed to the plant melted down. Usually if you read a novel that has a nuclear plant in it, that plant is doomed.

Peter Brecht09:04

Right or right?

Meredith09:04

But, I thought that wasn't fair, because most people know more or they think they know more about what happens in a maximum security prison than in a nuclear plant, because after all, there are movies about maximums. Anyhow, so I wrote it and then I realized that I needed to have some...

Peter Brecht09:18

Mm-hmm. Right.

Yes.

Meredith09:30

Highly technical people review it and I didn't know exactly where to find them in Vermont. But one man wrote a pro-nuclear letter to the editor and it was pretty easy to find out where he lived and what his phone number was. And so I called him and I said, hey, would you be willing to read a book for technical accuracy about nuclear?

And he said, yeah, sure, that's great. He's a very nice man. He's very nice. He's also worked at nuclear plants in Taiwan, the Midwest, and the Northeast. So it's like he definitely knows nuclear. But at any rate, he was fighting for the continuation of Vermont Yankee. He said, well, if I read your book, I want you to come and be at a hearing with me about Vermont Yankee. Maybe you'll even.

Get a chance to talk. I said, okay, sounds good. So I went there and I had never really realized the street theater that goes on at some of these hearings, the shouting and the people coming in costumes. It was just amazing to me. And I decided more people ought to know about this. People will read about a hearing and they'll say, opponents said this. They don't know that opponents shouted that.

Peter Brecht10:43

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Meredith10:59

And, anyway, so I decided I would write a blog in favor of Vermont Yankee. So I began writing that. And it also, on occasion, mentioned how Vermont Yankee and its regulators were interacting. And that result of that is some regular type people were reading it. And they asked me if I would join a...

Peter Brecht11:23

Right.

Meredith11:28

A group called the Consumer Liaison Group for our grid operator. So I joined that and that's when I began to really, I joined it and I really didn't know very much about what the grid operator did or what the PUC did or what. So long and short of it is that I sort of had a immersion experience in grid politics or grid laws or whatever.

Peter Brecht11:45

Right.

Right.

Meredith11:57

And

I decided, unlike nuclear, where I could explain something to people relatively short, I could say, no, you don't have to worry about X because of Y, explaining the grid was just an endless, I'm a bit talky anyway, but it was like, it was too much. So I decided I needed to write a book that people could refer to, so I didn't have to start everything by saying, well, let's...

Peter Brecht12:22

Mm-hmm.

Meredith12:26

Look at the capacity market, the energy market, the ancillary services market to start out. Yes, let's, okay, now that we've looked at those.

Peter Brecht12:33

Right.

Now that your book gets, it's not too technical. And in terms of I read it and understood, how you were approaching it, which was great. I just appreciated, I think the fact that it wasn't, it wasn't politically written. Was very much, an engineering mindset that sat down and said, okay, let's put out a a thesis that the average person could understand. And so,

Another thing that I really appreciate about your story is that you wrote content, you wrote something and then you made a connection and that led you to something. Then, so it's always been fun for me to see how putting yourself out there in a sense, or just making a phone call can really change, kind of the direction of how you're teaching and sharing and educating and, putting yourself out there. I just think that's really.

I've always found that fascinating. So really cool to see that it stays true, forever really.

Meredith13:34

Yeah, I think it does. I think, you you have to do something and then if you're lucky, that what you do will be useful. And even if you're not lucky, maybe somebody who knows something more about it will be there to talk to you about it. I just loved meeting Howard Schaefer and the other people who worked at nuclear plants. Even though I had...

Peter Brecht13:51

Absolutely.

Meredith14:03

Been at nuclear plants, I'd only been in the chemistry labs. I hadn't been all over the place.

Peter Brecht14:09

Yeah, that's a great story on the origin. Getting back to the grid a bit, when someone says, hey, our grid is fragile, we hear that, see that quite commonly. And it's something that you would, I think, agree with in terms of, reading through everything. But when someone says the grid is fragile, what do they mean by that?

Meredith14:31

Well, they mean that it's easy to break. Fractional means easy to break.

Peter Brecht14:35

Yeah. And does that mean, does

That mean that we're losing, we're at risk of, having no power or only certain areas or that there's a larger infrastructure problem? How do we fix it? Guess is the other problem, right? Which is a much longer answer. I'm sure.

