Solar and wind are coming. And the power sector isn’t ready

I'd be really interested to find out more about what you're doing. How did you get into that line of work?

Politics are at play how ever. My understanding of renewables is they require multi-year, billion dollar projects. The desert I live in, for instance, has a political faction devoted to tourism development. And to develop geothermal here would come up against NIMBYs.

Personally I can program, build super computers, read and communicate math (bs in math). But I don’t know how I could really be hired to help.

As for salaries, energy companies represent some of the largest companies in the world. Just look at what energy money has done for Saudi Arabia. Or all the oil rig drillers who work 4 years and retire a millionaire.

Since you're asking, and I can only speak for myself, I don't like taking that path because at some point you'd need to communicate with some sort of local/national authority and/or politicians and I'd rather eat ear wax than go down that road.

Another hurdle might be that it's difficult for pure software developers to enter the field because most problems require a combination of hardware, software, infrastructure and regulation in order to be solved.

Because it's not a problem that can be solved exclusively with software and marketed as a SaaS or eyeballs ploy.

There are plenty of people on HN solving hard problems but they are not too overlapping with the 'high growth' crowd.

So maybe this boils down to why there aren't many energy experts here? Where do they hang out, anyway?

0. (We've met briefly; I work at a clean energy startup that relies on Utility API; I posted this.) 1. It is too late to prevent civilization-impacting warming, but it is not too late to have an enormous effect on how much impact happens how quickly. 2. "Optimism isn’t principally an analysis of present reality. It’s an ethic. It is not based on denial or rosy thinking. It is a moral posture toward the world we find ourselves in." [1] 3. Ken Caldiera thinks that the tool-building you have done is the right kind of work. [2] 4. Ya, HN has noisy nay-sayers. A lot of them simply have outdated mental models and excessive self-confidence. Can't do much about the latter, but posts like yours can chip away at the latter. 5. If you need a dose of fact-based optimism, check out recent editions of Chris Goodall's amazing mailing list. [3]

Your work matters. Keep on keeping on! Best, Sam

[1] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/observations-on-the-day... [2] https://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/on-choosing-pro... [3] https://us9.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=a336c39e55a6260d59a...

I work for a startup that's focused on making it easier for utilities to integrate DERs into the distribution grid. We make software to simulate the grid, gain real time visibility, and unlock new business models.

I think that software interest in these kinds of industries will be coupled to a maturation of the software profession. When the software industry recognizes the need for professional licensing (like a P.Eng for engineers) in certain disciplines then energy will be much more appealing.

> Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?

I was convinced that this is where I wanted to take my career from reading Bret Victor's piece on a technologists role in address climate change [2], originally thinking that this will never be a huge industry but more and more after reading this piece, realizing how large the opportunity is for software and technologists. The domain is so large there are so many angles, however, I think why VCs might be largely passing on based on your last point "the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic" as it is somewhat true but there seems to be a growing appetite to 'get things done' but I think this is more recent(?).

Something else that might be seen as a risk (certainly occurred to me) is that targeting an industry with so much money, one of them might just solve this problem themselves and they are already an insider to the industry. As much money as VCs have, it's pretty hard to outspend energy giants trying who really want problem X solved.

> Because it really is too late.

This scares me as well, from what looks like a start of a biodiversity crash [3], islands starting to disappear [4] and projecting out what all this means in over the next 50-100 years, it is "too late", however, I'm always reminded how things that look bad can always get worse so it's worth trying to do what we can now.

It's funny (in a sick way) how the joke that VCs always use the tag line of "to change the world", yet these problems are staring us in the face and that same drive seems to be largely missing, maybe cause "playing a small part to make things less horrible in the future" doesn't have the same ring to it..

[0]: https://solcast.com.au/

[1]: https://electrek.co/2018/01/23/tesla-giant-battery-australia...

[2]: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-...

[4]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/09/09/new-study...

From the perspective of someone who's not a software engineer but rather an ops engineer (a software concierge [1]), I find the idea of a scaling problem to be far more attractive than a software (writing) problem, for obvious reasons.

> Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC?

> Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?

The above two combined would be enough. As sibling comments have pointed out, the nature of the industry means that the players involved will be very large and/or political.

It's not that the above three qualities are somehow magical. It's that they're generally necessary (but not sufficient) to create that small, startup (usually high-growth) company environment that appeals to a certain subset here.

Focussing on just one aspect of such an environment without understanding the totality of the appeal (and/or effectiveness) can end up turning into cargo-culting, as with (if you'll forgive the caricature) large, bureaucratic companies attempting to attract talent by refurnishing their common areas with brightly-colored beanbags chairs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17484840

1) Because VC's want returns measured in months, not years. So VC funding is right out.

2) None of this is high-growth. You are selling into a market with a fixed budget. To win, you have to displace something else. That's expensive and difficult and doesn't scale.

3) You are effectively selling to the government with all the downsides. Worse, you are selling to a set of things that are government constrained without the upside of being actual government.

4) Nobody inside cares. There is no short term 15% bonus to most of the people with their hands on the levers. The people in charge won't move until there is so much residential solar installed and the power grid is in such bad shape that individuals start disconnecting from the grid.

I can't speak for the "crowd", but personally I've lost more money in solar stocks than any other sector I can think of. And I didn't even get burned by gambling on specific stocks like SunEdison, just by a broad solar ETF.

Just because something is the wave of the future doesn't mean it's a good investment. If you invested in the solar ETF called TAN[1] back when it came out ten years ago, it's down over 90%. It just keeps shrinking and shrinking, although it has bounced around a little.

Why should producing a commodity efficiently be lucrative from a profitability standpoint? Competitive markets should reduce the profit of a safe activity anyone can do to almost zero. And investors who are willing to invest without regard to profits should reduce investment returns to zero or below.

[1]https://www.nyse.com/quote/ARCX:TAN

Countries like India, Solar is huge. We don't get enough energy even in our richest cities. Most people cant afford to pay as much as they do. Using coal to fire electricity plants is clogging up the air. Solar has the potential to change a lot here.

Do you know of any cleantech software that take on remote workers?

Historically, all those limitations make the "move quickly and break things" approach popular in the current wave of startups impossible and the code with this kind of requirements has historically been implemented by large corporation already working in the industrial domain.

If anything, this feels a domain where GE and large contractors will be chosen to write mission-critical code over startups.

I’d take a long look at how much power you need, and when 5 years of electric bills are more expensive than your own installation. Maybe never, but prices do keep falling.

Every time the smart grid comes up, I imagine the power company turning off my air conditioning because the ability to turn off my air conditioning made them feel safe to under-provision.

https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=...

Irrelevant of what they're doing, you can cover your roof in panels and stick in some storage and forget that a grid even exists.

People spend a lot of time complaining about things they should just ignore.