What’s good for Generac is bad for America, Sadoway talks batteries, Sapsucker at McKinney Falls

What's good for Generac (and Kohler) is bad for America, Donald Sadoway talks batteries on the podcast, and, last Saturday: a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 

Happy Friday, everyone. We’ve had contractors working at our house this week, so I’ve been distracted and haven’t had much time to write. But I’m not complaining. We’ve lived in our house in Austin for 22 years and have fallen behind on upkeep. It was long overdue for some painting and repairs. The work they’ve done has been a big lift. The workmen are still here today, so I will keep this note brief. Three items today: 

• New Forbes: What’s good for Generac is bad for America

• Donald Sadoway talks batteries on the podcast

• Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers have a red chin.

The photo of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker above was taken by John Harrison in 2009.
 

On Thursday, in Forbes, I revisited a topic I’ve been covering for a while: the surging sales of standby generators. I wrote about the issue last September in the Wall Street Journal. I was spurred to revisit the issue because so many people I’ve met over the past few months have either purchased a generator or are planning to get one. Further, in this piece, I was able to add some info that didn’t fit in the WSJ piece, including information about Kohler Power Systems, which like Generac, is seeing booming sales of its generators, as well as the surge in deployment of large diesel-fired generators in California. I began: 

•  Over the past few months, while doing speaking engagements, I have been asking the people in the audience to raise their hands if they have a home generator. Usually, a handful, or perhaps a dozen hands, go up. Then I ask, “now raise your hand if you are planning to buy a generator or have already ordered one.” Invariably, most of the people in the audience raise their hands. One of the people aiming to get a new generator for their home is my friend, K., who lives near Houston. (K. asked me not to use her full name.) She and her husband are spending $11,600 on a new 24-kilowatt Generac generator. (She sent me the receipt.) They put half of the money down last December, but don’t expect to get the machine delivered and hooked up to their home until the end of this year. They recently got an email update telling them that more than 2,500 people are in line ahead of them. 

• The reason why K. and so many other people in Texas and across the country are buying generators is obvious: the reliability of the electric grid is declining. According to data from the Department of Energy, between 2000 and 2020, the number of what the agency calls “major electric disturbances and unusual occurrences” (read: blackouts) on the U.S. electric grid jumped about 13-fold. Consumers and businesses have responded to the decline in electric reliability by rushing to install backup generators. That’s good news for companies like Generac Power Systems, which manufactures about three-quarters of the home backup generators sold in this country...But, what’s good for Generac (and Kohler) is bad for America. That’s not a slam on those companies. They are well-run outfits that produce quality products that consumers want. That said, soaring sales of standby generators are concrete proof of the declining reliability of our electric grid and therefore a decline in our national wealth and our national security. 

I concluded: 

• The decline of our electric grid should be causing alarm bells to ring in Washington, D.C., and every state capitol in the country. In response, regulators and policymakers should be preserving our existing nuclear plants. And before any more coal-fired plants are shuttered, policymakers should be certain that the closures will not reduce the reliability and resilience of the grid. If America wants to remain a world leader, it must have a robust grid that delivers cheap, abundant, and reliable electricity 24/7/365. We cannot rely on Generac, Kohler, or other generator manufacturers for that. The electric grid is our biggest, most complex, and most important piece of infrastructure. We ignore it at our extreme peril. 

Again, here’s a link. Please share it. 
 

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Donald Sadoway on batteries, magnets, and why he sees the periodic table of the elements as a "palette"       

I met Donald Sadoway, who is now an emeritus professor of materials chemistry at MIT, about a dozen years ago. We were both attending the CERAWeek conference in Houston and by chance, we started talking about batteries and energy. Since then, I’ve visited him at his lab at MIT. This week, I was pleased to have him on the podcast to talk about metals, mining, the periodic table, battery chemistry, and the battery company that he co-founded, Ambri Incorporated. I’m partial to chemists and materials science types. Lorin’s father, Paul Rasmussen, is an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan. He has been a mentor. He’s also been a great help in proofreading my book manuscripts and making sure I am on track whenever I dive into science-related issues. 
 
