Aphantasia

This post will be a lot more personal than other posts on this blog, because rather than catching my curiosity, this topic has personally affected me, and as such, I’ll be sharing my own experience in learning about this thing called “aphantasia.” Though this is a personal story, I find that learning about how other people perceive the world and how other brains work to be endlessly fascinating. (If you do too, read anything by Oliver Sacks)

I’m not going to define what aphantasia is quite yet, because for me, the most interesting part of this topic is how I learned about it, and I’d like to try to share a small part of that experience.

Mystery 1: My first inclination that my cognition might be a little different from others came as I started taking masters-level classes in Education. Having graduated college in a STEM field, I’ve noticed numerous changes in pursuing a liberal arts degree, one of which is the introspective nature of much of the coursework. The instructor would often questions like, “Think of a time when a teacher didn’t understand something you were trying to communicate;” or, “How were you taught about ‘X’ subject?” 

I drew a complete and total blank for specific examples like that. I thought they were overly specific questions, but everyone else had very detailed answers. I continually thought “How could you possibly remember something like that?” I remember that I learned things, but never how I learned things. I am among many people who always hated the “essay about personal experiences,” the “two truths and lie game,” and thinking about what to put on a resume, but I never realized that my troubles might related to the fact that I simply don’t remember any of these details. I thought it was because I don’t like talking about myself, the oft-cited reason I’ve heard from so many others. In truth, while I also don’t like talking about myself (despite doing it for this entire blog post), there might also be this underlying reason of poor autobiographical or experiential memory.

Mystery 2: I took up the practice of vipassana meditation several years ago, and among the many cues delivered from my guided meditations are things like “close your eyes, and notice that while you can’t see the desk or wall you have been staring at, this visual space is still active.” When I closed my eyes, I could see some small modicum of activity (subtle grey blobs, and very fait light cues), and it was that to which I though the mediation was referring. 

One session however, the daily meditation said something along the lines of “Look at the table in front of you, and imagine a candle, sitting on the table. You may see a faint outline of a candle, or your experience may be no different than if the candle were really there. Look at the candle, and see if it is one that you recognize, or a candle you have never seen before. Closing your eyes and placing the candle on the table in your mind may help.” That is a paraphrase, but I listened to that section 3 or 4 times. It was the first time I had ever heard, in completely unambiguous terms what the visual sensation should be like, and this didn’t match which my experience at all. I was completely unable to conjure any whisp of an image of a candle with my eyes open or closed. The prompt of “is it a candle you recognize” was completely nonsensical to me because I was imagining the idea of a candle, not any specific one. It could just as easily have been red or white, tall or squat, vanilla or plain paraffin.

I initially chalked this second experience with the meditation app up to not being quite that good a meditator yet. I couldn’t believe that with enough practice, I might be able to actually “see” something that wasn’t there! To most of you, I suspect, this is starting to sound off because, of course, you don’t need to be some Level 20 meditation expert to see a candle when you close your eyes. You just picture it, what’s the big deal? Maybe it’s just an outline, or a flash, maybe it’s in greyscale, or you need to concentrate to see it, but it’s there, right?

I lack any an ability to visualize things. In other terms my “mind’s eye” is completely blind. Yesterday as I write this, I listened to a podcast that mentioned the term “aphantasia,” and out of curiosity I Googled it (well, I DuckDuckGo’d it). It was having a name for it that finally collapsed all the weird phenomena into one explanation.

Aphantasia is a term coined in 2015 by Adam Zeman that refers to the inability to picture things in your “mind’s eye” There has been relatively little research on it, with the majority of research just starting to break out from two researchers: Adam Zeman from Exeter and Professor Joel Pearson from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

My experience of trying to visualize things seems to be different from others. From accounts I’ve read and people I’ve asked, if asked to picture an elephant, the experience varies from flashes of a full picture, being able to conjure and hold an image, to registering an outline or a greyscale image. To me, when asked to visualize an elephant, this is approximately what I’m seeing when I close my eyes:

Subtle grey shades, the occasional indistinct shape or line, and a faint awareness of some sort of network, which I suspect might be blood vessels in my eyelid. This is what I’m seeing regardless of what I’m being asked to picture – an elephant, my wife’s face, a place I’ve been on vacation

If I had to categorize the thought process, it would be something like this:

Note that I don’t actually “see” the text or lines, I just think them. I could continue adding details like this until I ran out of things I knew to be true of elephants, but there is never any image I’m referencing.

