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Question for you all, since you're always knowledgeable about these things. I want to put a ceiling fan in a room. The room is on one of the ends or "wings" of the house, has an HVAC "out" register in the near-middle of the ceiling, and is always always always scorching hot or freezing cold. I know this is caused by a lack of cross ventilation where the cold/hot air would be exchanged for hot/cold. The attic goes across the top of the main part of the house, then sort of squishes down to a lower roof where you can't...

The president's recently proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 included a strategic review of the federal government's role in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA is a federally owned corporation that owns and operates 56 power plants in the Tennessee Valley Region, which stretches across parts of six states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee). TVA's plants are primarily hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, and coal-fired facilities with a combined net summer capacity of more than 35 gigawatts (GW), about 3% of the total U.S. electricity capacity. According to the proposed 2014 budget, TVA's current capital investment plan...

Colorado Senate Bill 252 and the multibillion-dollar economic burden it would impose on .. Colorado. ... SB 252 is being fast tracked to limit public debate. The bill squeaked through the Senate by just one vote and now will be heard in the House. Coloradans: It's time to contact your representative to say how critical it is to stop this costly bill. ... It will just take a minute or two to make your voice heard and your representative needs to hear from you today.

Normally when I see somebody upset with the EPA, it’s because they’re shoving their regulatory boot down on the throat of somebody else. That’s why it came as something of a surprise to learn that the agency may be facing a lawsuit from a coalition of very blue states. What on Earth, I wondered, might the EPA have done to these guys? Nothing, as it turns out, and that’s why they’re upset. The EPA has, in the opinion of the complainants, dragging its heels on ramming through new energy production standards which will effectively exterminate construction of any new coal...

Though its name sounds better suited to fantasy or sci-fi, researchers have recently gathered evidence that something called dark lightning exists, the Washington Post reported. Like any evil twin, dark lightning appears to "compete" with the ordinary lightning during thunderstorms. A person could be struck by dark lightning and not even know it. Like ordinary lightning, dark lightning brews inside thunderclouds. In fact, it may be a competing way for the clouds to release their energy, says Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology. Dwyer has come up with a model explaining how dark lightning arises....

Much to the chagrin of people who are sure I’m evil, in the pocket of big oil, and highly carbon positive, I’m actually an independent and pretty energy efficient guy, and I challenge any of my detractors to show their solar and energy efficiency projects. Put your money where your mouthpiece is, I say. For example, do loud climate campaigners Joe Romm and Bill McKibben have solar power on their homes? Do Jim Hansen and Michael Mann have solar power while telling us we all must cut back our energy usage linked to fossil fuels? Inquiring minds want to know....

Coal-fired power may be on the wane in the United States, but reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, energy executives said Thursday. The bluster about coal’s demise came as the end of IHS CERAWeek approached and delegates mused about the diversity of the United States’ power mix. “We’re talking about coal going from 42 percent of generation in 2010 to about 33 to 35 percent …in 2030,” said Barry Nicholls, vice president of power systems sales for Siemens Energy North America. “I don’t think going from 42 percent to 33 percent means coal is going away. I think that’s...

Two wind turbines towering above the Cape Cod community of Falmouth, Mass., were intended to produce green energy and savings -- but they've created angst and division, and may now be removed at a high cost as neighbors complain of noise and illness. "It gets to be jet-engine loud," said Falmouth resident Neil Andersen. He and his wife Betsy live just a quarter mile from one of the turbines. They say the impact on their health has been devastating. They're suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they've lived for more than 20...

I just wrote a check this morning for my monthly power bill, made payable to American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) in the amount of $260.02.  I'm not alone. AEP serves five million residential and business customers in 11 states.  Rain or shine, that's five million checks that pour in each month. They add up fast. AEP's utility segment collected $14 billion in revenue in 2011. But on closer inspection, the company only retained $2.8 billion in operating profits. Where did the other $11 billion go? Well, nearly half ($4.4 billion) was spent on fuel needed to run the firm's power...

Airbus said it is dropping plans to use lithium-ion batteries on its new A350 airplane, under development, in the wake of problems with the batteries on Chicago-based Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. The Boeing Co. rival said, while it believes the battery architecture it has been developing and qualifying for is robust and safe, it will instead use nickel cadmium main batteries, which have a proven track record. “Airbus considers this to be the most appropriate way forward in the interest of program execution and A350 reliability, Airbus said in a statement. The entire fleet of 50 Boeing 787s was grounded by...

