Freeing Energy
How Innovators Are Using Local-Scale Solar and Batteries to Disrupt the Global Energy Industry from the Outside In
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Narrated by:
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David Gann
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By:
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Bill Nussey
The transition to clean energy is moving far too slowly. Trapped by a century of fossil fuel investments and politicians that struggle to plan beyond the next election, the “Big Grid” that powers our modern world is outdated and in dire need of an upgrade. Freeing Energy offers a new and faster path towards a clean energy future — one that is more reliable, more equitable, and cheaper.
Just like personal computers eclipsed mainframes, millions of solar rooftops and small battery systems are challenging every assumption about our century-old, centralized electric grid. These small-scale “local energy” systems are deeply disruptive because they are based on fast-moving technologies, not fuels. Driven by a new generation of innovators and genuinely competitive markets, smaller systems are faster to build, easier to finance, cleaner to operate, and they create far more jobs than large-scale projects. Bill Nussey takes listeners to mud huts in Africa, an off-grid farm in California, and a rural school in the mountains of Puerto Rico to uncover the underlying patterns of technology and the business model innovations of the local energy revolution. He shares stories and insights from some of the industry’s brightest visionaries and from leaders of the most cutting-edge startups, bringing it all together into an actionable framework to help accelerate this transition.
Freeing Energy is a deeply researched, actionable guide for anyone that cares about the future of energy — from startups, policymakers, investors, and utility leaders to the families and communities that want cleaner, cheaper energy today.
©2021 Bill Nusey (P)2021 Bill Nusseyactionable path forward for society.
inspiring and hope inducing
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It highlights how electricity, in the USA context particularly, is the one commodity that is undemocratically monopolised by the National Grid. You can buy and sell anything nowadays but not electricity. While the National Grid has an important role to play, it is susceptible to cut- out by storms, fires, squirrels (!) and other disasters (many of which are on the increase due to Global Warming). I liked his simplification of it being like a very long extension lead. It highlighted for me the vulnerability of the supply going long distance over bunches of cables.
By promoting and supporting microgeneration of electricity through solar panel systems, essential service institutions such schools, hospitals, and Fire Stations, can keep going their own supply of electricity when disasters happen. This point is poignantly illustrated in the audiobook by the example of a person in a poorer area of the world dying in hospital due to their support system being cut off by a blackout.
Last year here in Ireland we saw how schools in the West had to close because of Grid damage by storms. Debates are ongoing about providing these institutions with generators. Bill Nussey goes that essential step further by arguing for solar as the means of generating that local power, with batteries for when sunlight is scarce.
I was impressed by how accessible the writing style is, and the human connections he makes throughout the audiobook.
There is also a reasonable amount of detail on the history of solar energy, from Edison to Elon Musk, and how it works today, as well as personal stories of how it has aided individuals in places where before they were health-challenged by having to burn animal dung or kerosene for heat and light in small dwellings. He also tells the story of innovators he has met in his travels to explore solar energy, a new venture for him after his departure from his previous career in computers.
He starts the audiobook with an interesting insight into the impact of electricity outage in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria in 2017, with comments he collected, when he visited there, from some who experienced it firsthand. The long-term loss of electricity lead to many deaths and diseases and provides a powerful introduction to the litany of ways that we depend on electricity, as if our lives depended on it, which it clearly does these days, in so many ways. He uses this context to give us his definition and first introduction to the whole subject of, ‘Freeing Energy’, which I found an informative way of realising how tied up with multinationals our electricity supply is at the moment.
I have some favourite quotes from the audiobook which include: 'Fears of depletion usually underestimate the human ingenuity to find more. Afterall, the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones'. This highlights for me the fact that we can influence our fate, rather than being puppets to the propaganda that we are in peril due to the depletion of our oil resources in the next few decades, when the opposite is the truth. Our ancestors didn't worry about the supply of stones. The were creative in pursuing alternative materials (bronze, Iron, etc.)
Nussey deals with some of the myths discouraging solar energy as a solution to energy needs for the world, including the amount of land solar panels would need. He tackles the myth of a shortage in lithium, Cobalt, and other raw materials required in solar energy systems. And here I give another of my favourite quotes in this regard, ' Clean energy does not consume raw materials; It just borrows them'.
I can confidently recommend this audiobook to anyone concerned about how the world will meet its energy needs from today onwards, right down to the individual household. The answer is Solar, and Nussey comprehensively and engagingly, pays justified homage to the Promethean-like people involved in the story so far.
Solar-best thing since Prometheus gave us fire
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Excellent
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A must read for renewable energy entrepreneurs
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