‘Visualizing’ things has always been abstract like this for me. If I asked you to picture a star, something visual will likely come to mind, but I asked what the next word is in “Twinkle, Twinkle Little ____” you likely just thought the word “star” rather than picturing one. For me, everything is like the latter case. If I care to draw something (I’m about average at drawing), I refer to these descriptors, and draw them out such that they resemble what I know to be true about elephants. Here is a drawing I did of an elephant with no reference:

I tried being fancy and making the elephant take a step. While drawing, I thought things like “elephants have pretty wrinkly knees, so I’ll add knee wrinkles” and “I know they have a little diamond shaped tail because I remember thinking that was odd while watching Tarzan once.” After looking at a reference I realize I got the tusk and the back leg/belly areas pretty wrong, and the eyes should be lower down. Close enough.

I’m sure aphantasia has been noticed by individuals for as long as there have been humans, but the earliest real account of aphantasia was written down by one of Darwin’s cousins in 1800. Francis Galton asked 100 people to visualize their breakfast table, and 12 reported little to no imagery, which took Galton by surprise. Fast forward a few centuries and in 2009, neuroscientist Adam Zeman had a patient, called MX in the literature, who lost the ability to visualize internally after surgery. This curious case opened up the field and the eventual coining and description of aphantasia. Others who are known to have aphantasia include Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios; J. Craig Venter, the biologist who led the team that first sequenced the human genome; Glen Keane, Disney animator and creator of The Little Mermaid; and Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller.

The most interesting thing about all of this to me is that it took until my late 20’s to realize this. For years, I thought everyone was using “picture this” as a metaphor, a figure of speech. I thought it was the same usage as “feel the music” or to get a “taste of success.” Those aren’t literal feelings or tastes (I know you can feel bass in your chest, and feel emotions with music, but I still think the expression is mainly metaphorical). If asked to describe an elephant, my process and that of looking at an elephant in your mind's eye and listing details are indistinguishable. The fact that I can’t see it never comes up. I assume they can’t see anything, they assume I can see something, and it never gets brought up. It took listening to someone really carefully spelling out their experience visualizing something to realize that I’m doing something different.

It blew my mind to realize that when many people are reminiscing, they are revisiting the sights, smells, and sounds of past times. I have none of that sensory input with memories. My memories are more or less a list of facts, or major plot points, like Cliff Notes or Sparknotes.

I’ve seen tweets such as these one that made no sense to me:

People saying “that’s not how I pictured it” to a movie finally makes sense to me. “Counting sheep” makes a little more sense. Math word problems make a little more sense now. That example from earlier of being able to conjure up a candle on a table that’s as real as if it were really there still seems like a superpower to me. <sidenote> "Conjure" is the perfect word if you can't do it. It seems like magic. </sidenote>

To wrap up one more thread before moving to some FAQ, that first mystery from my grad school classes hasn’t really come up yet. This is the main insight that I had upon learning the word “aphantasia.” I’ve always considered myself to have a decent memory. I memorized the lyrics to Blackalicious’ Alphabet Aerobics, and Tom Leher’s Elements Song, I have known pi to 50 digits, I can solve a Rubik’s cube by remembering sequences like “U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F” 

These are sort of memorization ‘feats’ which are categorically different than being really good with names or remembering stories from your past. It’s that last type that I am really terrible at. If you know me well, you’ve probably heard me say, “that sounds like something I’d do,” or you may have looked at me dumbfounded while explaining something that we had done together while I registered no recognition. I’ve always kind of acted along while feeling a bit guilty for forgetting the memory.