The spark spread is a common metric for estimating the profitability of natural gas-fired electric generators. The spark spread is the difference between the price received by a generator for electricity produced and the cost of the natural gas needed to produce that electricity. It is typically calculated using daily spot prices for natural gas and power at various regional trading points. The chart above shows spark spreads during 2012, calculated for four locations around the United States. Spark spreads tend to be fairly volatile, more so than crack spreads in petroleum markets, largely because of the volatility of wholesale...

The Super Bowl power outage on Sunday happened after electrical monitoring equipment “sensed an abnormality in the system,” according to the power provider for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Entergy, which provides power to the Superdome, along with 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, said in a statement Monday that the change triggered a partial electrical shutdown. Entergy’s service area includes 400,000 customers in southeast Texas, including homes in Beaumont, Port Arthur, The Woodlands, Huntsville and Conroe. The only customer affected by the problem was the Superdome, Entergy spokesman Michael Burns told FuelFix. “Shortly after the beginning of...

A jump in natural gas usage combined with big gains in energy efficiency have helped the United States make strides in cutting emissions over the past five years, according to a report released Thursday. The “Sustainable Energy in America” factbook documents a 6.4 percent slide in total energy use between 2007 and 2012. During the same time frame, the amount of electricity generated both by natural gas and renewable sources climbed, and coal-fired power generation declined, helping to trim carbon dioxide emissions produced when fossil fuels are burned. “Significant changes are occurring in the US energy sector that are boosting...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. ... Barack Obama’s EPA just killed off another 3,900 energy jobs in Texas. ... Obama’s new EPA regulations will cost the coal industry $180 billion and force electricity rates to skyrocket.

Link only....... http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/290793/8/No-decision-yet-on-crippled-Crystal-River-nuke-plant

Egyptian authorities fearful of a monopoly on Nile waters received agreement from Khartoum to build an airbase in Sudan, to launch attacks on Ethiopian damming facilities, claims the anonymous media outlet; Wikileaks. Wikileaks has leaked files allegedly from the Texas-based global intelligence company, Stratfor, which quote an anonymous "high-level Egyptian source," claiming the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said in 2010 his nation would do anything to prevent the secession of South Sudan because of the political implications it will have for Egypt's access to the Nile. The Nile is vital in providing fresh water to the people and agricultural projects...

WASHINGTON – The United States now is facing two serious national security challenges, but they aren’t expected to be addressed effectively because of the serious budgetary headaches Congress has created, and a virtually deadlocked legislature on just about every issue pending, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. And the White House apparently isn’t paying attention. The first is the growing concern of the impact that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event – either natural or manmade – could have on the national grid system, on which the Department of Defense has a 99 percent dependency. The other concern...

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT energy story of the summer deserves revisiting. India suffered through massive blackouts that spilled across regions with a combined population about twice that of the United States. The televised images of that outage were easily compartmentalized and dismissed. Here was a far-off undeveloped country. It can't happen here. Thinking about the Indian power calamity, I recalled admonitions from grid and cyber security experts in the United States that it is only a matter of time before terrorists, criminals or a hostile state disrupts the power grid in this country. World War III, should it come, or...

NRG Energy has abandoned plans for a massive coal-fired electric generating unit between Houston and Dallas, citing poor economics. The 800-megawatt unit would have been an addition to an existing coal plant in Limestone County near Buffalo, and had drawn opposition from environmentalists. The New Jersey-based power producer told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality last month that it no longer needed environmental permits since it does not plan to proceed with the $1 billion project. The proposed new unit at NRG’s Limestone generating station would have been too costly compared with the potential of a plant running on cheap...

The Dallas Observer published a report1 recently that Texas has worst electric grid in the nation. This was based on a North American Electric Reliability Corp report2. That’s not very encouraging. They are also reporting that there is the possibility of rolling blackouts in 2013. For a couple of years I have had the interest in setting up a backup power system for home use. There is a mobile system that provides power for work a couple of times per month, and is a backup system when at home. It provided power for 2 freezers, a refrigerator and a fan...

