Energy Labor-saving Day
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 6, 2026“Energy will do anything that can be done in the world.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Energy is the resource of resources, the master resource. This Labor Day weekend, give thanks to the dense, plentiful, affordable, reliable energies that have done much to improve living standards worldwide, while mastering the vagaries of extreme weather and climate. Think of it as Labor Saving Day. After all, eight billion consumers cannot be wrong.
The Old Days
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Continue ReadingScale Economies in Natural Gas Generation
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 5, 2026Paul Martin, a chemical engineer on Linkedin, has published some good work on economies of scale:
Chris Bright writes:
There are certain fixed overheads regardless of size. For example a tachometer for measuring the speed of a turbine generator.
Most turbo-generators are 2-pole and run at 3000 rpm on 50 Hz systems and 3600 rpm on 60 Hz systems.
For turbo-generators between 50 to 1000 MW there would not be much difference between tachometers and perhaps the same design could be used for any rating.
So if we decide to choose between suppling 1000 MW with one 1000 MW turbo-generators we would only need one tachometer, but if we chose 20 off 50 MW generators, we would need twenty tachometers.
Tachometers are a very small part of the overall costs, but similar principles apply to control, instrumentation and protection.…
Continue ReadingTaxpayer Subsidies for Chinese Batteries? Just Say No!
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 4, 2026Ed. note: This letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and key members of Congress from Consumer Action for a Strong Economy and other free market energy groups is reproduced below. At issue is a legal loophole allowing Chinese-owned battery component manufacturers to receive taxpayer funded incentives. More information can be found here.
“American taxpayers should not finance the expansion of Chinese-controlled battery companies inside the United States.”
Dear Secretary Bessent:
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy and the undersigned organizations urge the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to fully enforce the foreign-entity restrictions enacted through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and prevent Chinese-controlled battery companies from accessing American manufacturing and energy tax incentives, including the Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit and the Section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit, through U.S.…
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