The realization was that memories are so often tied to sights, sounds, smells, and emotions led me to understand that most can use those senses as a ‘hook’ to remember something from their past. They can call to mind a visual of what they were seeing, or an emotion they were feeling at the time, and access that memory. I don’t have any of these ‘hooks’ with my memories. So when I think about a vacation I had, I think things like “we saw this show, which I’m sure was quite nice, and stayed here, so the walk to there must have been pretty quick. The city was close to the sea, so I’m sure I could smell saltiness. I liked the people I was with, and I remember this funny joke we all laughed at...” Sparknotes. It’s absent of any visual, auditory, emotional, or other sensory components.

This quote from Blake Ross, Co-founder of Mozilla, rang really true for me:

"I’ve always felt an incomprehensible combination of stupid-smart. I missed a single question on the SATs, yet the easiest conceivable question stumps me: What was it like growing up in Miami?

I don’t know.

What were some of your favorite experiences at Facebook?

I don’t know.

What did you do today?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I did today.

Answering questions like this requires me to “do mental work,” the way you might if you’re struggling to recall what happened in the Battle of Trafalgar. If I haven’t prepared, I can’t begin to answer. But chitchat is the lubricant of everyday life."

 

It’s hard not to feel a sense of loss for this type of autobiographical memory. I wish I could “relive” moments from my past, remember childhood stories or the plots of fictional books I’ve read, or even access my favorite smells when they’re not around. Next time you see me, please don’t hesitate to tell me a story from our past, because unless it was in the last few years, I probably don’t remember anything but some really basic ‘plot points.’

One effect of this lack of autobiographical memory is that I find it very easy to “live in the moment.” Holding grudges or feeling embarrassment is basically an impossibility for me, which I don’t mind. It may sound callous, but my grieving process is mercifully short, as I can’t keep recalling memories from the past like most can. I suspect that moving on from loss is easier with less solid memories to fall back on.

While I’m talking about benefits of aphantasia, I’ll mention that I had always assumed my lack of memories from my childhood was the result of repressed memories, which I had heard of. I have always thought it was more likely than not that I must have been terribly bullied or lonely and attributed the fact I couldn’t remember much of it was due to repressing those memories. I’m relieved to figure out a happier cause for their absence. My own lack of these memories also led to the assumption that my grad school classmates were wildly inventing when asked about their own schooling, so it’s comforting to know that I can have a little more trust that they aren’t making things up.

A final result of this lack of autobiographical memories is that I don’t really identify with my past self. I think of “Scott from 15 years ago” as a different person who I have little in common with. I mean, that guy hasn’t taught a professional development workshop, hasn’t been to Scotland, nor does he even know who Cordelia the cat is. Those are all important aspects of who I am now. In many fundamental ways, I have more in common with my wife than I do with 15-years-ago Scott. As a result of this, I find it really easy to change my opinion on things. Since I don’t identify with ‘past Scott’ who held that old opinion, there’s no problem with having a different one now. For example, Scott from a year ago drank 2-4 caffeinated drinks a day. Current Scott drinks none (okay, maybe once every week or two). No problem. Present Scott has never been a coffee drinker, only past Scott has, and he's gone already.

General questions often asked about aphantasia, and the experience of having it:

1. Can you picture my face?

• No, but I know what you look like. I have always been able to recognize faces just fine, but have a hard time knowing from where I know them. I think this is common, though.

2. Do you recognize me when you see me?

• Yes. The process of putting a name to a face is different that the process of visually generating a face from a name.

3. What about simple shapes, like a circle or triangle?

• Nothing. If the brain is a computer, mine has no monitor. Asking “what is on the monitor?” doesn’t make sense to me.

4. “I can’t really SEE things either. For me it’s just picturing it in my mind. It’s not the same as seeing it.”

• I can’t even picture it in my mind. I don’t SEE things, but I ALSO can’t picture them in any “mind’s eye.”
• I was initially worried that this is all a bit subjective until I read about a study that looked at "Binocular Rivalry" In that study they asked participants to visualize either red horizontal bars, or green vertical bars. Researchers then flashed one image to the left eye and one to the right simultaneously, and asked which image participants saw 'more.' People who are strong visualizers saw the image they were asked to visualize about 80% more often. With aphantasics, there was no correlation between what they were asked to visualize and what image they saw 'more,' suggesting a real and objective measurement of a real phenomena.