Solar Companies Seek Ways to Build an Oasis of ElectricityBy DIANE CARDWELL Published: November 19, 2012 When Hurricane Sandy wiped out the power in areas like coastal Long Island and the Jersey Shore, what should have been beacons of hope — hundreds of solar panels glinting from residential rooftops — became symbols of frustration. Despite the popular perception that installing solar panels takes a home “off the grid,” most of those systems are actually part of it, sending excess power to the utility grid during the day and pulling electricity back to run the house at night. So when the...

More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned WorldwideBy Damian Carrington, The Guardian Published: November 26th, 2012 More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are being planned worldwide, new research has revealed. The huge planned expansion comes despite warnings from politicians, scientists, and campaigners that the planet's fast-rising carbon emissions must peak within a few years if runaway climate change is to be avoided and that fossil fuel assets risk becoming worthless if international action on global warming moves forward. Coal plants are the most polluting of all power stations and the World Resources Institute (WRI) identified 1,200 coal plants in planning...

A nanogenerator made from inexpensive materials harvests mechanical energy and produces enough power to charge personal electronics. The phenomenon that causes a painful shock when you touch metal after dragging your shoes on the carpet could someday be harnessed to charge personal electronics. Researchers at Georgia Tech have created a device that takes advantage of static electricity to convert movement—like a phone bouncing around in your pocket—into enough power to charge a cell phone battery. It is the first demonstration that these kinds of materials have enough oomph to power personal electronics. Excess energy produced when you walk, fidget, or...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, once considered a rising star Democrat, is facing a storm of criticism over the dismal performance of the state-owned electrical utility, Long Island Power Authority, in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Even today, over ten thousand Long Islanders remain without power. The danger signs were obvious well before Sandy hit. The New York Post wrote: ***** A state-authorized independent analysis undertaken after Hurricane Irene last year found LIPA to be an outdated, barely competent organization. The agency had ignored a 2006 recommendation that it update its management system, which runs on an obsolete 25-year-old computer...

When Mother Nature demonstrates her extraordinary power, I always hope that people will draw a lesson from it, but they never seem to. Hurricane Sandy is just the latest example of the futility and foolishness of thinking that humans can do anything about a hurricane or similar demonstration of who is really in charge. It is the planet. Not us.

Scientists in the Advanced Materials and Nanosystems directorate at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto have developed a revolutionary nanotechnology copper-based electrical interconnect material, or solder, that can be processed around 200 °C. Once fully optimized, the CuantumFuse solder material is expected to produce joints with up to 10 times the electrical and thermal conductivity compared to tin-based materials currently in use. Applications in military and commercial systems are currently under consideration. "We are enormously excited about our CuantumFuse breakthrough, and are very pleased with the progress we're making to bring it to full...

Doped graphite may superconduct at more than 100 ºC. Researchers in Germany have claimed a breakthrough: a material that can act as a superconductor — transmit electricity with zero resistance — at room temperature and above. Superconductors offer huge potential energy savings, but until now have worked only at temperatures of lower than about -110 °C. Now, Pablo Esquinazi and his colleagues at the University of Leipzig report that flakes of humble graphite soaked in water seem to continue superconducting at temperatures of greater than 100 °C1. Even Esquinazi admits that the claim “sounds like science fiction”, but the work...

Engineering PbTe on the panoscale making it exceptionally efficient at turning waste heat into electricity © Mercouri KanatzidisResearchers in the US claim to have passed a new milestone in thermoelectrics with a material that converts heat to electricity more efficiently than ever before. The new thermoelectric material, which employs ‘panoscale’ structuring to scatter phonons, has a figure of merit (FoM) some 20% better than previously achieved.Thermoelectrics convert heat to electricity and can, therefore, ‘harvest’ waste heat from the environment. When one end of a thermoelectric material is heated, electrons flow to the cooler side, creating a voltage across the material...

San Francisco must have taken a chapter out of Laer Pearce’s new book “Crazifornia.” The city’s new CleanPower SF plan garners subsidies from U.S. taxpayers for green-power purchases. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you would have to be crazy not to shift your green power purchases onto U.S. taxpayers if laws provide for it. And what city wouldn’t want to do it if it could cover it up as part of their compliance with AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006? San Francisco is “gaming the system,” just as Enron supposedly did in the 2001 state energy...