Meredith14:51

Well, that's a very long answer. Let me explain fragile. So for example, let's look at California, which has been having what they call flex alerts almost every evening and in the summer. And basically they say, okay, please don't use your electricity tonight or between four o'clock and nine o'clock tonight, which is when most people come home and make dinner.

Peter Brecht15:13

Yes.

Meredith15:19

And so the thing is that if that sort of thing happened on the day when it was 108 for the first time in five years, then you'd say, the grid is being stressed. But if it's happening many evenings, that's a fragile grid. That's a grid that's easy to break as opposed to a grid that you better be up to 108 before we're going to notice what is happening here.

Peter Brecht15:37

Yeah. Okay.

Right,

Right. OK, so we move we're moving from a stressed grid then to a fragile grid into one that potentially breaks. Right. It is sort of the progression of that. And so I mean, I've I spent some time and listeners will know I've been to Puerto Rico and spent some time there. And that's that grid system there is finally after I read your book, I understand it. Right. It's the most fragile, I think, or the most stressed I've ever seen, because the power just goes out for three days. Right.

Meredith15:55

Yes.

Yes.

Peter Brecht16:16

The last time the power went out where we were there, they had, they had a New Year's blackout, the whole entire island for three days during the new year. And then we went in April and it was the same thing. And it's like, you're trying to get your work done and you can't because there's no power. Right. And then all of sudden you don't have water. There's all these other things that kind of sort of dovetail off of no electricity. Right. It gets pretty messy. I think another thing that I picked up from your book.

Is, we focus like all the people that we've talked to, for the most part, up to this point are focusing on, oil and gas and generating that power or getting the fuel to generate the power. But then there's this whole other part of transmitting it, right? That then that's sort of where my gap came in. But could we maybe talk about the difference between generating it versus the transmission part and break it down so that my six year old son could maybe understand it?

Meredith17:14

That's a very hard thing to ask. I want to say that basically there's two main levels of transmission. Transmission and distribution. Transmission is the big high voltage wires that run long distances. Then distribution is the wires around your house. They've already been stepped down to much lower voltage at

Peter Brecht17:17

Ha ha ha.

Meredith17:43

Various substations and they're around your house. Another thing is the transmission. I call it a grid, but it isn't actually squares, it's a network. And so if the one line goes down, it's designed so that in general, the...

Current will be rerouted around other lines so that it doesn't just flop. And that's called n minus 1. What I mean is that the grid is supposed to be good enough to take n minus 1, that is some large thing happening, and just keep working along. But n minus 2 is much harder to take. So you don't want to get to an n minus 2 situation.

At any rate, so that's the grid, it's the network. Meanwhile, at your home, it's more of a tree configuration because you don't have two different ways to get power to your home. If your line, part of the tree is broken, they got to fix that part, end of story. And so there's that.

Peter Brecht18:59

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yes.

Meredith19:07

Then there's other things that are kind of confusing. You can't overheat the lines, which means that sometimes you can't put electricity on a line if it's almost full. If you remember in my book, I have that little thing where the Vermont people were complaining that...

ISO New England was curtailing their renewables and the answer was, well, when we have to curtail something for safety, yeah, we do. And so if your renewables were about to overheat the line, okay, you're getting curtailed.

Peter Brecht19:39

Yes.

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

And I see that too, is this similar then is in California, we have these massive wildfire risks, right? We have a lot of brush and it's common. But is this similar to my utility company shutting down power for two days because it's windy and they don't want to have any sparks from the transmission lines. Is that similar?

Meredith20:04

Gosh.

That, no, it's not similar, but it's sort of similar. What I'm trying to say is if lines are rated to carry a certain amount of, they don't want to overload it. But the thing about California is, let's face it, the...

Peter Brecht20:29

Right, so they don't want to overload the lines. Okay, I gotcha. Okay.

Meredith20:39

They have not been keeping up their transmission system as well as they should. I always want people to read my book and so I want you to all read, go out and read Shorting the Grid. But then after you finish my book, I think it'd be good if you read California Burning, which is the history of the wildfires and PG &E's role in it and so forth. So anyhow, but remember my book first.

Peter Brecht21:04

Gotcha.