5. What about other senses?

• Same with all senses. If a song is stuck in my head, it’s just lyrics and rhythm, no sound whatsoever.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a non-lyrical song stuck in my head. Concerning smells, I have no idea what coffee smells like, but I’m confident that I’d recognize it if I smelled it again. If you asked me to describe the smell, I’d say “nutty, earthy, and slightly burnt.” I’m referencing things I know about coffee, and nothing about the smell itself. The weird thing is that it’s the same with emotions. I don’t know what it feels like to be frustrated, but I know that if frustrating circumstances come up, I’ll be able to identify it.

6. Do you have an ‘inner monologue?”

• Yes, but it doesn’t have a voice, or accent. It’s just thoughts. I was amazed to hear that some people’s “inner voice” is not only auditory, but uses their speaking voice, or a high pitched version, or accented version.

7. What goes through your head all day if not sights, smells, and sounds?

• Just that ‘voice,’ and only when I pay attention to it.

8. Do you dream?

• I think I do, but I forget every last detail within a minute of consciousness. There are no images or sensory components, just ‘plot points.’ I can remember a grand total of 3 dreams from my entire life, one of them lucid.

9. How do you follow directions if you’re not following a map in your head?

• I have three lists: One is a list of turn directions like “left, right, right, take the exit onto the highway.” The next list is the street names: “Washington, 3rd, Ralston, Highway 287.” Last, I have the distances “right away, 1 mile or so, quite far, right away.” Those together get the job done.

10. I’ve heard of synesthesia, is this similar?

• Not really, I don’t experience anything like synesthesia.

11. Does not knowing what an emotion feels like affect your empathy?

• Yes and no. No in the sense that I don't feel others' emotions for the sole reason that they are feeling them. If someone is crying because they lost someone I never knew, I don't feel any sadness 'on their behalf.' So, in that sense, I don’t emotionally feel what anyone else is going through. Often, the thing that is affecting them is also affecting me, so I may feel the emotion independently. If I also knew the person who passed, I'll feel my own sadness. Otherwise my main emotion is one of compassion for my friend, not of sadness. However, I make a lot of effort to understand what others are going through and know that their feelings are valid, so in that sense, yes, I do 'feel' empathy.

12. Do you not have an imagination?

• I do. “Imagination” is a broader term than “visualization.” I use different tools, but I can still create things from scratch, even if I’m not visualizing them.

13. Do you feel that having aphantasia is a positive or negative thing?

• Neither. I sure would like to remember my own life better, but I am who I am because of my brain and how I think. With mental imagery and autobiographical memory, I would be a different person. It’s a difference, not a benefit or loss.
  
  There are a few fringe benefits though: I’ve never been scared by a verbal story because I’m not imagining anything; I can forget all the terrible images I’ve seen in movies and TV shows; adaptations of books are always spot-on because I wasn’t picturing anything in the first place; I’ve never held a grudge; I’ve never lingered on an embarrassing memory; and living in the moment without visual images 'intruding' on my mental space increases my mindfulness.

To me, it's a testament to the varieties of the human experience that it took me until my late 20’s to realize this difference in how my brain works. This cognitive difference, which has presumably always existed, has only even begun to be studied in the last 5 years. There are so many possible variants to cognition, memory, and more that we're presumably only beginning to discover. 

Who knows, maybe your red really is different than my red, and we can never know.

If you are interested in participating, or finding out about how well you can see with your mind's eye, you can take the Visual Imagery Assessment from the University of Exeter (Zeman), or the Vividness of Visual Imagery Quiz from aphantasia.com.

I'm a 1, unless you think you can see a faint star in "1," in which case I'm a 0

Cheers,

  - Scott

Email List: tinyletter.com/scottsieke

Mise En Place

This picture was retweeted by Adam Savage, NBD

Mise en place (me's on plas) means setting things in their place. It's a technique I've started to use in the kitchen, but I've found it's applicable well beyond the kitchen.

