Tag Archives: Electricity

U.S. Chamber of Commerce joins anti-solar crusade

by ArethaMaxie Posted on June 15, 2016

Throwing shade

U.S. Chamber of Commerce joins anti-solar crusade

By on Jun 15, 2016Share

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the latest conservative group to start spreading anti-solar messages. In an email sent to supporters on Wednesday, the chamber attacks net metering, a policy in place in many states that pays people with solar panels on their roofs for the electricity they feed into the grid. The group also posted a video on YouTube last week making its anti-net metering case. This is fairly new territory for the chamber, according to energy regulation experts.

In its email, the group warns: “While your neighbor is receiving a credit (in the form of a reduced electricity bill) for putting excess energy back on the electricity grid, these outdated net metering policies overlook the costs to use, maintain, and update the grid. So, who is actually paying those costs? You — and everyone else!”

There is actually some truth to this. But the problem with the chamber’s analysis is that it ignores the positive effects of rooftop solar — most importantly, that it reduces the need for dirty, fossil fuel-based energy that causes air pollution and worsens climate change.

Here’s a more fair way to paint the situation: Electric utilities are using outdated technologies that poison our air and destabilize our climate. Who is actually paying for those costs? You — and everyone else!

We reported on Tuesday about the utilities’ trade association, the Edison Electric Institute, feigning concern for consumers who could be ripped off by unscrupulous solar companies. The Chamber of Commerce’s new campaign takes a different approach by heaping blame on solar consumers. But it’s all part of the same big effort by conservative groups and dirty energy companies to kneecap the solar industry, any way they can.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce joins anti-solar crusade

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10 Helpful Tips for Avoiding Electricity Bill Shock this Winter

by KitStringfield Posted on October 19, 2014

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10 Helpful Tips for Avoiding Electricity Bill Shock this Winter

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Your iPhone uses more electricity than your fridge

by 2KeaheySchoeffler461 Posted on August 16, 2013

Your iPhone uses more electricity than your fridge

By Claire Thompson

Shutterstock

So much power at our fingertips.

The global digital economy, also known as the ICT system (information-communications-technologies), sucks up as much electricity today as it took to illuminate the entire planet in 1985. The average iPhone requires more power per year than the average refrigerator. It’s like you’re walking around all day with a fridge’s worth of electricity in your pocket (but no hummus!).

This info comes from a report [PDF] by Mark Mills, CEO of the Digital Power Group, sponsored by the National Mining Association and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. So part of the report’s point is that coal keeps the iPhones on. But instead of inspiring gratitude for coal and all the blessings it bestows on us, knowing the source of all that juice just makes the digital economy’s ginormous energy footprint of even greater concern.

As Bryan Walsh points out in Time, the ICT system’s power hunger only stands to keep growing as our devices become ever more powerful and ubiquitous. Walsh explains:

[T]he cloud uses energy differently than other sectors of the economy. Lighting, heating, cooling, transportation — these are all power uses that have rough limits. … you can only heat your home so much, or drive so far before you reach a period of clearly diminishing returns. Just because my Chevy Volt can get 100 miles per gallon doesn’t mean I’m going to drive back and forth to Washington each day. …

But the ICT system derives its value from the fact that it’s on all the time. From computer trading floors or massive data centers to your own iPhone, there is no break time, no off period. (I can’t be the only person who keeps his iPhone on at night for emergency calls because I no longer have a home phone.) That means a constant demand for reliable electricity. … As the cloud grows bigger and bigger, and we put more and more of our devices on wireless networks, we’ll need more and more electricity. How much? Mills calculates that it takes more electricity to stream a high-definition movie over a wireless network than it would have taken to manufacture and ship a DVD of that same movie.

No matter how energy conscious you may be in your habits — religiously unplugging your toaster, screwing in CFL bulbs, and keeping the AC at 80 — as long as you’re connected to the cloud, you’ll be a first-class energy vampire whether you like it or not. Ironically, as we and others have already noted, a growing movement toward more sustainable lifestyles goes hand-in-hand with an increase in wireless-technology dependence, even if the link doesn’t represent a conscious choice:

At a moment when young people are buying fewer cars and living in smaller spaces — reducing energy needs for transportation and heating/cooling — they’re buying more and more connected devices. Of course the electricity bill is going to go up.

