HACKER Q&A
📣 cosmodisk

Where can I learn about energy sector?


There's quite a lot going in the energy sector with shifts to renewables, Russia going nuts, countries implementing various policies,etc. Anyone's got some resources that I could deep dive or at least build decent understand of what's going?


  👤 raydiatian Accepted Answer ✓
If nobody else answers, my tried and true technique is to refine exactly what I want to study, then try to map that into a college-level course, steal a syllabus, find a textbook, begin self-education.

Oh! Also there’s this guy Vaclav Smil you might check out. He is an author of absolute compendiums on all things energy. “Energy & Civilization” comes to mind.


👤 solardev
I'm not sure if you were interested in the technical aspects or the geopolitical and economic parts.

If the former, try a college energy engineering or environmental engineering textbook. Or for hands on stuff, check out this wiki: appropedia.org

I work in the solar industry (as a dev) and have previously taken some of the coursework meant to prepare installers (NABCEP). An entry level PV certification takes about a full time week to learn, for example. Pretty thorough stuff covering the industry basics.

For analysis, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) publishes a lot of free research.

Note that everything I said is biases towards the renewables side. I am not familiar with how oil and gas works.


👤 f0e4c2f7
This video might be useful as a broad overview of oil and gas[0]

This podcast on nuclear energy was pretty informative but ultimately still left me with many questions.[1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWyhKobyM68

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-nuclear-...


👤 NickRandom
Can you expand on which parts of the energy sector you want further knowledge of? The question you posed is too broad for anyone to be able to meaningfully reply.

👤 heneryville
I just started "The Science of Engergy" by Michael Wysession for the same reason.