I don't know what standard we're holding companies to for projects they're shutting down. From my experience, projects that are closing down don't get as much support prioritization, especially when they're deemed unsuccessful.
I share your sentiment that we could get even more; it sounds like you're seeing even more interesting things the public is not. I am grateful for what they have provided so far.
Yes I'm aware of the Makani stuff. In fact according to a Makani team member I was probably the first person outside X to run their code when I generated some screenshots of their UI and posted the pictures to Imgur.
But Makani is one project, and again my only push back is whether they have been "really good" about releasing projects or whether there have been a relatively small number of notable releases.
My general feeling was that they are really almost 100% focused on profit and for the managers I met, I did not feel like they even understood the world-changing potential of open source. If your primary interest is in changing the world, you can get a LOT done with open source. Especially with the money they have. A relatively small project that releases a quality design and then continues to develop it while other people clone it in my mind has the best chance of gaining traction.
But that requires letting go of control. And I did not get the sense they were interested in that kind of thing. So I left and started my own open source project to explore this theory. In three years we have spent as much money as they would spend on a single mistake. I really wish they were more open to this kind of development, but I don't think they are really set up for it.
When you're dealing with solar (or any renewable really), you have to think about the generation of electricity and storage of that electricity.
Solar thermal plants can be used to generate energy, but they're not great at storing it for dispatch at later times. Even the link you provided has thermal storage as a component of the system-- you need to figure out how to dispatch electricity at night.
What's proposed is a cheaper storage solution, and they state it can still provide power after 10 hours.
Solar thermal inherently has built in storage: the molten salt heated during the day continues to provide energy through the night.
> Even the link you provided has thermal storage as a component of the system-- you need to figure out how to dispatch electricity at night.
This is referring to the thermal storage of the molten salt tower.
What I'm getting at is why is solar PV -> electricity -> thermal storage preferable to solar mirrors -> thermal storage. Is solar PV less expensive than mirrors?
Solar PV performs better under imperfect illumination conditions. Concentrating solar thermal power can't make use of diffuse light on partly cloudy days, whereas solar PV can. Solar thermal also has to reach a minimum operating temperature before it starts generating steam/electricity. PV actually works better on bright, cold days and will generate full power the instant an array reaches full illumination. These factors, plus the greater mechanical complexity and maintenance requirements for thermal solar, make it very hard for new thermal solar plants to deliver a lower levelized cost of energy than new PV plants.
The comment seems to imply Gavin Newsom decided to shut the plant down-- but it's owned by a private corporation, PG&E. Did we expect Newsom to take control of the plant and keep it open? I can maybe see a case for policy change, but I don't see California being that different from other states in this regard.
While I don't like the trend of closing nuclear plants, this isn't a straightforward decision just to "keep it on", from what I understand. There were seismic concerns for the plant, which is probably a worthwhile consideration given its location in California.
Additionally, I think how the plant performed cooling (drawing from the adjacent ocean) would also negatively impact the local ocean environment, and that type of cooling process was being phased out of California more generally.
FWIW, I'm a fan of nuclear, but I think it's worth digging deeper into underlying problems so we can see what the future solution may need to overcome.
What's the reason for the emphasis on weight? From reading the technical reports (from Makani), there were larger issues with the design unrelated to the weight.
As an example, Makani's Y-bridle design to attach the tether to the kite introduce stability issues during hover, and limited their control when the kite was aloft making circles, which in turn limited their power generation.
> What's the reason for the emphasis on weight? .... As an example, Makani's Y-bridle design to attach the tether to the kite introduce stability issues
It's quite possible that if their kiteplane was much lighter that these tether issues would have been much less of a problem. Remember that the Makani tether also had to include some copper cable for power transmission to the ground. That makes the tether itself heavy as well.
How does a deep well extract all along its length? My belief was the production well will experience a gradient (so the bottom of the well will have the temperature you need), and the temperature will drop as you get closer to the surface (which also contributes to the calcite scaling problem geothermal can experience).
Also, I think a lot of wells add concrete casing (or metal, as indicated in the article) around portions of the well, which would prevent extraction around those zones of the well.
assuming you can reach a working temperature differential why not continue deeper with the well? From that threshold depth onwards you can extract heat along a line segment that extends to the ultimate depth (which is pressumably dictated by engineering limitations)
caveat: thinking like a physicist, not an engineer :-)
Cheap drilling would be a large boon for geothermal, considering the cost of surveying/exploring/drilling is > 50% of the cost of the development of a geothermal site.
I don't understand the articles goal of 300C target, though. While some types of geothermal plants do require temperatures that high, binary cycle power plants can use lower temperatures (130C) [1], which seems to open up more area for geothermal development since we expect most gradients between the surface and bottom of the crust to be ~2.5-3.1C / 100M. A lower temperature requirement would in turn allow you to drill less deep, which could consequently also decrease drilling costs.
