Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

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Firm Power & FOAK Risk

Fracked Rock Is Not A Rechargeable Battery
Geomechanical storage can reuse oilfield tools, but repeated pressure cycling risks erosion, sand production, and poor bankability.
 • Michael Barnard
Compressed Air Storage Keeps Running Into The Same Physics
LightSail failed chasing cheap storage in tanks. Hydrostor adds water and caverns, but still has to beat pumped hydro, batteries, and underground risk.
 • Michael Barnard
Beyond The Hype: Geothermal In Context
Access: Paid subscriber report
 • Michael Barnard
Wave Energy’s Real Enemy Is Maintenance
CorPower has serious engineering, but wave energy still has to beat the ocean’s reference class: seals, corrosion, retrievals, downtime, and cost.
 • Michael Barnard
Wave-Powered AI Compute Still Has To Survive The Ocean
Panthalassa tries to bypass grid and land limits by putting AI compute offshore. The ocean still brings corrosion, fouling, maintenance, and insurance.
 • Michael Barnard
Eavor’s Geothermal Pivot Looks More Like A Stress Test Result
Geretsried was supposed to prove repeatable closed-loop geothermal. Instead, it raises hard questions about output, risk, moat, and bankability.
 • Michael Barnard
Energy Models Still Undersee The Grid Reality
Models can flatter nuclear and hydrogen when delivery is smoothed, while undercounting renewables, storage, grid tools, and demand flexibility.
 • Michael Barnard
Hydrostor’s Ontario Storage Bet Has To Beat Batteries
Quinte may solve a real Ontario grid constraint, but underground A-CAES still has to beat batteries on cost, efficiency, schedule, and risk.
 • Michael Barnard
SMRs Still Lack The Discipline Nuclear Scaling Requires
SMRs promised simpler nuclear scaling. The credible projects now look larger, more institutional, fuel-constrained, and publicly risk-backed.
 • Michael Barnard
China Has Commercial Underwater Data Centers. That Does Not Make Them The Future
Shanghai and Hainan show the technology is real, while the global buildout denominator shows how small the niche remains.
 • Michael Barnard
Counterinduction: A Practical Tool For Energy Analysis
How to test whether apparent evidence for a technology is really evidence for the story attached to it.
 • Michael Barnard
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