World Soil Museum

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World Soil Museum

April 22, 2026
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The World Soil Museum hosts a range of educational programs and workshops for students, researchers, and other visitors who are interested in learning more about soil science. These programs cover topics such as soil classification, soil management, and soil conservation, and they are designed to help people understand the vital role that soils play in supporting agriculture, ecosystems, and human societies around the world.

 

Getting to Know Your Soil

Earth Energy Systems

April 22, 2026
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Geothermal systems cool buildings by leveraging the stable temperatures found beneath the Earth’s surface. A geothermal heat pump system consists of a ground loop, heat exchanger, and distribution system.

In cooling mode, the system extracts heat from the building and transfers it to the ground. The ground loop, typically composed of pipes buried horizontally or vertically, circulates a fluid that absorbs heat from the building’s interior. The fluid, warmed by this process, is then pumped through the ground loop where the Earth’s cooler temperatures absorb the heat, effectively dissipating it into the ground.

The cooled fluid returns to the heat pump, which distributes the now-cooler air throughout the building via the distribution system, such as ductwork. This process is highly efficient because the ground maintains a relatively constant temperature year-round, allowing the geothermal system to operate with less energy compared to traditional air-source cooling methods.

At the moment, though the technology has been made practical since Prince Piero Ginori Conti’s discovery in 1904, and has since tracked well in local building codes and environmental regulations, the bibliography for earth energy systems is nascent and relatively thin.  One trade association is emerging from the gathering pace of applications and case studies: Closed-Loop/Geothermal Heat Pump Systems Design and Installation Standards

We maintain the IGSHPA catalog on the standing agenda of our Energy, Mechanical and Air Conditioning colloquia.  See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.

Partial Bibliography:

Handbook of Best Practices for Geothermal Drilling

Best Practices for Designing Geothermal Systems

Geothermal Direct Use Engineering and Design Guidebook

International Standards

ISO 13612-1:2014 – Heating and cooling systems in buildings — Method for calculation of the system performance and system design for heat pump systems — Part 1: Design and dimensioning.

    • This standard covers the design and performance calculation of geothermal heat pump systems.

ISO 14823:2017 – Intelligent transport systems — Graphic data dictionary.

    • While not specific to geothermal, this standard includes data relevant to various systems, including geothermal energy systems.

ISO 52000-1:2017 – Energy performance of buildings — Overarching EPB assessment — Part 1: General framework and procedures.

    • This standard provides a general framework for assessing the energy performance of buildings, which includes geothermal systems.

IEC 61753-111-7:2014 – Fibre optic interconnecting devices and passive components – Performance standard – Part 111-7: Sealed closures for category S – Subterranean environments.

    • Relevant for the installation of geothermal systems that include fiber optic components in subterranean environments.

North American  Standards

CSA C448: Design and installation of earth energy systems.

ANSI/CSA C448 Series-16 – Design and Installation of Earth Energy Systems.

    • This standard covers the design and installation of geothermal heat pump systems in the United States, providing guidelines on installation practices, materials, and system performance.

ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.

    • This standard sets the minimum energy efficiency requirements for the design and construction of buildings, including the installation of geothermal systems.

IGSHPA Standards – International Ground Source Heat Pump Association (IGSHPA) Standards.

    • The IGSHPA develops standards for the design and installation of geothermal heat pump systems, with a focus on closed-loop systems.

NFPA 54 – National Fuel Gas Code.

    • Although primarily focused on fuel gas systems, this standard may intersect with geothermal systems when they involve hybrid solutions that include gas heating.

EPA Standards for Geothermal Energy (40 CFR Part 144) – Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program.

    • This standard regulates the injection of fluids into underground wells, relevant for geothermal systems that involve deep wells for heat exchange.

UL 1995 – Heating and Cooling Equipment.

    • This standard applies to the safety of heating and cooling equipment, including geothermal heat pumps.

“Neptune’s Horses” 1919 | Walter Crane

Gallery: Great Lakes

April 22, 2026
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The Great Lakes contain enough fresh water to cover the land area of the entire United States under 3 meters of water.

We collect 15 video presentations about Great Lake water safety and sustainability prepared by the 8 Great Lake border state colleges and universities and their national and international partners in Canada.

Tour Around Lake Superior

 

 

Water 100

When the wicked problems of peace and economic inequality cannot be solved, political leaders, and the battalions of servile administrative muckety-mucks who report to them, resort to fear-mongering about an imagined problem to be solved centuries hence assuming every other nation agrees on remedies of its anthropogenic origin.  We would not draw attention to it were it not that large tranches of the global academic community are in on the grift costing hundreds of billions in square-footage for research and teaching hopelessness to our children and hatred of climate change deniers.