Walsh argues that the hidden and artificially cheap cost of electricity (“Compare the feeling of paying your utility bill to the irritation of forking out $3.50 a gallon to fill up your car”) reduces the incentive for technology companies to push for energy efficiency in their devices. Having to charge your iPhone constantly is annoying, but we don’t think of it as expensive. We don’t think about the fact that 10 percent of the world’s total electricity generation today is devoted solely to the ICT system.

But as wireless technology only grows more and more accessible — according to predictions, 1 billion people could be using the cloud by next year — its share of the world’s power will keep ballooning. We’ll need to invest more research in making digital devices more efficient. More urgently, we’ll need to wean the cloud off coal.

Luckily, we have plenty of viable alternatives.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Your iPhone uses more electricity than your fridge

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (P.S.)

by Myrna Posted on August 10, 2013

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Use Less Energy This Summer With These Great Tips

by Stacey Kawano Posted on June 13, 2013

Summer is upon us, and with it comes heat and humidity. Homeowners are more and more concerned about their spiking electricity bills from running costly air conditioners. These units are the largest consumers of electricity in our homes.

Over half of all Oahu homes have air conditioning, either central air or a single window unit. This is a dramatic increase of almost 22% when compared to 25 years ago. – Hawaii’s Energy Future

Running a window unit in a standard bedroom for 8 hours a night can rack up to a $49 monthly bill, depending on its EER. Turning the thermostat a few degrees lower or running it during hotter hours of the daytime can make a dramatic difference in your electricity consumption, which is reflected on your utility bill. Here a few tips to keep in mind to help lower your energy usage this summer while still keeping cool:

– Consider the use of a fan in place of your traditional cooling unit.

– Change the thermostat to reduce your energy consumption.

– Add a programmable thermostat which will automatically run your AC when the house is occupied.

– Clean or replace filters to increase the efficiency of your cooling unit.

– Take actions to lower the base temperature in your home. Install cooler CFL lights, close blinds, and invest in home window tinting.

– Always make sure to have the right size cooling system for your room or home. HECO has a free calculator to determine the proper unit size and it shows the average cost per month.

– Make sure to schedule system maintenance with a licensed contractor. Central air users can even qualify for a maintenance rebate.

– Add a photovoltaic system to your house.

All of these small but important changes will help to keep your AC from working overtime during these hot summer months. Find more information and further energy saving tips at the Hawaii’s Energy Future website.

Want to find out more about how to save electricity? Visit .

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Solar Competition Heating Up

by John Graham Posted on May 2, 2013

Competitiveness In the Brisbane Solar Market The prices of solar panel manufacturing overseas has now dropped significantly the aussie companies are finding it tough to compete against. Tindo is really the only solar manufacturer in Australia is officially had enough of overseas competitors and wants the government to step in.

Competition Increasing For Solar Industry

Silex Solar Keeping People Guessing Silex had a hard time against the competitors with the overseas manufacturer prices being to low for them to compete against. The prices that were displayed were actually more than the Australia available today, with no real advantages to them. There has been change in the solar power system prices of late.

Solar Now More Competitive In The Industry

Origin Having a Stab Origin is looking to make waves in the Brisbane Solar Arena but look like they could fail. Everyone could be looking at Origin to see if it will be able to do well in the solar industry.

For more detailsabout solar system prices see Brisbane Solar Panels for details.

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Solar Electricity Handbook – 2012 Edition: A Simple Practical Guide to Solar Energy – Designing and Installing Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems

by Myrna Posted on April 24, 2013

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Artificial Brains May Be the Best Way to Control Electricity

by s1cx54s Posted on April 23, 2013

Photo: ykanazawa1999

Nothing humans have created beats the brain at the type of complex problem-solving that involves logic, creativity and making connections. And to one group of researchers, the brain, with its ability to “monitor, forecast, plan, learn and make decisions,” seemed the obvious choice for controlling a complicated system for producing and meting out energy supplies. They attempted to put the cells of a rodent’s brain to the complicated task of managing the country’s power supply, and the results of their experiments, they hope, could pave the way for smarter control of the energy grid, LiveScience writes.

To begin, the team of neuroscientists and engineers grew rodent neurons in the lab:

The technique involves growing neurons in a dish containing a grid of electrodes that can both stimulate and record activity. The electrodes connect the neuronal network to a computer, allowing two-way communication between the living and the electronic components.