Sadoway and I talked at length about Ambri, the molten-metal battery company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its long road to commercial production. I asked him to explain his great line about batteries, “if you want to make batteries cheap as dirt, you have to use dirt in the battery.” Sadoway also explained why lithium-ion batteries are so dangerous, “you’ve got oxygen and the fuel inside the case... I would call that a bomb.” We also talked about energy density, cost, reactivity, the origin of the neodymium-iron-boron magnet, coercivity, and why iridium is his favorite element. As you will learn, Sadoway is opinionated and blunt. It was a fun conversation. Here’s a link. Please share it.

And don’t forget: it’s also available on YouTube. 
 

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers have a red chin; a group of Sapsuckers is called a "slurp"    

Last Saturday, Lorin and I went to McKinney Falls State Park, a beautiful place a few miles southwest of downtown. It was a gorgeous day, cool and sunny, with patches of snow still on the ground. One of the park rangers told us to be on the lookout for a Couch’s Kingbird. We didn’t see any of those, but Lorin did spot an unfamiliar woodpecker in the trees on the opposite side of Onion Creek from where we were walking. We watched it for maybe 10 minutes at a long distance. But then it flew into some trees on our side of the creek and spent a good bit of time prospecting in a tree that was maybe a dozen meters away. That’s when we were able to confirm that it was a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius). The defining mark was the bird’s red chin. None of the other woodpeckers have that mark.

Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking that it was the first time I’d seen a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. But as I was drafting this “news” letter, I retrieved my vintage Field Guide to the Birds of Texas and found that I’d seen a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at (where else?) McKinney Falls, on October 29, 1993. On the same page, I noted that we also saw a Yellow-shafted Flicker on that same day. Even better, the notes in the same field guide show that I also saw a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker about six years later, on April 18, 1999, at Smith Oaks Sanctuary in High Island, Texas. (The photo above is from my field guide.)
 
I take some real satisfaction in seeing those notes in my field guide. Knowing that I saw a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker nearly 30 years ago, but didn’t remember it, is both jarring and pleasurable. Jarring that it has been three decades and I'd forgotten the siting, but pleasurable because it reminds me I've been birding for a very long time.

What else can I tell you about the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker? My iBird app reminds me that a group of sapsuckers is known as a “slurp.” Wikipedia says this:

• The yellow-bellied sapsucker usually forages by itself, although it sometimes joins small groups in the winter, and occasionally mixes into flocks of insectivores in the winter. Arthropods, tree sap, fruits, and nuts compose the majority of the yellow-bellied sapsucker's diet. It also takes bast and cambium from trees. Berries are occasionally eaten, and in the Northern Hemisphere spring, buds are eaten. Arthropod prey is usually in the form of Lepidoptera, Odonata, or both the young and adults of beetles and ants. During the nesting season, insects comprise about half the diet of the adults. During the late Northern Hemisphere summer and throughout the same hemisphere's autumn, sap is the primary food of choice. Cambium is taken throughout the year, although it is primarily eaten during the Northern Hemisphere winter and spring. Fruit is mainly eaten during October to February.

• The chicks are fed by both sexes. The primary food is insects which are occasionally coated in tree sap before eaten by the chick. The size of these insects varies by the age of the chicks, with younger chicks being fed smaller insects. The chicks beg for food through vocalizations that can be heard 100 metres (330 ft) away or more, likely stimulating the adults to catch more food. These vocalizations are usually done by the hungriest chick, with the other joining in only when the parent is at the nest. Because of this, the hungriest chick gets fed first. When the chick leaves the nest, it relies on both insects from its parents and sap from the holes they drill…Before feeding consistently on a tree, this sapsucker lays down exploratory bands near a live branch. These bands are laid down in horizontal rows. When it finds a tree that is photosynthesizing, then it lays down more holes to feed, about 0.5 centimetres (0.20 in) above the primary bands. These form columns. Each hole is started as an oval elongated horizontally, drilled through the bark and phloem layers to the outside of the xylem. They are then drilled further, with the sapsucker enlarging it vertically, making it yield more sap, but only for a few days.The top holes in each column thus provides phloem sap, and this sapsucker also utilizes the bast from the edges of the holes drilled….Because the feeding habits of the yellow-bellied sapsucker can injure trees and attract insects, it is sometimes considered a pest. The birds can cause serious damage to trees, and intensive feeding has been documented as a source of tree mortality.

Have a great weekend. 
 

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