If you watch a cooking show from Everyday Cooking with Jaques Pepin and The Rachel Ray Show to the Tasty YouTube channel, you'll see little glass and ceramic bowls full of chopped veggies and spices. This isn't just a convenience for TV cooking; if you eat at a restaurant with an open kitchen you'll see these little bowls with single ingredients. It may seem neurotic to prep all the ingredients in neat little aliquots before turning on a burner, but it avoids several cooking pitfalls: the accidental four course meal, the scramble to chop garlic while onions burn, and the dreaded salt-for-sugar substitution.

Preparing for a meal using mise en place streamlines the actual cooking process and makes the part that matters - usually the application of heat - less prone to error. In my kitchen, I've occasionally served a side dish fully 20 minutes before the main while waiting for 4 quarts of water to boil. I've burned onions only to add garlic that itself only gets warm, never breaking down into those garlicky flavor compounds. Worst of all, I've entered the Total Meal Failure (TMF) spiral. While waiting for risotto to cook and thicken, I've paused to cut asparagus. For those of you who haven't made a risotto, while not stirring, the bottom will be burning onto the blazing hot base of the pan. The burnt flavor then infects the whole dish. That risotto had to be tossed. If the asparagus had been cut beforehand, the risotto could have been saved.

Setting out the ingredients beforehand is a way to minimize decisions and hurries in the heat of the moment. A recipe I made today said "Add scallions, nutmeg, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3/4 teaspoon pepper, and minced sage; cook, stirring occasionally, until scallions are softened, about 3 minutes." Since I had done my mise en place, that instruction meant tipping a little glass bowl into the pan and stirring for a few minutes until I needed to add broth. If I hadn't prepared my bowl beforehand, I'd have 3 minutes to go outside to collect sage, chop a shallot, and fiddle with measuring spoons to get my salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar measured. I have to say it - that's a recipe for disaster.

Most people do some form of mise en place during common kitchen tasks. When making a sandwich, the assembly is usually done after all the toppings are collected from drawers, countertops and fridge shelves. When making a stir fry, which cooks quickly, all the ingredients are often at hand. Most kitchens have staples easily accessible - salt, pepper, maybe oils, bacon fat, or butter. All kitchens I've seen have easily accessible utensils like spatulas and wooden spoons. Moving outside the kitchen, many nearly-universal tasks are recognizable as mise en place: organizing Legos before a build, packing for vacation by setting things on the bed, laying out clothes the night before an interview. Each of these is a way of off-loading decision-making from stressful or hurried times to when things are relatively calm. You certainly can pick out your clothes in the morning before a 9am job interview, but you'll be splitting your attention between remembering that list of three things you innovated on the job in 2015 and making sure your socks match. It's easier to make some decisions the night before, during the relative calm.

Everyone at some point has come down with "One Damn Thing After Another-itis." This happens most commonly for me while leaving the house in the morning.

"Why are the keys not on the hook? I didn't realize we were out of oatmeal... I have a lot to carry, I should chuck it in a bag. Where is the bag? I can't leave the door open or the cat will get out... I'm going to miss the bus."

One. Damn. Thing. After. Another. In cooking, this may manifest in a ruined dish, but a morning crowded with rushed decisions can ruin a day. Hurried packing can lead to a ruined vacation. Everything in its place; mise en place. If your morning is going to be rushed, off-load as many decisions as you can to the night before. What's for breakfast? What are you wearing? What do you need to bring? These decisions don't need to be remembered in the moment. You can lay things together so you just need to bring everything in that pile you made last night, or my favorite, making a checklist the night before? Is everything on the checklist checked? Leave. You've got everything.

To broaden this idea one final step, the core idea behind mise en place is helpful beyond moving physical objects on your countertop or in your house. Each of the following three examples is a bit of a stretch, but I believe the sentiment still applies.

