Econ of Energy Series
The name of this blog is Volt Grid Hub, and at the time of writing this paper, three blog posts have been published since I started this informational website. All of these articles have specifically focused on new technologies and STEM-related topics; however, for the following seven articles, I would like to shift towards a more economic perspective on the broad talking point of the electrification of the world.
This summer I participated in a week-long program at Brown University called “From Grid to Green: The Economics of Energy”; the class was taught by a professional in this field named Stephanie Kang. Over the course of the program, I made new friends, learned important life skills, and, arguably more importantly, learned a ton about this topic.
I was very interested in this field as it combined two unique matters that I find very intriguing, engineering and economics; I therefore decided to make a five-part series of articles to explain what I learned, one of which includes a case study about the infamous Texas power grid failure. I will also post two homework assignments that I completed while at the camp, because we were able to explore and learn more about the topic and I would like to share my findings.
Over the course of these posts, I am excited to combine my two interests while keeping the structure of teaching that my professor utilized.
I will first begin with an introduction to basic economic concepts necessary to understand this market, then I will move on into more depth on how these economic concepts relate specifically to the electricity market for the next three articles. Finally, I will explain the Texas Power Grid Failure and the importance of this event to the future of this market.
You, the reader, may be wondering how this all connects to engineering, which is the whole point of this blog, right? Well, to those who believe this does not correlate with engineering, I strongly disagree.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this brief introduction to the upcoming series, the name of this blog is “Volt Grid Hub”, and what has more relevance and importance to the electrification of the world than the electricity market itself and the economic concepts that are driving this new future of an electrified world?