Another thing the article doesn't mention: another interesting approach (aside from improving the technology, like drill bits) is with financing innovation. There have been / are government programs to de-risk the exploration/drilling cost by reimbursing the costs of drilling (80% for failed wells, for example) which also likely adds well data that could better characterize the underlying geothermal resources in regions (which would allow more accurate future development).
Really glad to see a deeper dive on geothermal though; its non-intermittency is a valuable characteristic separating it from other renewables that we're currently favoring (solar/wind). Because we generally break down energy generation to LCOE, it omits advantages like uptime of the renewable resource.
The big breakthrough seems to be making drill bits out of a composite material formed from diamond and tungsten carbide.[1] One of their bits lasted through 25km of drilling. (Not one hole, re-used for multiple shallow holes.) That's encouraging. The geothermal people only need to go down 10km. Being able to do much of the job without backing out the drill string, one pipe section at a time, to change the bit is what seems to yield the cost estimates in the original article.
The next problem is to get everything at the down-hole end up to that level of reliability. Which is why the author talks about seal problems in mud-powered drilling motors. For the geothermal application, they just want to drill straight down, so they don't need all the fancy stuff used for slant and horizontal drilling.
So there remain some grungy, hard, and important problems to solve, like a seal material that will work better at high temperatures. Such things exist.[2]
This is encouraging.
The article points out that this isn't like hunting for oil and gas pockets; if you have roughly the correct overall geology, there will be hot rock down there anywhere you drill. This upsets some financial models, where drilling the first well in a new area is more like a VC-funded high-risk high return project. You're really drilling for the valuable info that oil or gas is there, not for the oil or gas from the exploration well.
Deep geothermal is going to be dull, boring (literally), usually successful, and profitable over a long period but not in the short term. Great for regulated utilities.
The 300 degrees is needed to get enough steam pressure to drive a turbine. You need the temperature gradient basically to get that. It's all about efficiencies. A lower efficiency basically means you need to pump more water through, which means more drilling, which raises the cost.
Heat exchange pumps work with much lower temperature gradients which is great for heating a building or some water since you don't need to drill that deep. But it's not very efficient for generating electricity. There actually are some companies that can use heated water in your boiler as a battery and generate electricity from it but that is more from the point of view of using the energy you are storing anyway instead of letting it cool down. So a lower efficiency is acceptable for that.
The open question mark for geothermal is if the cost of drilling will ever be low enough to compete with solar and wind + batteries. Solar and wind are a lot cheaper per kwh but of course intermittent. There are various ways of fixing that that basically involve using some form of battery. You can think of geothermal as a battery where the fully charged battery simply is our planet. Nice if you can get to it but not necessarily cheap enough compared to other ways to store energy. Getting to it involves expensive drilling projects and operating a lot of plumbing to get energy out of it.
An example of a battery that is pretty cheap is a thermal mass based batteries. It is basically the same material (i.e. rocks) plus some insulator. Given enough mass, you can store quite large amounts of energy for very long and there are some companies starting to do exactly that. Several companies are working on those. It's all going to boil down to cost per kwh in the end. wind and solar converging on about a cent per kwh. Batteries tend to be more expensive but still cheaper than burning gas/coal. Geothermal sits somewhere in between. It could be cheaper in some places long term. But then batteries are also getting cheaper.
My old University powers, heats, and cools itself with Geothermal wells that are at 195F, not sure about the 300C either. (and clears snow/ice from sidewalks and outdoor staaircases) The college also sells extra power to the hospital next door. (it makes around 2MW with a binary cycle plant) https://urbanecologycmu.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/geothermal-...
I think the 300C target is to support the article's assertion that geothermal could replace e.g. nuclear plants. Geothermal for heating can work well with a lower approach temp, but industrial processes/power generation needs a higher differential.
Could I get your help understanding your statement "industrial processes/power generation needs a higher differential"? Why does geothermal need a higher differential for power generation?
Power generation is already accomplished with lower heat cycles (e.g., binary plants mentioned earlier would probably use a rankine cycle to deal with the low heat), though we'd expect those power plants to have less nameplate capacity than something like a double flash-steam plant.
I think you're correct you'd get more efficiency with higher gradients, but I don't understand what's limiting about the lower temperatures. Is it economics?
The higher the differential the higher the efficiency of heat to electricity transformation. If I remember correctly it's a big efficiency gain between 200C and 300C. From economic side of things, more bang for the buck.
