Director: Derek Hallquist
Running Time: 92 mins
Certificate: NR
Release Date: June 5th 2016 (LA Film Fest Premiere)
Derek Hallquist has worked as a cinematographer on documentaries such as Freakonomics, but decides with Denial that due to his strong interest in climate change, he will turn the camera on his father, Dave, who runs a small energy company in Vermont, which is working to increase the amount of renewable energy the US produces.
However, there is a problem, which is that while the nation’s enormous electricity grid works okay with the amount of wind and solar energy produced at the moment, it will have increasing problems as more is created. The wind and sun aren’t reliable in terms of the amount of energy they can produce at different times of the day, and with no economical way to store excess energy for use when the wind dies down or the sun goes behind clouds, there will be large issues if there’s high demand and not enough sun or wind to meet that. Dave thinks the answer is smart products, which can talk to the grid and adjust their power demands depending on the supply – taking more when it’s plentiful and less when it isn’t. [Read more…]