Before the internet is scrubbed of information contrary to climate change mania, we recommend a few titles:

“Gulliver’s Travels” Jonathan Swift | Start at Chapter 5, PDF page 235

The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania

Climate Change Craziness Exposed: Twenty-One Climate Change Denials of Environmentalists

Climate Psychosis

Gallery: Other Ways of Knowing Climate Change

 

Gallery: Animal Care

April 22, 2026
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Animals 300

Student-run coffee shop

April 21, 2026
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Standards Ohio | Ohio 937

Artist: Bob Dylan (featuring Leonard Cohen)

John Marshall students to run coffee shop

“There’s a new coffee shop in Cleveland, and it’s in John Marshall High School. The “Lawyers Café” serves lattes, healthy fruit smoothies, and Rising Star coffee, and it’s completely student-run. While they brew up the drinks as baristas and handle the budgets on the finance team, all of the scholars are getting hands-on job skills and learning what it takes to run their own small business.”

American Enterprise Institute: One Nation, Under Lawyers

“In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”

— John Milton, Tractate of Education

President George H. Bush’s prescient warning to graduates about the destabilizing dangers of “political correctness” to the American experiment in a constitutional republic.  Escalated by the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden; accelerated by multinational social media conglomerates, free speech — globally — remains challenged and threatens the return to the tribalism that doomed ancient civilizations.  Higher education in America will have the heaviest hand in this transformation.

“Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses. The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”

Engineering Research: Coffee Science

Coffee

Readings

Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman

Schumpter’s Theory of Creative Destruction

Electric Load Growth

April 21, 2026
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Standards North Carolina

The February 19, 2025 webinar hosted by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability explored how the U.S. power grid can accommodate rapid new electricity demand from data centers, AI, manufacturing, and EVs with minimal new generation and transmission infrastructure.  The study focused on the 22 largest U.S. balancing authorities (covering ~95% of national load) and emphasized load flexibility as a practical near-term solution.

Three Main Takeaways:

  • Load flexibility is a critical tool to support economic growth while maintaining grid reliability and affordability. Large customers can temporarily curtail or shift usage during periods of grid stress, reducing the need for costly infrastructure expansions.
  • Up to nearly 100 GW of new large loads could be added with minimal impact. Using “curtailment-enabled headroom,” the grid could accommodate approximately 100 GW of additional load if customers allow an average curtailment of just 0.5% of maximum uptime per year (roughly two hours during peak events). Sensitivity cases ranged from 76 GW (at 0.25% curtailment) to 126 GW (at 1%).
  • The required curtailment time is comparable to existing demand-response programs already operating successfully across the United States and would not be overly burdensome for large users such as data centers.

Additional Insights: The U.S. power system already has significant built-in headroom because it is designed for rare peak events. Leveraging modest flexibility from new loads can unlock this capacity quickly, enabling faster integration of high-growth loads while keeping costs lower for ratepayers.  Overall, the session advocated shifting from a traditional “build more supply” mindset toward greater use of demand-side flexibility to balance rapid load growth with reliability, affordability, and decarbonization goals.

Bulletin Board

April 21, 2026
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NIST | USPTO | ANSI | IEEE | ICC | ASTM | ASHRAE | UL | TIA | ASME | ASCE | AGA

Michigan Standards Developers : NSF | ACI | NETA | ASABE | HL7 | RIA | JCSEE | BIFMA | PJRFSI | SAE

Global: SA | BSA | NSAI | CSA | CEN & CENELEC | ISO & IEC*

 

APPA was founded at the University of Michigan| See our ABOUT

 

 

* ISO and IEC have opted out of the X-social media platforms.  FYI: X is 13 times the size of BlueSky in terms of scale and reach.

The $7 Billion Stargate “Barn”

April 21, 2026
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Saline Area Historical Society

Project Stargate Saline AI Data Center | EDRA of MI

 

Reaction: April 16 Open Meeting

April 21, 2026
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FERC HOME

The Commission voted on a series of mostly consent agenda items focused on electric reliability, market rules, compliance, infrastructure, and related matters.

In opening remarks and related announcements, FERC highlighted its intent to act by June 2026 on a separate large load interconnection docket. The meeting reflected ongoing efforts to refine interconnection processes, address co-location issues in PJM, ensure just and reasonable rates, and support infrastructure while maintaining reliability.

Power transformers and distribution transformers will face supply deficits of 30% and 10% in 2025

March 19, 2026

Key Reliability & Cybersecurity Actions. FERC approved important updates to Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards. These included modernized rules for virtualization (allowing secure use of virtual machines), enhanced security management controls for low-impact cyber systems (CIP-003-11), and refinements to the definition of “control center” to better protect high-risk assets. The changes aim to strengthen the bulk-power system against rising cyber threats and extreme weather while reducing unnecessary administrative burdens.