Yes, well, then at least

It gives a good base layer for understanding the next one, right? And that's I think part of.

Meredith21:12

Yeah,

Yeah. People get very upset about being curtailed. The renewables are very upset about it. Now, one of the things is that a renewable usually, okay, if you're a coal plant, you get paid when you put some electricity on the grid and your payment is more or less

The equivalent of the electricity you put on. There's different facets of it, different, that could be your capacity payment, your energy payment, whatever. But meanwhile, if you look at a renewable, the renewables get a lot of their income, not by the kilowatt hours that they get paid for, but by the grid. The grid...

Pays them for kilowatt hours, of course, but they get more than what the grid is usually paying them from production tax credits and selling renewable energy certificates. Now, the renewable energy certificates and the tax credits are only for when they put electricity on the grid. So if they get curtailed, they not only lose the money they would have gotten from the grid, they lose the money they would have gotten from the...

I think the federal government for the tax credits and from other utilities who would buy their renewable energy certificates. You know, I don't even know how to say it except that the renewables are desperate to be online. They're so desperate that they're willing to bid in at the auctions at like, we'll pay you two cents of a kilowatt hour.

Peter Brecht22:47

Mm-hmm.

Meredith23:05

To take our power. Because once we pay you the two cents, we get the rec, we get the production tax credit, we're good.

Peter Brecht23:05

Yeah, right.

Yeah, the tax credits play a huge part in any renewable conversation. Even with, we're talking about carbon.

Meredith23:20

I can't,

I'm sorry, I cannot hear you. I don't know why. Okay.

Peter Brecht23:23

Okay. Are you still there? Can

You hear me okay?

Meredith23:29

Yes, it's okay now. Go ahead.

Peter Brecht23:33

Okay.

Can you hear me? Okay. So the renewal, the tax credit conversation around anything with renewables is huge. Even talking to, buying an electric vehicle, it's so funny. There's so many credits that go into all of this and carbon capture sequestration and 45 Q credits. And I, the, list goes on, but, the, think the incentives are important to kind of see like, what is the incentive of the renewable? Why is it there? And I think.

It's a net positive at the end of the day. Think we need all of these sources of power. But it's interesting to see the economics of why they're trying to get where they're going.

Meredith24:11

Yes, yes. Let me just say for a moment that we could run the country with a very low carbon grid with baseload nuclear and natural gas and hydro filling in the rest.

Peter Brecht24:13

Yeah.

Interesting. Okay. I am a the more I learn about nuclear the more interested I am and you know Continuing my education on it, but we'll have to hold it hold that thought I think for a moment here

Meredith24:45

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing

Is, do we need renewables? And the answer is that they're great where they work. But let's look at solar for a minute. Solar is available in the daytime, which is great because that's when most electricity is used, but not all. And then it goes away at sunset. Sunset is bye-bye solar.

Peter Brecht24:50

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yep.

Meredith25:14

Well, the thing is that many utilities peak right after sunset because people go home, they turn on the AC, they turn on their stove to make a little dinner, they turn on the TV. In other words, there's a post-sunset peak, especially in the winter. So what I'm trying to say is that when you say, we need the utility, we need solar,

Peter Brecht25:26

You

Meredith25:43

We use solar, it's fine, but...

Peter Brecht25:46

Mm-hmm.

Meredith25:48

I don't know what you can say about needing it when it's not there at peak.

Peter Brecht25:51

Yeah.

Yeah. I totally agree with you on that. It's, and it makes me think of the batteries, right? Try and understand where batteries kind of fit in this whole equation. Maybe solar could, be held in a battery storage for temporarily and then put back on the grid. Don't know. But I mean, we've had so many issues with battery plants catching on fire here in California. I mean, there's been three of them within, I think the last 12 months.

Meredith26:15

Yes.

Peter Brecht26:21

And then there's a fire actually, I think in the LA Harbor right now with a there's a Cargo container that's full of batteries that caught on fire as well. It's actually probably still going but I mean where do batteries fit in with maybe the renewables part? Is that something that you see is economic or not so much?

Meredith26:43

I don't see it as economic. I hate to say that, but I don't see it as economic. I think we'd be better off backing up renewables with natural gas. I mean, natural gas is explosive, whatever, but people really know how to handle it. There's not a lot of natural gas disasters happening, certainly not three in one state in one year.