> At first, when you start working at a rapidly growing company, what you see is smart, idealistic, driven people working together to accomplish a goal greater than themselves. When you leave, unless you are willfully blind or exceptionally naive, what you see is a ruthless political arena— a modern day Game of Thrones, where machinations take place over email, and battles are won and lost over cups of light roast coffee.
I grew with a rapidly growing company. While I don’t disagree with the author that these sorts of environments exist in our industry (or most industries), or even pockets inside of a company, I don’t think this experience describes mine. Maybe I’m willfully blind or naive (or maybe I was too low level to experience this), but I’d caution someone of taking this strategy wholesale and start assassinating the careers of your colleagues.
Keep in mind, a major goal of a company is to make money. The leader of the company is generally aligned with that goal. Those are their incentives. They hire people to make them more money. If you play a different game according to this quotation:
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics.
Then, if the leader is competent and they determine you’re doing this, you’re probably going to get fired. They might also be bad, and you might get promoted if you fool them. But you’re also probably fooling yourself if you also have the goal to grow your own skills.
Instead, I’d suggest this mindset: When you’re joining a company, you’re joining a group of humans who created a system to help them to work together. Each system is a bit different, tailored to the company and the people who compose them. Some are passable. Some are terrible. But there is variance, and you should probably think about the strategy you employ when you join a new company (or re-evaluate how you operate in your current one).
You don’t need to trust the system, but you do need to learn to see and work the system. I guess if the environment is truly toxic and your only goal is to get promoted, exploiting as the author suggests might be working the system. However, there are systems you can work in a more productive way that might end up making you feel more fulfilled.
I'm not a fan of open office spaces, but I don't think the article fully captures the problem that the open office space is addressing. Our company has a team dedicated to the design of our office space, and they're trying to balance against multiple stakeholders' needs, from different functions (engineering vs legal), to work environment needs (1:1 vs meeting room vs quiet place), all shoved into a fixed and (relatively) small space. The result is you have to do trade-offs, just like normal engineering problems.
From my understanding, it's easier to scale environments that are open-office. For a startup that's always have to contend with finding space for their ever-growing teams, I can see why executives may reach for an understood solution to that problem, even knowing the downsides.
My guess is there's a necessary iteration to work environments in the future, since I don't think open offices truly optimize for knowledge workers. Presumably knowledge-based companies (e.g., tech) will eventually start thinking about how to optimize their internal efficiency as a lever to growth in addition to their product development.
From my understanding, it's easier to scale environments that are open-office. For a startup that's always have to contend with finding space for their ever-growing teams,
I’m sure there is plenty of space if they let everyone work from home or come in on an ad gov basis.
I work at at company that does OKRs as well. I think I've viewed both the symptoms you described and the common pattern described in the article of fitting an existing backlog to OKRs.
I think one observation that I have is that OKRs are really a framework to help teams understand what direction/goal to head to and understand progress toward that goal. And really, this mindset needs to be adopted not just by the development teams-- it needs rigor and consistency from leadership as well.
For example, the leaders are accountable for setting direction and describing what they think is important. If they then start asking you for things that aren't tied with an OKR, it's a perfectly fair question to ask leadership "Why are you asking me to work on this when you indicated it's not important to our company strategy?" If the team feels like they're going to be working on something unrelated to their OKRs, that's symptomatic of leadership not sending a consistent message on strategy or prioritization.
I've also seen it from the other side as described in the article. I've seen development teams really struggle to initially understand OKRs and the value. As mentioned earlier, it's really designed to help clarify direction and progress-- if a team is ignoring the OKR and fitting their backlog, that's symptomatic that they're really not trying to understand the direction leadership wants to head.
What I like about the author's suggestion is that it really forces the team to understand the problem the organization is trying to solve and think up solutions how to achieve it. Backlog bankruptcy is one way to do it, though there are likely some items that can still solve the problems outlined in the OKR. Those items just shouldn't automatically be transferred over without verifying they solve a problem that needs to be solved.
Teams shouldn't be fitting problems to work-- teams should be fitting work to problems.
That's pretty pessimistic. Sometimes there actually are interesting problems at those companies. Larger companies can also offer benefits that aren't available at some other companies-- sometimes security, sometimes work-life balance, greater access to resources or talented people. Not everyone's tradeoffs will be the same when evaluating where to work or what to do.
And in the end, pretty much everyone is working for someone to "make a few guys rich". Unless you're a completely self-funded founder or investor.
Here are some flight logs they released: https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/bigquer...
They also released reports that describe their findings; it's quite detailed (here's part 1 of 3): https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...
I don't know what standard we're holding companies to for projects they're shutting down. From my experience, projects that are closing down don't get as much support prioritization, especially when they're deemed unsuccessful.
I share your sentiment that we could get even more; it sounds like you're seeing even more interesting things the public is not. I am grateful for what they have provided so far.