1) I try to live by the Kant-ian categorical imperative to never lie. It's an ideal, and I fall short occasionally, but it keeps my life so much easier to manage in the long run. Everything is in its place. If I'm asked something, I answer honestly, and because I have done this for many years now, I only ever have to compare my answer with reality, never some version of it. If I tell a friend that I love their acting, but acknowledge to a third party that I think they're no good, I've filled a can labeled "salt" with sugar and stuck it in the pantry of my life. I now need to remember that that can contains sugar, not salt. When I'm asked later on if I like my friends acting, I need to figure out what to say. I need to figure out which reality to represent - the one in which I like their acting, and the one in which it's rubbish. Which can of salt do I grab? Lying creates a cluttered cupboard, and keeping things in their place means I always grab the right thing - everything labeled "salt" is filled with salt because I'm only ever comparing what I say against reality.¹

2) Browsing around on Netflix or Amazon Prime can occasionally lead to discovering a good show, though I've often found that recommendations from friends are far likelier to resonate. Making a decision in the moment while browsing means you're likely to be swayed one way or the other by factors like the autoplaying trailer or show thumbnail, which can be misleading and end up wasting your time and attention. Applying mise en place, you can have shows lined up, ready to watch when you find yourself searching for a show. If a friend recommends a show or movie off a steaming site, you can add it to the service's watchlist. When you want a new show, that list will guarantee two things: you've heard enough about the show to warrant checking it out, and you'll have someone to talk to about it.

3) Most people prep for meetings unless they're hyper-qualified and ludicrously competent at their jobs. You have some questions to ask and some things to offer. This prep work makes the meeting less stressful, and allows you to think on your feet, knowing some of the bases are covered. I've prepped for conversations like meetings. I noticed a while ago that conversations catching up with old friends have often had a certain characteristic. When asked "what's new?" I often mention recent things that are relatively mundane in the scheme of the time they're asking about, but since they're recent, they are on my mind.

"What have you been up to?"
"Been baking bread. It's nice because I can eat it before heading off to a grad school class and it fills me up before I can cook a good dinner."
"Wait, you're in grad school?!"

Before catching up, I put a few 'ingredients' in bowls, knowing we'll get to those topics. Important things going on in my life I want to share, and important things in theirs I want to know about. Knowing I'll have these bases covered means I can listen and engage with what they're saying rather than planning on how to talk about x, y, or z. Mise en place; having a few ingredient bowls ready to go, to flavor the conversation.

This last example illustrates one last thing about mise en place. It's helpful to reduce decision making to the relative 'calm before the storm' of a stressful or hurried task, but its best application to reduce decision making and increase engagement when a task is meaningful.

Cheers,


  - Scott

Email list:

tinyletter.com/scottsieke

1: Always telling the truth comes with some hard conversations. I once received a gift I knew I wasn't going to use, and after two years finally fessed up and said that I didn't need it. It turns out that the gift itself was a regift, so I sent it along on its journey to a spot where it gets used at least once a week. The hard conversation can be difficult, but it often leads to more genuine interactions, and occasionally a better outcome than the alternative. Another 'white lie²' that is easy to fall into is the 'everlasting compliment.' Always saying exclusively positive things when asked for feedback may lead to short term happiness, but I find that giving honest feedback, even when negative, has one huge advantage - when the feedback is positive, they are certain you mean it. That authenticity goes a long way.

2: I ask people all the time to come up with scenarios in which 'white lies' are either harmless or lead to a better outcome than telling the truth, and I haven't yet found one where a lie is truly the better alternative. Fight me.

The Reality of Renewables

Generating power for the entire country comes with one fascinating quirk: the national grid produces the energy that is demanded at that particular moment. Phrased another way, power is used as it is created. In Xcel’s Pawnee coal plant in Brush, CO, a piece of coal is burned to drive a steam turbine, and some microseconds later, that energy is used to boil a kettle in nearby Wiggins.

From this reality of the grid, several consequences follow. The country has to generate more energy when the Superbowl goes to commercial and Americans turn on stoves and microwaves, so we have to have power plants that can quickly ramp up their production to meet the sudden demand. This need has been problematic in the UK when unexpected breaks in soccer games drive millions to energy-hungry tea kettles.

The power plants that have the capability to ramp up and down their production in response to demand are called load following power plants. These load followers carefully track the energy needs of the grid they are supplying and ramp their production up and down to meet the demand at that moment. When the Superbowl starts, these are the plants that ramp up or turn on to supply electricity to millions of TVs.