Peter Brecht26:49

Yeah. Okay.

Okay, gotcha.

Right. And that's interesting that you say that it lines up with exactly what I saw is we have all these data centers that are going online and natural gas is just projected to continue, up into the right because it's potentially the best source of power that we have. Along the lines of data centers, there's this whole conversation of behind the meter versus in front of the meter. And there was an article I saw where

Meredith27:22

Yes.

Peter Brecht27:37

There was proponents of this thought that data centers should be creating their power behind the meter. So effectively on their own site, creating that power and then using it instead of having the costs spread out over the rate payers. I look at that, like that becomes quite challenging. Both sides of the argument, should the rate payers be paying for it or should it be? But I mean, the infrastructure to build

Power generations, it's not necessarily an easy task along with everything else. What are, how should we think through that problem where data centers are going to keep consuming more power and rates are going to go up and all this, there's such a hard conversation to even think through. But any thoughts there?

Meredith28:21

Well, I'm

Not even sure that I completely believe that data centers are going to cause power prices to go up. In general, if you don't build anything more, but you use what you have at a higher percentage rate, the prices will go down. You see what I'm saying? In other words, if I can sell more, I can...

Peter Brecht28:41

Okay. Yeah.

Meredith28:51

Half people pay less and I'll make the same amount of money. Volume. In other words, the difference between a boutique and your local supermarket is which is going to be, which one's going to be the more expensive food.

Peter Brecht28:53

Right? Right.

Right, yes.

Right, right, whichever one my wife is is not shopping at, For the most part. It's very interesting. See, I and you guys heard it here first. I mean, that's a great way to kind of flip it on the problem on its head, right? Is is looking at I'm reading this article and I'm focusing on the words that are being written. But then if you can zoom out or talk to somebody or read a book and get a different perspective on how to solve the problem or think through it, I think that's a critical piece here. Yeah.

Meredith29:15

Okay.

I just want to say one more thing, and that is I'm

Not predicting that data centers will lower the price. I'm just saying that that's as much of a possibility as the opposite, as far as I can tell.

Peter Brecht29:38

Yeah Yeah, supply and demand

Yeah, it's supply and demand right and that's that's and I'm fixated on on one politician that's saying something right and it's like Let's zoom out a little bit and everyone just relax. It's gonna be okay. We'll figure this out, right? You know going back to my local utilities and We haven't even talked about our TOs yet, which

Meredith29:46

Yeah.

Mwahaha

Peter Brecht30:06

A lot of your book focuses on the politics and that can be, I think that's such a, that's like a whole nother podcast episode. But my question as I'm reading through your book is, there's these community meetings where it's like, okay, your utility company is going to host it and everyone's going to come in and they're going to talk about why your bill's going up $20 a month or you're going to see this new fee, but we want your feedback, right? And they invite everyone over and

Meredith30:08

Yet.

Peter Brecht30:35

Typically it's the older retired folks that show up to these because let's face it, they're on a fixed income and $7 a month, it could be concerning even. But really what I'm asking here is I've been to those meetings and I've listened to both sides and I'm not sure that those meetings really have any effect on the utility company or the RTO outcomes.

Help me understand this.

Meredith31:05

They don't. No, they don't. I'm going

To tell you quite honestly, they don't. When I was in the consumer liaison group, several people who were in the consumer liaison group were also in the participants committee of the NEPOLE. And now in the participants committee, you can't join that committee without a financial

Input. Mean you have to pay every year to be in that committee and if you're a consumer it's not very much money it's like five hundred dollars a year. But you can see by my saying consumer and five hundred dollars is not much money that the big guys are paying a lot more to be in that committee. And those committees are listened to

Peter Brecht31:54

Yeah, yeah.

Meredith32:01

But things like the consumer liaison group, one of the people who was in it said, it's just a good place to have coffee and chat.

Peter Brecht32:09

Yeah, interesting. Okay, well, I was hopeful that wasn't my impressions weren't consistent, but it sounds like they're right up there with it. I mean, it feels maybe that there's no way to control, especially in a region where the RTO controls the market, right? I only have one option for my utility company where I live. I don't really have a say in anything. I mean, I can't even vote with my wallet.

Meredith32:33

Yes.

