Episode 73 - Saul Griffith

Saul Griffith is an inventor, energy advisor & founder of Rewiring America & #ElectrifyEverything.
Today he's launching his book "The Big Switch".
This is his first time driving a Tesla M3P.
Every politician, journalist and climate concerned citizen should read his book available here:
www.blackincbooks.com.au/book...
-------------------------------------
Help keep me on the road by supporting me on Patreon:
/ coalminersdrivingteslas
Follow us on twitter and tell us where we should go and who we should meet.
/ minersinteslas
Follow us on Facebook:
/ coalminersdrivingteslas
Instagram:
/ coalminersdrivingteslas

[@hudsonacam]

This is the best interview for your entire series. Very thought provoking. Saul just may have outlined a strategy to actually remove the culture war from the climate debate. Let it be so!

[@sb6264]

Fantastic Interview mate, thanks for sharing!

[@adda58]

Heard about him last week, instantly bought his new book. Can’t wait to get it and read it! Keep doing what you are doing Daniel!!

[@aaronbounds1336]

Small world. I live in New Mexico. Glad to hear Martin Heinrich is down for the cause of the electrification of things.

[@onislandtime7]

I have an electric leaf blower and it works great!

[@Leopold5100]

FANTASTIC !!!!!! 😀 just book the book .......

[@Andrew-gd5jp]

Go the 0-60 ‘activism’! Please obtain a wireless lapel mic 🎙! It will make the guest audio so much better. Captions is good on this one tho.

[@alastairleith8612]

I can lend you a pair of wireless sennheisers whenever you want, Daniel. just as long as you return them! just call.

[@daviddgm5527]

The wind noise is distracting.

[@KitLaughlin]

The BEST book I have read in the last ten years. I am recommending it to everyone, because everyone needs to know the contents. We need to know them, and act on them, immediately. The Sankey diagrams alone are worth the price: they show the scales of the flows of energy into and out of Australia in a way that no other diagrams have, for me, so far. Brilliant work.

[@guringai]

It's great that there is at least 1 retail in Au that I know of that delivers the spot price of electricity to the end user - Amber Electric. On the weekends, between around 10 & 3, the electricity cost is often / typically between 0-5 c/kWh, depending on the season &the weather. (notwithstanding the recent energy market crisis) but coming out of that ow & the prices are coming down again. Amber is ideally suited to those who can limit evening & morning loads, or by utilising a home battery in association with a decent size PV system. We get our EV in September, so looking forward to super cheap Australian-made energy for our car! Saul is a fabulous communicator of practical ideas & let's hope that everyone can take on board his ideas

[@gideoncor]

My mum is reading Electrify at the moment! Can't wait to read The Big Switch. Great job!

[@alastairleith8612]

love the Keith Haring style/reference on the cover. Haring lived in Melbourne for a time and left a few art works that are still partially surviving on the walls of Fitzroy.

[@guringai]

Wow, interesting history!

[@gideoncor]

So many good bits in this episode but especially when the acceleration is so fast it nearly gives Saul a head injury at 1:06:00

[@sarahbrennan9416]

Really enjoyed listening to this!

[@carl-Sp]

Great chat. Loved the discussion on exports and imports of fossil fuels. Eye opening. Learned a lot. Remembered things I’d forgotten from Uni days - good ol’ Carnot cycle. One tip for people who can’t find an affordable heat pump water heater. Just use a regular electric water heater tank and put a timer on the circuit in the switchboard to come on at 10am. Spend savings on more PV. Looking forward to reading the book. Four and a half engineers in the family. Will pass it around.

[@rewiringaustralia8926]

We like your thinking Carl

[@rewiringaustralia8926]

Love it!

[@sirgarence]

I love this series, but it'd be great if you could mic your guests!

[@Andrew-gd5jp]

I hope even half of these initiatives get off the ground but wish for the lot. My 2 Teslas are on order.

[@outbackev-hunter6035]

Yes need to get generation to 500% renewable... SuperPower here we come....Tony Seba....

[@alastairleith8612]

we've also made extinct about 30% of the global mammalian extinctions in the last 200 years in Australia, so not amazing on conservation in many ways. Logging still happening to the point of making iconic species extinct in every state (including WA though most NF logging will end in 2023 there).

[@johannbeckham]

Can we have audible version of the book Saul?

[@deanrossiter]

Which political party aligns most to Saul's approach to our energy situation?

