Book2008
Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air
David J. C. MacKay
Puts every energy source and use on the same per-person units so the arithmetic, rather than the rhetoric, decides what is possible.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Energy & Power Engineering
Producing and moving energy at civilisational scale.
12 topics · 22 curated works
Topics
- 01Foundations & Overviews1
- 02Thermal Power Plants2
- 03Wind Energy2
- 04Solar Energy Systems2
- 05Hydroelectric Power2
- 06Geothermal Energy2
- 07Energy Storage Systems2
- 08Battery Engineering2
- 09Hydrogen Systems2
- 10Smart Grids2
- 11Energy Efficiency2
- 12Combustion Engineering1
Reading in Energy & Power Engineering
22A way in
Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air
David J. C. MacKay · 2008
Puts every energy source and use on the same per-person units so the arithmetic, rather than the rhetoric, decides what is possible.
+1 more at this level
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada
U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force · 2004
Traces a fifty-million-person blackout to untrimmed trees, an alarm system that failed silently, and operators with no view beyond their own control…
+11 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
Design of Small Dams
United States Bureau of Reclamation · 1960
Codifies hydraulic, structural and geotechnical practice for dam design into a single reference so thorough it became the working standard for…
+7 more at this level
12 of 22 works
Book2011
Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era
Amory B. Lovins & Rocky Mountain Institute
Argues that efficiency and renewables can displace US fossil fuel use by 2050 at lower total cost than business as usual, because the analysis compares whole-system cost rather than pricing energy sources against each other one at a time.
Report2004
Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada
U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force
Traces a fifty-million-person blackout to untrimmed trees, an alarm system that failed silently, and operators with no view beyond their own control area — a cascade of ordinary omissions.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Report2004
The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs
National Research Council
Assesses hydrogen as an energy carrier system-wide — production, storage, distribution, fuel cells — and concludes the engineering barriers are comparable across every link in the chain, not concentrated in one.
FreeIntermediate
Report2008
20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply
United States Department of Energy
Models a scenario where wind supplies a fifth of US electricity by 2030 and works backward to the manufacturing, transmission and workforce investment it would require, treating the target as an engineering feasibility question rather than a policy aspiration.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Report2009
Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy
Hannah Choi Granade et al. (McKinsey & Company)
Maps energy efficiency improvements across the whole US economy by engineering cost per unit of energy saved, and argues most of the cheapest efficiency gains go unrealised because of who pays versus who benefits, not a lack of technology.
FreeIntermediate
Report2010
NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Lays out the reference architecture and priority standards needed for grid devices from different vendors and eras to interoperate, treating the smart grid as fundamentally a standards problem before it is a hardware one.
FreeIntermediate
Report2012
Technology Roadmap: High-Efficiency, Low-Emissions Coal-Fired Power Generation
International Energy Agency
Argues that raising steam conditions and combustion efficiency in coal plants, not just carbon capture, is the near-term engineering lever for cutting power-sector emissions where coal is not going away soon.
FreeIntermediate
Report2012
SunShot Vision Study
United States Department of Energy
Sets a target of unsubsidised grid-competitive solar power and works backward to the specific cost reductions needed in modules, inverters and installation to get there.
FreeIntermediate
Report2015
Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States
United States Department of Energy
Models a pathway to wind supplying a fifth of US electricity, tying it to specific engineering advances in turbine size, siting and grid integration rather than treating cost decline as automatic.
FreeIntermediate
Report2016
Hydropower Vision: A New Chapter for America's 1st Renewable Electricity Source
United States Department of Energy
Surveys the technical and economic potential to roughly double US hydropower capacity through upgrades to existing dams and new low-impact development, treating hydropower's future as expansion of existing infrastructure rather than new dam-building.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Report2019
GeoVision: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Our Feet
United States Department of Energy
Argues geothermal's US potential is held back less by geology than by drilling cost, and quantifies how far enhanced geothermal systems would need to bring that cost down to compete broadly.
FreeIntermediate
In order written
1960 – 2023- 1960Design of Small DamsUnited States Bureau of Reclamation
- 1961Detailed Balance Limit of Efficiency of p-n Junction Solar CellsWilliam Shockley & Hans J. Queisser
- 1980LixCoO2 (0<x<-1): A New Cathode Material for Batteries of High Energy DensityK. Mizushima, P. C. Jones, P. J. Wiseman & J. B. Goodenough
- 2004Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and CanadaU.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force
- 2004The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D NeedsNational Research Council
- 2006The Future of Geothermal Energy: Impact of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) on the United States in the 21st CenturyJefferson W. Tester et al.
- 2006The Gas Turbine HandbookUnited States Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory
- 2007Basic Research Needs for Electrical Energy StorageUnited States Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- 2008Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot AirDavid J. C. MacKay
- 200820% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Electricity SupplyUnited States Department of Energy
- 2009Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. EconomyHannah Choi Granade et al. (McKinsey & Company)
- 2010NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability StandardsNational Institute of Standards and Technology
- 2011Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy EraAmory B. Lovins & Rocky Mountain Institute
- 2012Technology Roadmap: High-Efficiency, Low-Emissions Coal-Fired Power GenerationInternational Energy Agency
- 2012SunShot Vision StudyUnited States Department of Energy
- 2013DOE/EPRI 2013 Electricity Storage Handbook in Collaboration with NRECAAbbas A. Akhil et al.
- 2015Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United StatesUnited States Department of Energy
- 2015Cost and Performance Baseline for Fossil Energy PlantsNational Energy Technology Laboratory
- 2016Hydropower Vision: A New Chapter for America's 1st Renewable Electricity SourceUnited States Department of Energy
- 2019GeoVision: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Our FeetUnited States Department of Energy
- 2020Energy Storage Grand Challenge RoadmapUnited States Department of Energy
- 2023Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Clean HydrogenUnited States Department of Energy