Electric Rate and Complaint Resolutions. The Commission resolved several long-running rate complaints, including setting a base return on equity (ROE) of 9.57% for New England Transmission Owners. It addressed complaints involving spot market sales exceeding price caps in the WECC region and cost allocation issues in MISO related to DOE emergency orders. Several tariff revisions and generator interconnection filings were also accepted.

Other Actions. FERC modernized Electric Quarterly Report (EQR) filing requirements, authorized multiple asset transactions and dispositions, and approved several natural gas pipeline, storage, and abandonment projects. A presentation on the 2025 State of the Markets Report was also delivered.

FERC’s involvement in CHP plants at universities and hospitals depends on and how the facility interacts with the bulk electric power system and wholesale markets. In many cases, FERC’s role is indirect—but it can become significant under certain conditions.  We cover this topic separately in our periodic US Department of Energy Combined Heat & Power eCATALOG

Next Open Meeting: May 21.  Keep in mind that much “bandwidth” is devoted to administrative issues; the technical specifics of primary interest to us referenced in case dockets that are referenced here:  FERC Online

The current full complement of five FERC commissioners is relatively new as of December 23, 2025. The two most recent additions — Chairman Laura V. Swett (term expiring June 30, 2030) and Commissioner David A. LaCerte (term expiring June 30, 2026) — were confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 7, 2025.
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This restored FERC to its full five members after prior vacancies and transitions earlier in the year. The other commissioners (David Rosner, Lindsay S. See, and Judy W. Chang) have been in place since mid-2024 or earlier, but the current lineup only fully formed about two and a half months ago.
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This followed changes tied to the new administration, including shifts in majority and leadership.
January 22.  Issues of interest discussed at the FERC Open Meeting on January 22, 2026, centered primarily on electric sector matters related to generator interconnection reforms, expedited processes for resource adequacy.  Our interest lies in the effect of FERC action will have on the utility costs of educational settlements which, of course, practically involves all utilities and how those decisions are reflected in state tariffs.
One issue of particular interest for Michigan: Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO) Expedited Resource Addition Study (ERAS) process (Docket No. ER25-2454-002): The Commission addressed arguments on rehearing and sustained its prior July 21, 2025, order approving MISO’s ERAS framework. This provides an expedited interconnection study process for generation projects addressing urgent near-term resource adequacy and reliability needs in the MISO region.  Discussions involved balancing reliability concerns (e.g., load growth, resource shortfalls) against claims of undue discrimination or preference in interconnection queuing, as raised by public interest groups.  We will see these conclusions reflected in Michigan Public Service Commission action.Other agenda elements likely included routine administrative matters (e.g., A-1 Agency Administrative Matters, A-2 Customer Matters/Reliability/Security/Market Operations) and consent items (often non-controversial electric, gas, hydro, or certificate matters voted en bloc without discussion).
No major presentations were noted, and the meeting focused on these reliability/interconnection and market integrity issues amid broader grid challenges like queue backlogs, rapid load growth, and transitioning resources.The Q&A afterward involved energy media, with emphasis by Laura V. Swett on reliability concerns ahead of likely winter storms. The next public open meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 19th. 

December 18. The public meetings are dominated by administrative procedures and mutual admiration.  Technical issues that require in-depth, expert-level understanding of complex laws, rules, guidelines, and precedents beyond surface-level awareness appear deeper into the FERC website.  There you will generally find:

  • Nuanced interpretation of statutes and agency decisions
  • Awareness of historical context and evolving policies
  • Insight into how rules interact with technical, economic, and operational realities
  • Impacts of changes and navigate compliance strategically

As interest and time allows we can pick through technical specifics regarding FERC oversight of interstate electricity with the IEEE colleagues.

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Whats On a Utility Pole

Midwest Energy Communications: What’s On a Utility Pole?

 

Hegemon Essex & Hauts-de-Seine Counties

April 21, 2026
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Square D was founded in 1902 in Detroit, Michigan, by Bryson Dexter Horton and James B. McCarthy as McBride Manufacturing Company, focusing on electrical fuses. By 1908, it became Detroit Fuse and Manufacturing, adopting the iconic “Square D” logo—a “D” in a square—reflecting its Detroit roots.

Renamed Square D in 1917, the company pioneered safety switches and circuit breakers, growing significantly with 18,500 employees and $1.65 billion in sales by 1991. That year, after a competitive 10-week bidding process, French multinational Groupe Schneider S.A. acquired Square D for $2.23 billion, raising its offer from $1.96 billion to $88 per share.

The acquisition, approved by Square D’s board and the U.S. Justice Department, made Schneider Electric the world’s largest electrical distribution equipment manufacturer, integrating Square D’s innovative products into its global energy management portfolio.

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