As well as the load followers, other forms of energy generation are the more laid-back base load power plants. A great example of a base load plant is nuclear energy. If you asked a nuclear power plant to quickly ramp up production, they would ask how you got in, then say they can’t easily change their output. These plants are kept on 24/7 to meet the base load: the lowest expected daily energy demand.

The extreme example of load following plants are peaking power plants, known as “peakers.” These plants are by default not producing power and only turn on when the base load cannot be met by the base load power plants. Their sole purpose is to smooth out intermittencies and ensure that just enough power is being produced. These plants operate inefficiently to prioritize a fast ramp up and ramp down time, and so the power they provide commands a premium price, as demand is necessarily high.

So what happens if this system goes wrong and there is more or less energy on the grid than is demanded? You might not have heard of the electricity wars between Edison and Tesla (the inventors, not the companies), but you have certainly heard of the band AC/DC. AC/DC got their name after someone saw the initials on a sewing machine. It stands for Alternating Current or Direct Current. Direct current is the kind you get from batteries, and alternating current comes from wall outlets. It is called alternating because it switches direction 60 times a second – 60Hz.

When more or less energy is produced than is needed, this frequency changes, which could begin to wreak havoc on things plugged into the national grid that are expecting a particular frequency. The grid is expected to deliver within 1% of 60Hz frequency to businesses and residences here in the US. One solution to this problem of shifting frequency is to have consumer devices like refrigerators monitor the incoming AC current and when it deviates too much from 60Hz, the device responds by powering down to reduce the demand. Enough consumer devices doing this will reduce demand back to the operating limits, and save consumers a few dimes a year to boot.

At this point it is helpful to look at some data. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is the main grid operator in California, responsible for about 80% of the energy usage of the state. Helpfully, they put all their data online, and update it every five minutes, and keep records going back months.

To start, here is the demand curve: how much electricity is needed throughout the day. Note that the y axis does not start at 0:

No surprises here. Overnight, less energy is needed, and there is a peak in the morning as people are getting up and in the evening after getting back from work. A lot of this is from energy-intensive appliances that heat up food and water, and relatively less from lights and TVs, as might be expected.

Next let’s take a look at the Net Demand, or what happens when you subtract out renewables (again, note the y axis):

The purple here represents the non-renewable resources. As expected, there is a dip starting around 7 am, lasting until about 5pm. This midday dip in non-renewable energy demand comes from the sun hitting solar panels.

One thing that can be seen by looking at the Net Demand graphs from many days is that California has been heavily investing in megawatts of solar energy, and less so in wind energy. The effect of heavy investment in solar over wind is that there is a narrow margin of renewables available when the sun isn’t out. December 16, 2019 (the day the data from these graphs was collected) wasn’t a particularly windy day, but the point still holds when looking at relatively overcast and windy days (look at Sep 9, 2019 for an example of a cloudy and windy day).

Next is the graph I want to dig into a little bit:

This graph shows how California met its demand on December 16^th. I didn’t include coal, batteries, or “other” as they are insignificant to the overall supply, and I didn’t include Imports for clarity. The imports curve mirrors the natural gas curve, reduced by about 50%.

First to note is nuclear. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant provides a constant 1,100 MW to California’s overall supply 24/7. On December 16, its output varied between 1,102 and 1,106 MW. This nuclear plant is a base load plant that cannot ramp. The Diablo Canyon Plant is due to shut down in 2024 or 2025.

Next is large hydro, or water behind dams. These can be ramped quickly, but not indefinitely. The water level cannot vary too much, so there is a natural limit to how long these plants can be ramped up - once the water level falls, it's time to shut down. On the other hand, if snowmelt from the neighboring Sierra Nevadas comes through the dam, operators have no choice but to let the water through. This leads to cheap energy prices in spring months. Large hydro is somewhere between a base load and a load following power plant.

Renewables including wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas, and small hydro account for a about 2,000 MW, and these can be considered base load plants. Solar is intermittent, and so can be load-following, but the manner in which they can be load following seems a shame. To make a solar farm load following, build many more solar panels than you need, and connect or disconnect them as the load changes. This seems wasteful, however solar panels do have an unmatched ramp up and ramp down speed; turning them on and off takes nearly no time. California routinely overproduces and curtails solar power at certain facilities during summer months.