No, that's right. You can't even vote with your wallet. That's one of the problems about utilities, which are this weird blend of monopolies from the customer's point of view and, infighting for the subsidies from the different participants' point of view.

Peter Brecht32:57

Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I will leave some of the negativity behind. I want this to be more of an interesting episode in terms of positive thought and engineering and all the other maybe interesting things coming up in the future. For those of you listening that maybe aren't familiar with RTOs or FERC or any of these other entities that are involved in this, again, going down and point you back to the book or, at least start with a Google search if you don't have the book in your hands. All right.

I'm going to move on to kind of another burning question. This is one that I have on my sheet here that's highlighted in every color and bold. So I wanted to make sure I didn't miss this one with you. Don't get too excited though. It's probably inconsequential. We have these data centers and then another conversation that I have often with my younger brothers is kind of around this cryptocurrency Bitcoin thing, which

Meredith33:35

Dear.

Peter Brecht33:56

I'm not intimately familiar with it, but what I have seen, and I don't know if this is something you're readily familiar with, but these cryptocurrency miners believe that they're helping stabilize the grid because they can shut off their mining systems, right? So they might be using a lot of power, so we'll shut it off when more power is needed throughout the day for consumers. So the argument they're making is that, well, we're producing

Meredith34:14

Yes.

Peter Brecht34:25

Thing of value, is this cryptocurrency. And we should be building more of these because we can't help stabilize the grid. So I don't know, I don't know if that's a valid reason or not. But I mean, does it help the grid when we create these sort of pockets of high demand that can be shut on and off, more, more regularly, I guess, or without less consequence?

Meredith34:51

Well, I would say that your average dispatcher would love to be able to control demand in the same way that they control supply. In other words, they dispatch this plant because there's need for plants and then they undispatch it when the need goes down. And I think they'd love to have the same control over demand, you know. But I really don't...

Peter Brecht35:09

Mm-hmm.

Meredith35:16

I don't even want to speculate about it. I've talked to, people ask me to talk to groups and I've talked to cryptocurrency groups and I can understand their argument. I just don't know enough about it to say, yeah, you're definitely stabilizing the grid. I don't know.

Peter Brecht35:33

Right.

Yeah. And I'm always wary of marketing pitches, right? Where it's like, well, we, you we want to get this accomplished because, Hey, we're going to make a lot of money doing it, but what's the net downside to it. And so, I think again, it's, like trying to learn how to see everyone's perspective on it. And if you, if it's not something that that's widely known, right. And we can't really point to data on it. I'm just curious how that might roll out over the next couple of years. Well, we'll see.

Meredith35:59

You

Yes, yes.

Peter Brecht36:04

Yeah, Texas, Texas, especially in Wyoming are the two states I'm thinking of as talking through it the most. But again, Texas, their whole their economy is oil and gas, right? It's power generation. I mean, it's that's what they do. Right. So I hope that they would have some leadership there from Urquhart, even thinking through some of the grid implications. So.

Meredith36:23

Well, I hope so too, because I mean, I think that whether we understand it or not, a stable, reliable grid is one of the really important things for a civilization. I mean, you don't have prosperity, good health care, lots of, you go into a hospital and everything's being sterilized while you're waiting and all this sort of stuff, autoclaves are going and everything.

What I mean is that it's very needed. It's extremely needed. And intermittent electricity is a big burden on people. So I just hope that it all works out. I feel like I need to follow stuff that's going on on the grid, and that's what I do. But I really can't follow, what's new with cryptocurrency? I don't know.

Peter Brecht37:03

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, and there's plenty of there are people in that space that are doing it and are having those conversations. Right. It's just it's learning, who can you trust and who do you want to follow? Right. And I'm trying to broaden. And I'll be honest, when I started reading this book, I wanted I went into it with the sense like I do with most things is like I want to disagree with the author. Right. I almost go in defensively. Like I don't want to disagree.

Meredith37:23

I don't know.

Peter Brecht37:52

Because I want to come out the on the other side fully convinced or fully understanding both sides of it. So your book lays it out perfectly and I know we're here to talk about more than that, but that's been such a great guidepost. So thank you for that. I was hoping to ask you maybe one more question and this really revolves around and I want to be respectful of your time, but there's this thought that has kind of come up for me and talking to people over the last

Five years where, it's the thought I think with oil and gas sometimes, or, in general, the comment is made that we just take energy for granted, right? Like we plug our phone into the socket, we turn on a light and we take it for granted. And I think that I'm, I think I'm starting to see, believe it or not, maybe, maybe I spend too much time talking about energy.