They hoped to capture the physical responses of the neurons and translate them into mathematical equations, as they tinkered with voltage and speed signals sent across a simulated power grid. If successful, LiveScience writes, they could use these data as the basis for a brain-inspired computer code for controlling the power grid, which will likely become ever more complex as energy from renewable sources, including solar and wind, come online.

So far, the researchers report that they managed to teach their neural system, called the Brain2Grid, to respond to complex data, Discover News writes, the first step for designing a super-intelligent—but purely artificial—means for controlling the future grid.

More from Smithsonian.com:

How an Unholy Alliance of Unusual Weather and Scarce Coal Nuked India’s Power Grid 
Can We Ever Stop Worrying About Blackouts? 

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Artificial Brains May Be the Best Way to Control Electricity

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Lockheed Martin Wants to Pull Electricity from the Ocean’s Heat

by KetaHeadraf Posted on April 22, 2013

If all goes to plan, a new deal inked by two of the world’s biggest companies could give rise to a sustainability advocate’s paradise: a resort near the South China Sea that gets all of its power from the heat of the water nearby through a new type of renewable energy.

The deal, says a news release issued by Lockheed Martin, will see the defense giant partner with the Reignwood Group—a massive company that does everything from selling Red Bull in China to operate hotels and golf courses, managing properties and operating a private aircraft service—to develop the first commercial plant for a new type of renewable energy generation system known as ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

Ocean thermal energy conversion draws on the natural temperature gradient that forms in tropical oceans worldwide. The surface of the ocean, heated by the Sun, is much warmer than the water deeper down. OTEC plants use the warm surface water to boil a liquid with a really low boiling point in a low-pressure container to form steam. This steam then drives a turbine, generating electricity. Colder water from deeper down is pulled up in a pipe, and by having this cold water pass by the pipe containing the steam, the steam is condensed back into a liquid. The liquid flows around, is heated by the warm surface water, and turns into steam once more—on and on, generating electricity from the temperature gradient in the ocean.

The idea for ocean thermal energy conversaion has been around for a really, really long time. “The concept of deriving energy from ocean thermal gradients was a French idea, suggested in 1881 by Jacques d’Arsonval, and French engineers have been active in developing the requisite technology,” says Marine Energy Times.

According to energy reporter Tyler Hamilton, famed engineer Nikola Tesla even tried his hands at making it work.

While Lockheed has been working on this for four decades, one of the first in-depth discussions of the concept came from Nikola Tesla, who at the age of 75 outlined how such a plant might be built in the December 1931 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics journal. Tesla spent considerable time devising a way to improve the efficiencies of such a power plant, but he determined that it was too great an engineering challenge at the time. “I have studied this plan of power production from all angles and have devised apparatus for bringing down all losses to what I might call the irreducible minimum and still I find the performance too small to enable successful competition with the present methods,” he wrote, though still expressing hope that new methods would eventually make it possible to economically tap the thermal energy in oceans.

So the idea is old, but recent technological developments have driven ocean thermal energy conversion into the realm of possibility. Interestingly, some of the most troubling issues facing OTEC were solved by the oil industry, says the Marine Energy Times:

Ocean thermal is the only remaining vast, untapped source of renewable energy, and is now ripe for commercialization.  The near market-readiness of this technology is largely attributable to the remarkable ocean-engineering innovations and successful experience of the offshore oil industry during the past thirty years in developing, investing in, and  introducing mammoth floating platforms.  That achievement has inadvertently satisfied ocean thermal’s key operational requirement, for a large, stable, reliable ocean platform capable of operating in storms, hurricanes and typhoons.

Consequently, adaptations of those offshore-ocean-platform designs can be spun-off  to supply the proven ocean-engineering framework on which to mount the specialized ocean thermal plant and plantship heat exchangers, turbomachinery, cold water pipe (CWP) system, and other components and subsystems.Those offshore engineering achievements have greatly reduced the real and perceived risks of investing in ocean thermal plants.

Lockheed Martin has been working on the technology behind OTEC, too, and the deal with the Reignwood Group will see them build a test plant. If they manage to pull it off, the work could open the door to increased investment in this new form of renewable energy.