Lastly is the hero of California’s load following energy production: natural gas. Natural gas plants can ramp up and down production to follow the load far quicker than coal or nuclear plants. They are comparatively nimble and reactive. Natural gas is at this point absolutely indispensable. Without it, California would be entirely reliant on energy imports from Nevada to match demand.

One more curiosity from the CAISO database. There are times when the cost of energy is negative. Before you get excited, you're not going to see a check from the energy company unless you are a wholesale buyer of energy, which you aren't. This negative cost arises due to excess energy being produced, and the fact that energy is expensive to transport. In some cases, it is cheaper for the grid operator to pay middlemen to offload excess energy than it is to transport or ramp down production. Living nearby a large hydro installation in springtime benefits an energy consumer. A typical large hydro plant might have fifteen room-sized turbines, 5 of which are usually on, but while snowmelt is coming through all fifteen might be producing power to get the water through the dam. This energy is cheaper to offload locally than transport elsewhere. Note to supervillains with energy-hungry doomsday weapons: find a valley in California and run your tests in the springtime to save money on a big electric bill.

The whole reason to have base load plants, load-following plants, and consumer appliances that turn of and off depending on incoming AC frequency is that we don’t have any way to store large amounts of energy. This is analogous to trying to run a restaurant with no refrigerators, or a bar with no kegs – a logistical nightmare. The challenge of large-scale energy storage is what stands between our current power grid, and one that runs off intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar.

There are some ideas floating around that may be able to scale to meet some of the eventual demand for energy grid storage:

1)    Batteries. Creating batteries that power cities rather than cars, watches, or laptops is difficult. Just wiring a lot of LiPo batteries together isn’t going to cut it. These city batteries will need to be charged in the summer, and hold that charge until winter with a near zero failure rate, and be made from earth abundant elements.

<sidenote> "Rare earth elements" are poorly named. Most aren’t rare at all. Every "rare earth element" is more common than gold, and there is about as much selenium as there is nickel. The thing that makes them hard to extract (rare) is that they don’t clump in exploitable deposits like gold or gemstones – they are more evenly distributed. To get an appreciable amount, you need to dig up an process a lot of earth. </sidenote>

2)    Pump Hydro Storage. This is essentially pumping water uphill and behind a dam during the day when you have energy, and letting it flow through a turbine at night when you need it. You can also pump up extra water in the summer and it stores perfectly well until it is needed in the winter. There is a related idea that replaces the dam in a valley with an underground reservoir, and trades out gravity for pressure: pump water underground at high pressure, and release the pressure to drive a turbine when you want the energy back.

3)    Molten Salt. Using power generated during the day to heat up salt until it is molten, as well as chilling antifreeze. This creates an extreme thermal gradient and you can use this to drive a heat exchanger to get energy out. This method doesn’t have a long shelf life – heat up salt during the summer and it will be cold by winter.

The three above are highlighted in this video.

4)    Flywheels. During the day, use solar power to spin up an enormous circular weight called a flywheel, storing energy in the form of angular momentum. At night, apply the brakes to spin up a turbine.

5)    Vehicle-to-Grid. We are starting to heft around pretty big batteries in cars and sometimes in wall mounted batteries in garages. The idea is to use these batteries for ‘peak shaving:’ sending energy to the grid when demand is high, and ‘valley filling:’ charging batteries at night when demand is low.

Without large scale and reliable energy storage solutions, the only way to move fully to renewable resources would be to fully supply our power needs even in the dreary January. Meeting the demand in January using California’s current ratio of renewable energy sources would result in overproduction in summer months several times over.

In the meantime, we need to meet the base load, follow the load as it changes, all while not releasing too much CO₂. The path ahead seems clear:

·      Innovate and install energy storage solutions

·      Continue to invest in diverse renewable power sources

·      Build more nuclear plants to meet the base load

·      Keep our natural gas infrastructure in place until it’s no longer needed to follow the load

Cheers,

  - Scott

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