tagged w/ Power Grid
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Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the darkness by unlikely benefactors – a group of Israelis who installed solar panels and wind turbines to illuminate the Palestinians' makeshift homes. The villagers of Susya live in tents and caves with power lines darting right above their dwellings, connecting a nearby Jewish settlement to the power grid while bypassing them entirely. It was this lack of basic services that drew the physicists from Comet-ME, a group of pro-peace Israeli scientists and activists, to this dusty, desolate area. Now the entire village of 300 people has access to power that is reliable, free and green. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/43054-israeli-scientistsactivists-bring-green-power-to-west-bank-village-susya-south-hebron-mountains-Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the... more
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worrg
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4 months ago
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Google and two unfamiliar sounding business partners have received a key first-approval for construction of a $5bn power transmission project, linking the landward power grid to several wind farms to be built off the US Mid-Atlantic coast.
:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/05/google-partners-to-_make-5-billion-dollar-wind-to-wire-investment-along-us-mid-atlantic-coast.phpGoogle and two unfamiliar sounding business partners have received a key... more
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Power Grid Corporation of India PGCI enjoys a splendid welcome as the IPO initial public offering has been oversubscribed 3.61 times at the end of the second day of the FPO.Power Grid Corporation of India PGCI enjoys a splendid welcome as the IPO initial... more
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April 27, 2010: Just last week, scientists working with NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) released the most astonishing movies of the sun anyone had ever seen. Now, they're doing it again.
"SDO has just observed a massive eruption on the sun—one of the biggest in years," says Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC. "The footage is not only dramatic, but also could solve a longstanding mystery of solar physics."
Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin's Solar and Astrophysics Lab is leading the analysis. "We can see a billion tons of magnetized plasma blasting into space while debris from the explosion falls back onto the sun surface. These may be our best data yet."
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/27apr10_plasmarain/April 27, 2010: Just last week, scientists working with NASA's new Solar Dynamics... more
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by Karin Zeitvogel – Fri Feb 19, 9:15 am ET
SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) –
US researchers unveiled a vehicle Thursday that earns money for its driver instead of guzzling it up in gasoline and maintenance costs.
The converted Toyota Scion xB, shown at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here, is the first electric car to be linked to a power grid and serve as a cash cow.
"This is the first vehicle that's ever been paid to participate in the grid -- the first proof of concept vehicle," Ken Huber, who oversees technological development at wholesale electricity coordinator PJM Interconnection, told AFP.
The presentation of the box-like, unassuming looking Scion was the researchers' way of introducing the "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) concept as it begins to gain momentum in the United States and around the world.
V2G projects with hybrid cars that use electricity and gas to store energy in their batteries and feed it back into the power grid are up and running in the United States, and the drive now is to produce all electric vehicles to plug into the power grid.
"This makes the car useful not only when it's being driven, but also when it's parked, as long as you remember to plug it in," said Willett Kempton, who is leading a V2G project at the University of Delaware.
A V2G car is connected via an Internet-over-powerline connection that sends a signal from inside the car's computer to an aggregator's server.
The aggregator acts as the middleman between the car owner and power grid management companies, which are constantly trying to keep electricity output at a constant level.
When the grid needs more power due to a surge in demand, power companies usually draw from traditional power plants, which in the United States are often coal-fired and leave a large carbon footprint...
(rest of article at link)by Karin Zeitvogel – Fri Feb 19, 9:15 am ET
SAN DIEGO, California (AFP)... more
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One of the least-publicized aspect of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic, which has decimated nearly 2 million acres of trees in Colorado, is the threat it poses to the region's power grid. Whole mountainsides of dead and toppling trees throughout the state raise the specter of disaster on the scale of the great Northeast Blackout of 2003.
The largest power outage in North American history left more than 50 million people in the Midwest and Northeastern United States, as well as parts of Canada, without electricity for up to two days beginning on Aug. 14, 2003. It's estimated the blackout cost up to $6 billion and at least 11 lives.
And it all started with untrimmed trees coming into contact with a power line in rural Ohio.
http://coloradoindependent.com/41305/colorados-vast-beetle-kill-pine-forests-threaten-power-gridOne of the least-publicized aspect of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic, which... more
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Greg Bove steps into his pickup truck and drives down a sandy path to where the future of Florida's renewable energy plans begin: Acres of open land filled with solar panels that will soon power thousands of homes and business.
For nearly a year, construction workers and engineers in this sleepy Florida town of citrus trees and cattle farms have been building the nation's largest solar panel energy plant. Testing will soon be complete, and the facility will begin directly converting sunlight into energy, giving Florida a momentary spot in the solar energy limelight.
The Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center will power a small fraction of Florida Power & Light's 4-million plus customer base; nevertheless, at 25 megawatts, it will generate nearly twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the U.S.
The White House said President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the facility Tuesday, when it officially goes online and begins producing power for the electric grid.
As demand grows and more states create mandates requiring a certain percentage of their energy come from renewable sources, the size of the plants is increasing. The southwest Florida facility will soon be eclipsed by larger projects announced in Nevada and California.