According to Green Tech Media, there are some potential environmental issues to look out for: if the cold water brought up from depth is pumped out into the surface waters, you could trigger a huge algae bloom that is really bad for the local ecosystem. But, if you release the cold water further down, around 70 meters depth, you should be able to avoid this dilemma. Having a small-scale test plant will give researchers a way to learn about any other unforeseen issues before moves are made to implement this new type of renewable energy on a larger scale.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Clean Energy Can Come From Dirt
Catching a Wave, Powering an Electrical Grid?

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Lockheed Martin Wants to Pull Electricity from the Ocean’s Heat

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What is solar energy?

by Abby Bath Posted on April 19, 2013

How does solar power work?

Solar energy utilizes the sun to create the energy or electricity which you utilize in your residence. You are able to capture the sun’s rays, which produces the electricity or energy, by putting up the solar panels on your roof.

How does solar energy work with the solar panels?

The PV panels are special glass panes which are put on your roof. They contain special cells that are known as photovoltaic cells. These cells then capture the suns energy and rays and transform them into what you use your in your home today for electricity. This energy is known as direct current or DC power. Which is the power which your electric sockets utilize to turn on your lights, television, and alternative electrical equipment you have in your residence.

The typical residence requires quite a few PV panels so as to supply energy for everything that you do inside your home or even through your outdoor outlet. The average number of panels that is installed usually depends on how much energy you utilize and what type of sunlight you get during the day. It can be affected by the number of trees in your area as well as the direction your house is facing. The PV panels are usually installed on the southern side of the roof. If you don’t have a southern facing room then you may not be able to get solar power or it might be severely limited in the best case scenario.

The typical solar panel usually produces energy for up to 25 years then you would must probably considering replacing the panels at which time so as to continue using solar energy.

How does solar energy work with converting the suns energy?

It does require a system to be installed into your house to make the energy be transformed into the energy which you use today in your home. This system is known as the inverter system. The inverter system is related to the panels by a wire or cable which transmits the energy from the panels to the inverter box. The inverter box then transforms the suns energy into what you use in your dwelling today, otherwise known as the direct current energy or DC power. This then is turned over to your outlets which you utilize throughout your house for your electrical appliances and electricity.

How does solar power work with the bi-directional electricity meter?

The solar power that is produced is measured in increments of a half hour throughout the day. This is the device that measures how much sun energy is transformed into direct current (DC) that is sent to your house. It is also the instrument which tells you how much power is sent back to the electricity grid. The power that is sent back to the grid you are able to sell back to your electricity company or to the electrical grid. At this point the electrical grid sells your extra energy to other consumers who use electricity who may not have solar power.

How does solar power work when I need more energy than it gives?

Solar energy works by providing you with as much energy as it are able to give you. If you need more energy than what it is currently producing you will get your extra energy from the electrical grid. You are able to get this in two ways the first way is by having your extra energy that you gave to it earlier back to you as you need it. The second method is that you will get it a reduced bill because of the energy you gave back to the grid.

How does solar energy work to save me cash?

Solar power saves you money in several different ways. The first method is by you using less energy which comes from the electrical grid. This is where you electricity company gets their power to sell to you in the form an electric bill. Since you utilize less energy from them it means which your bill will be reduced greatly or you may not even receive a bill.

How does solar energy work with the electrical company or electrical grid?

The second way solar power works to save you cash is by the fact which you can sell your excess energy back to the electrical grid instead of simply giving it away for free. You will need to contact your electricity business and inquire on setting up which product. Once it is set up you will start to watch yet either further savings on your bill through your credits, which you get through your energy being sent back to the grid. You may yet again not receive a bill but you could either end up with having credits where you can utilize them down the road when there is a less sunny day. The other option is that they may send you a check if you are in so a lot of extra energy sent back on a monthly basis.

How does solar power work in conjunction with the electricity retailer?

The electricity retailer is the company that can come set up your solar energy panels and system. They will also be ones that give you the form to fill out for receiving your credit form for the electricity business or the electrical grid. So this is your solar power business and electricity Business all in one.

How does solar power work when there is limited sun?

Solar power is generated no matter what weather conditions you are living in on a daily basis. The sunnier the weather the more solar power is emitted into your system to create more energy. The less sunny the weather would still generate energy but at a lesser rate and you might must fall back on your savings that were stored up at an earlier date in time from the electrical grid.

Solar power is an excellent method to reduce your utility bill or to make some extra money on the good months.

Are you reaping the rewards of having solar? Catch the details about how to purchase solar Brisbane. Do you know where to get more good info? Go here now.

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