[@guringai]

The Teals & the Greens are on the money, & a long way behind are Labor then a long way behind those are the 'Liberals' & barely visible are the Nats, Hansen etc

[@Andrew-gd5jp]

It’s aluminium!!

[@onislandtime7]

please share link to the electric jetski!

[@niklaseklund88]

When is 0-60? Would love a time stamp for that!

[@outbackev-hunter6035]

little hidden this time but 18:20 was my guess....

[@ericdressler7334]

any discounts on the book for people on the pension??

[@guringai]

Ask your library to stock it

[@philmanke7642]

in 5 gallon buckets.!.!.!.!.

[@philmanke7642]

screwed by u-tube

[@jonknight8439]

pull up a pew, Saul has forgotten more about the energy system than we'll ever know. Sit back, get fully educated. Hope it doesn't ruffle your religion too much :O

[@amfpvt]

Maybe over-simplified. Super smart guy. The car he's sitting in requires 500x the battery weight in extraction and then processing. So, 500kg battery required 250t in extraction and processing. It's not a serious option. Every 25 years, all solar panels and wind farms need to be buried. You have to ignore their public funding, their maintenance and their lack of ability to be recycled, not to mention the noise and human cost of 'wind' plus the cost on large (often endangered) birds. All that aside, the poor pay for the increase in power costs; they don't have solar panels. So, lovely but I'm unconvinced that flippant 'this is how electric won over hydrogen' is actually as clear as it's made out. Your starting point is that the IPCC estimate 2.5% reduction in GDP globally if we do 'nothing' ... 50x adaption. This is as much an issue for economists as other scientists. As we've witnessed with COVID, if you cut non-economists loose on a complex cost/benefit problem they come back and tell you the benefits and ignore all the costs. Cheers

[@alastairleith8612]

such deep ignorance expressed here. sad.

[@amfpvt]

@@alastairleith8612 Thanks for the insightful addition. You can go back to virtue signaling now. Cheers

[@guringai]

Yea, though please consider these: ...Though you only have to dig the minerals out once, (instead of continuously) & Yes it's far easier & cheaper to reclaim the minerals from a battery than in a hole on the other side of the world. & Aluminium from solar panels- one of the most easily recycled materials available, as is glass. Each kg of silicone produces 20,000x more energy than coal. Equally stunning is the 60% reduction of energy required if everything is electrified. So far less freight of fossil fuels, compared to electrons by cables. + Electrons from our rooftop solar straight into the car & house- so good!

[@amfpvt]

@@guringai I get it, and it's a nice thought, but it's not reality. You will not charge your car from your home roof unless you live in a large warehouse. Even then, you aren't home when the sun shines, so you'll need another massive battery in your house to store the power which is also meant to be powering your home. When you are home (at night) there are no electrons. This is a non-solution. How about we discuss the only way this will work with zero pollution? Nuclear is the only game in town currently. Unless your plan involves power other than intermittent and unreliable power from existing tech (wind and solar), where the downside and cost is largely ignored, we aren't going to get anywhere. I'm all for lowering our pollution as possible, but the west isn't where the polution is being generated (largely) and the developing world (even China) have no restrictions in growth. There isn't a plan to replace our current reliable power with anything that's equally reliable. This is required for industry, jobs and ultimately to keep people fed. Where has this worked? How much will it cost? Who will pay? The answer, friend, is nowhere has this worked, we don't know the cost, and the poor will pay. A fact glossed over by most either because they are collateral damage to the utilitarian greater good arguments that drive this, or because they don't care in any real sense. Cheers

[@guringai]

@@amfpvt Clearly, you are poorly informed as 1/4 of Australian rooftops have solar panels & as it is, we have a mid-sized system which is 6 kW - which is more than enough to charge our car. Our car only travels 30k's a day, 150 / week. That would need 15 hours at 2kW Our charger is 7kW & we can set the charge at any time & at any rate we want, via the software. & Only need to charge every 2 weekends on average, so just plug it in & charge between 10 & 2 at 5kW on sunny days so 20 kWhrs per day which is 100kM of range over the middle of a single sunny day. Then there is the ZAPPI charger which can be set to ONLY charge a car when electricity is spare to the household needs & gets channelled directly into the car battery - & these have been operating all over the world for years. If you are happy to paying about 3 x as much for electricity from Nuclear, then great, though I don't think you'll get much luck convincing 25 million other Australians that they should pay for more expensive power:)