The future of energy is local
The clean-energy revolution is bigger than anyone realizes.
Small-scale solar and batteries are rewriting a $2-trillion industry from the outside in — driven by data, not hype.
330kW
solar canopy — the Kendeda Building, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
The numbers
The state of the energy transition
The data behind the revolution — every figure sourced in our Math & Facts.
Bill’s TED Talk
The future of energy is local
25K
views and counting — a talk that’s become a calling card for the local-energy movement.
The people
The visionaries behind the breakthroughs
From the installers on the roof to the icons who rewrote whole industries — the clean-energy revolution is a human story.
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The installers
Renovus Solar — local rooftops
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The entrepreneurs
Bringing power to off-grid Africa
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The builders
Utility-scale teams
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The pioneers
Edison and the originals
The essential read
Freeing Energy
How innovators are using local-scale solar and batteries to disrupt the global energy industry from the outside in. Bill Nussey takes readers to mud huts in Africa, off-grid farms, and the front lines of the clean-energy revolution.
🎙 Bill also hosts The Freeing Energy Podcast, the #1-ranked show in renewable energy. A few recent episodes:
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Podcast 99: Tom Jensen of FREYR Battery – From Giga Arctic to Giga Americas, the most capital and operationally efficient battery plant in Europe is headed for the US State of Georgia
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Podcast 98: John Berger and Michael Grasso: Sunnova wants to build a ground breaking local energy powered neighborhood and that is rattling cages. Will regulators let them?
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Podcast 097: Donnel Baird – His boyhood Brooklyn apartment was heated with an oven. Now he is pursuing a bold, gutsy vision of how entire cities can retrofit buildings and save on energy costs.
A pattern we’ve seen before
History rhymes
The stories behind today’s revolution. Tag any post “History” to add it, and drag to set the order.
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How Niagara Falls led to the first airplane
The world’s first large power plant at Niagara Falls solved a problem that, a few years later, helped the Wright brothers leave the ground. A story about how…
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Edison, Insull, and Westinghouse: the war that built the grid
How a feud between Thomas Edison, his protege Sam Insull, and rival George Westinghouse created the electric utility — and the century-old monopoly model local energy is now…
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Energy is following the path of computing
Centralized giants, disrupted by small, cheap, networked technology. Telephones, computers — and now electricity: the same story is playing out again.
Start here
Energy 101
Clear, jargon-free explainers on how energy really works. Tag any post or page “Energy 101” to add it here.
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Understanding the basics of electricity by thinking of it as water
Part of our Freeing Energy 101 series: a basic introduction to electricity. The article uses water as an analogy to explain voltage, current, resistance, AC, DC, power, and energy.
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An acre of solar is 73x more efficient than corn ethanol for cars
As each of the 50 US states adopt varying degrees of solar and wind, how does this affect their retail electricity prices?
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Excerpt from the Freeing Energy book: the Five Orders cleantech innovation framework
An excerpt from Chapter 5 in the book Freeing Energy, Pattern of Innovation. What is the Five Orders innovation strategy framework?
Read the article →