![\"BITNET](\"\/pictures\/1991-1994--mn\/big\/SCAN0425.jpg\")
<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\nBITNET in the U.S. and Worldwide and the Internet<\/a>,\r\nin\r\n\r\nMatrix News 4.10 October 1994<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nThe exponential growth of the Internet sucked users away from all the other networks.\r\nCoal is already crashing so fast that cleaning up coal ash is the biggest issue.\r\nNukes are closing left and right.\r\n“Natural” gas is still growing, but not as fast as solar and wind, which produced more new electricity than any other source in 2020.\r\nSoon, fracked methane will peak, and then it will fall fast, just like coal did. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.\r\n
\r\nSolar, wind, batteries and other storage will continue to soar until almost all electricity comes from them.\r\nA cleaner world, with profit for those who buy in, and lower power charges for everyone: it’s coming fast.\r\n
\r\nVote for clean energy and help it arrive faster.\r\n
\r\nRemember FidoNet?\r\nProbably you’ve never heard of it, and this is why.\r\nRemember BITNET?\r\nMaybe not, but one of its neologisms lingers on: \r\n\r\nlistserv.\r\n
\r\n\r\n \r\nBITNET was a large, worldwide network, which started on IBM mainframes\r\nbut also included VMS VAX computers from Digital Equipment, and possibly others.\r\nEarly on, from 1982 through 1985, BITNET grew exponentially, just like the Internet.\r\nBITNET was interconnected with all the other networks by 1986.\r\nThen its growth sputtered, like a rocket running out of fuel.\r\nBy 1992 BITNET peaked, while the Internet continued to soar.\r\n \r\nThis is why I predict that solar and wind power and batteries\r\nwill suck away users of all other power sources.\r\nOnly those three are growing exponentially, like rockets.\r\nIt doesn’t take rocket science to make this prediction.\r\n \r\nProbably it’s time to revise my 2013 ten-year prediction<\/a>.\r\n \r\n \r\nI deliberately drew it projecting only the 2013 growth rates forward for each power source,\r\nwithout taking into account the BITNET effect.\r\nBut now we have further FERC data which we can use to show the old, dirty, power sources have peaked (coal) or are peaking (gas).\r\nSure, Southern Company keeps bulling ahead with Plant Vogtle,\r\nbut those two units are the only nukes building in the U.S.,\r\nand many more than two have shut down during the long Vogtle delays and cost overruns.\r\n \r\nCoal has already peaked in the U.S. and is merely a shadow of its old self.\r\nRemember less than ten years ago, when mountain-top coal mining seemed unstoppable,\r\nand a bogus company wanted to build a coal plant in Ben Hill County, Georgia?\r\nWell, that plant was cancelled on Bastille Day 2012<\/a>.\r\nGeorgia Power is closing so many coal plants that disposal of coal ash<\/a> is\r\nthe big coal issue now.\r\nEven mighty Plant Scherer near Macon, Georgia, the country’s dirtiest,\r\nis losing the owners of one of its four unites by January 2020:\r\nFlorida companies FPL and JEA are selling out<\/a>.\r\nWho would be crazy enough to buy their shares?\r\n \r\nAlready in January 2020, the famously conservative U.S. Energy Information Agency\r\npredicted\r\n\r\nNew electric generating capacity in 2020 will come primarily from wind and solar<\/a>.\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\nIt’s not even close, with almost half from wind, a third from solar, and only a fifth from fracked methane.\r\nNo new electricity at all from coal, and no new nukes in 2020.\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\nMore than half of 2020 retiring electric capacity is coal,\r\na third “natural” gas, a seventh nuclear, and only 1% each solar and wind.\r\nThat’s far less than new solar and wind.\r\nWhile that 3.74 gigawatts of retiring gas is not only a third of all retiring 2020 capacity, it’s a third of the amount of 2020 new natural gas deployments.\r\n \r\nSo many fracked methane pipelines have been canceled that already in July\r\nwe were seeing articles like this:\r\nScott Tong, Marketplace, 6 July 2020,\r\n\r\n$8 billion natural gas pipeline canceled, raising questions about fuel’s future <\/a>.\r\n \r\nThe electric utilities were warned by their own think tank,\r\n\r\nEdison Electric Institute, back in 2013<\/a>, that:\r\n \r\n…one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent. To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\nNow I don’t recommend disconnecting from the grid.\r\nI sell my excess solar capacity back to Colquitt Electric,\r\nand that reduces their costs and supplies power for my neighbors.\r\nI recommend let’s finish converting the grid to solar, wind, and batteries.\r\n \r\nSure, solar power is intermittent.\r\nBut, as I told the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2013, shortly before they\r\ndecided to require Georgia Power to buy twice as much solar power,\r\n\r\nThe cloudy day doesn\u2019t last for an entire month<\/a>.\r\nAnd with distributed generation and storage, continuous power will be available.\r\n \r\nThat’s why I got batteries with these twenty solar panels way back in 2006,\r\nand used them to stay up through ten-hour power outages.\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\nWe got 60 more solar panels in 2012<\/a>.\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\nBattery prices have come way down, so it’s time to order some batteries for them, too.\r\n![\"BITNET](\"\/pictures\/1991-1994--mn\/big\/SCAN0424.jpg\")
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\r\n\r\nBITNET in the U.S. and Worldwide<\/a>,\r\nin\r\n\r\nMatrix News 4.10 October 1994<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n![\"Power](\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/8226\/8421700685_a46c93cf27_z.jpg\")
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\r\nPower source growth rates like compound interest, LAKE, January 2013.\r\n<\/p>\r\n![](\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/todayinenergy\/images\/2020.01.14\/main.svg\")
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![\"Sunshine](\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/5301\/5632134880_2f2363a7f2_b.jpg\")
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\r\nSunshine above solar panels at Okra Paradise Farms<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n![\"Gretchen](\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7061\/6823757402_e70261038e_z.jpg\")
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\r\n\r\nGretchen Quarterman and John S. Quarterman on the new panels on the roof of the farm workshop at Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 29 January 2012.<\/a>\r\nPhoto CC BY-ND Okra Paradise Farms.\r\n<\/p>\r\n