Meredith38:35

Yes, we do.

Peter Brecht38:49

So maybe my narrative mentally is shifting, but I feel like that might be changing a little bit, right? I think we're becoming more energy conscious as a people because our power is starting to brown out, brown out or go out or, they're starting to do more of this stuff where maybe we're thinking about it more. But, the language of everything, the way that everything is written and presented is so complicated and, I guess where, what are ways for people like me, regular people like me, how are we able to kind of improve where all this is headed? And I think educate others about, what we're looking at. I don't even know where to start. Obviously pointing them to the book and having them read it or asking them to listen to a podcast about it, but just a normal person living their day to day life. How do we think about energy or is it just something that it's just going to be that way until the power goes out?

Meredith39:48

I don't know the answer to that. Will say that I think that people, you can explain to people that low energy areas are not wealthy areas. By definition, you cannot have a high wealth, high life expectancy, highly efficient infrastructure area.

That's also low energy. So basically, keeping the power reliable is very important. Now, the thing is that what happens is if you begin going too far that way in talking, then people are like, yeah, another prepper. And I'm not a prepper. I just think electricity is really important for our civilized life.

Peter Brecht40:34

Yeah, yeah.

Meredith40:45

Am I prepping for not having it? No. But part of that is that I'm just so old. I mean, I don't mean to say, I'm just one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. But what I'm saying is that I just don't feel I can set up my life now to be a prepper. And I'm not. But there's something to being a prepper.

Peter Brecht40:58

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Sure. I like the connection that you draw between the need for power and civilization. That's the bottom line of how that should be talked about, I think, is if we don't have it, then we can't be prosperous. I think that, the other day. So we need more power and we need to talk about this more on regular basis and raise awareness for it, I think, is another part of it.

Meredith41:35

Yes.

Peter Brecht41:37

Gosh, I know I asked a lot of questions that maybe seemed left field. Your book made me think through some things that I'd never thought through before. So you're my first person that I've had to maybe think through some of these things with. So I appreciate your tenacity and hanging in there with me while I'm going through it. But, thank you for coming on and please give a people a handoff for where they can find you and where they should get your book.

Meredith42:02

Okay, well you can find my book, Shorting the Grid by Meredith Angwin on Amazon and also if you go to your local bookstore you should be able to order it because it's also on IngramSpark which supplies the local bookstores. That doesn't mean that the local bookstore is going to stock it necessarily but you should be able to get it through your local bookstore. And then in terms of me,

Peter Brecht42:14

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Meredith42:31

My suggestion is that you might follow me on X, which used to be Twitter, and that you also, I have a sub stack, the Electric Grandma sub stack, and I don't post enough, but you can follow it. I also recommend following Robert Bryce's sub stack. You know B-R-Y-C-E? Okay, Robert Bryce's sub stack and,

Peter Brecht42:36

Yes.

I don't know Robert, but I'll look him up.

Meredith43:00

There are two people, Mitch Rowling and Isaac Orr, who write a sub stack called the Energy Bad Boys sub stack. And I think they are worth reading also. Actually, if I begin listing sub stacks, I could be here for a week, but I'm just going to say mine, Robert's, Energy Bad Boys, and that's it for, that's for America.

Peter Brecht43:12

Okay.

Meredith43:28

If you're interested in Europe, then I recommend Irina Slav, S-L-A-V, substact, she's based in Bulgaria.

Peter Brecht43:36

Okay, all right. We'll look at we'll look those up and I'll make sure to include those in the show notes Meredith this has been such a fun conversation for me and just a breath of fresh air honestly with interviewing an author and a self-published author at that and going through all this and Just the writing process and how you got where you're at. So Yeah, just I hope you have a fantastic day and for everyone listening to local energy We should have Wade spirit back here on our next episode. We miss him dearly, but

He's out there doing great things on the oil field So anyways until then until we see you again next week. Thank you guys for being here

Meredith44:13

Thank you for having me on your show.

Peter Brecht44:16

All right.