"We took a chance at it and it worked out," said Bove, construction manager at the project, set on about 180 acres of land 80 miles southeast of Tampa. "There's a lot of backyard projects, there's a lot of rooftop projects, post offices and stores. Really this is one of the first times where we've taken a technology and upsized it."
Despite its nickname, the Sunshine State hasn't been at the forefront of solar power. Less than 4 percent of Florida's energy has come from renewable sources in recent years. And unlike California and many other states, Florida lawmakers haven't agreed to setting clean energy quotas for electric companies to reach in the years ahead.
California, New Jersey and Colorado have led the country in installing photovoltaic systems; now Florida is set to jump closer to the top with the nation's largest plant yet.
The Desoto facility and two other solar projects Florida Power & Light is spearheading will generate 110 megawatts of power, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3.5 million tons. Combined, that's the equivalent of taking 25,000 cars off the road each year, according to figures cited by the company.
The investment isn't cheap: The Desoto project cost $150 million to build and the power it supplies to some 3,000 homes and businesses will represent just a sliver of the 4 million-plus accounts served by the state's largest electric utility.
But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs for draftsmen, carpenters and others whose work dried up as the southwest Florida housing boom came to a closure and the recession set in. Once running, it will require few full-time employees.
Mike Taylor, director of research and education at the nonprofit Solar Electric Power Association in Washington, said the project puts Florida "on the map."
"It's currently the largest," Taylor said of the Desoto photovoltaic plant. "But it certainly won't be the last."Greg Bove steps into his pickup truck and drives down a sandy path to where the future... more
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.
The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website.
"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians."
The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official.
"There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.
Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."
Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.
4/8 7:15 AM ET ClipsFC - WandaWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left... more
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This $18 million investment from NSF will fund an Engineering Research Center at NC State that is aimed at creating the "Internet for Energy"--a revolutionary power grid that integrates electric energy from renewable sources into the power grid. The current power grid is not designed to deliver power from multiple sources such as wind farms and solar collectors, so the power grid must be redesigned for the nation to take advantage of the new sources of electric energy. This $18 million investment from NSF will fund an Engineering Research Center at NC... more
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jjwe
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3 years ago
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If you love wind, you’ve got to at least like transmission — or so I was told earlier this summer (by someone! please remind me who you were … ). Texas is moving ahead with nearly $5 billion in new transmission lines to accommodate electricity generated by wind turbines. But conditions don’t seem nearly as ripe for approving such investments and infrastructure in more crowded regions, where demand for electricity is highest, according to Matt Wald’s latest article on wind and the grid. The $320-million Maple Ridge turbine complex on New York’s windy Tug Hill plateau finds itself having to shut down periodically, when the transmission cables in the region become too clogged, he writes.
Plenty of opposition to the turbines themselves has appeared, even in rural areas, but robust opposition to building new conduits for getting energy from sources to markets, whether the medium is pipelines carrying natural gas or wires for electrons, has been seen for decades. This country has a lot of work to do to match power with markets if it’s serious about moving away from the fuel of convenience, coal. Many energy campaigners, including Plug In America (promoting plug-in hybrids), are prowling the corridors at the Democratic National Convention this week. Presumably they’ll be talking about wires as well as cars. Is anyone listening?
If you love wind, you’ve got to at least like transmission — or so I... more
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Lonnie Charles Denison, a Unix system administrator plead guilty to attempting to kill the western US power grid.
Denison had been fighting with his bosses and lost his access privileges to the system, which apparently led him to sudo up the old-fashioned way -- by taking a hammer to the data center's emergency shutoff switch. Fortunately, he did it late on a Sunday night, when the power-management center was not in high demand, but officials say he could have caused a power disruption in the western US if he'd gone loco in the AM.Lonnie Charles Denison, a Unix system administrator plead guilty to attempting to kill... more
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?Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. "This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought." We're hunched on the floor of Goodwin's gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy--a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and burn almost any fuel. And Goodwin has some startling plans for this esoteric piece of hardware: He's going to use it to create the most fuel-efficient Hummer in history.
Goodwin, a 37-year-old who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair, is a professional car hacker. The spic-and-span shop is filled with eight monstrous trucks and cars--Hummers, Yukon XLs, Jeeps--in various states of undress. His four tattooed, twentysomething grease monkeys crawl all over them with wrenches and welding torches.
Johnathan Goodwin is a 37-year-old professional car hacker out of Kansas that's making a name for himself by taking muscle cars and doubling their horsepower, and at the same time quadrupling their mileage and cutting emissions by 80 percent.
His latest project: creating a super-efficient electric hybrid Hummer H3 by putting in an electric motor plus a military-grade 60,000 rpm turbine modified to run on biodiesel, doubling horsepower from 300 to 600, getting 60 miles per gallon, and doing zero to 60 in five seconds. It'll also have a hydrogen-injection system that will cut the already low emissions by half.
He's currently converting a 1987 Jeep Wagoneer to biodiesel for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a 1960 Lincoln Continental into a biodiesel-electric hybrid for Neil Young.
?Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a... more
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Neil Young talks about retro-fitting his antique car with a bio-diesel engine to make it environmentally friendly.Neil Young talks about retro-fitting his antique car with a bio-diesel engine to make... more
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