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has said her college needs to be a global leader when dealing with energy sustainability. Yet, Coleman's own university provided residence has the most expensive energy costs among state universities, both in total costs and cost per square feet, with a gas-electric-steam bill reaching nearly $30,000 in one year. When receiving a grant for "sustainablity fellows" from Dow Chemical last year to help people "live cleaner, greener and sustainably," Coleman said: "[This partnership] is broad and comprehensive as sustainablity itself, and frankly, I believe it is the only way to solve problems as...

Last week, SouthernKalifornia had a fair amount of heat. Kalifornians believe the way to solve generating capacity shortfalls is to get rid of existing generating capacity. The following is from a blog, SCE press release and KaliforniaEnergyCommission report (for some reason it is misspelled CEC, but heck it is Kalifornia). From the blog: Blog: NoPowerPlant.com Starts Signature Drive; More State Reports Show AES Redondo Not Required It's been a busy week on the AES power plant front.... NoPowerPlant.com kicked off their petition signature drive for the resident initiative that phases out the Redondo power plant and replaces it with a...

Combating the Environmental Protection Agency’s flurry of new regulations on coal and other energy resources has become a campaign platform for Republicans in key battleground states. GOP contenders in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia are directing their focus to the Obama administration’s anti-coal policies, while blaming their Democratic rivals for bolstering the EPA’s intrusive regulatory efforts. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) recently launched a pro-coal campaign positioning 150 billboards in six different swing states aimed to underscore President Obama’s purported opposition to the coal industry. “Too many lawmakers in Washington have ignored President Barack Obama’s War on Coal,”...

About one train per hour. ThatÂ’s the target loading rate for the massive silos, conveyors, and hoppers at the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, the most productive coal mine in the world. And on a cool, nearly windless day in late March, Scott Durgin, a regional vice president for Peabody Energy, was happy. Standing in the mineÂ’s dispatch office, Durgin pointed to a flat-panel display showing a list of trains that had recently passed through. It was exactly 12 noon, according to the clock on the wall, and since midnight, the mine had loaded 11 trains, each carrying...

The Government Admits The US Power Grid Can Be Taken Out At Any Time Walter Hickey Aug. 1, 2012, 7:00 PM The Government Accountability Office just released a report backing up earlier findings: because a series of recommendations were ignored, the U.S. electric grid remains highly susceptible to cyberattacks. The grid is reliant on a number of IT systems that have known and likely unknown vulnerabilities. The result of a cyberattack on the grid could result in damage to electricity control systems, power outages, and failures in safety equipment on a scale currently unknown. GAO believes that there are still...

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there.” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road I don’t think you really get how serious things are becoming. I want you to take a moment and look at this photo. Do you know where this is? This is India over the past two days. According to Associated Press, Reuters and other sources today there is 600 million people without power. 600 Million People! That is equal to the entire population of North America and Central America! Can...

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power officials said. Emergency workers rushed generators to coal mines to rescue miners trapped underground. The massive failure - a day after a similar, but smaller power failure - has raised serious concerns about India's...

New Delhi (CNN) -- India suffered its second huge, crippling power failure in two days on Tuesday, depriving as much as half of the vast and populous country of electricity and disrupting transport networks. The first power grid collapse, on Monday, was the country's worst blackout in a decade. It affected seven states in northern India that are home to more than 350 million people. But Tuesday's failure was even larger, hitting eastern and northeastern areas as well. Both blackouts cut power in the Indian capital, New Delhi.

Plant owners and operators report to EIA that they expect to retire almost 27 gigawatts (GW) of capacity from 175 coal-fired generators between 2012 and 2016. In 2011, there were 1,387 coal-fired generators in the United States, totaling almost 318 GW. The 27 GW of retiring capacity amounts to 8.5% of total 2011 coal-fired capacity. The coal-fired capacity expected to be retired over the next five years is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period (6.5 GW). Moreover, based on EIA data, the approximate 9 GW of coal-fired capacity retirements expected to occur in...

Enlarge Image Stable Ride. The performance of new lithium-air batteries is nearly unchanged after 100 charge and discharge cycles, which could bode well for their future use in electric vehicles. Credit: (car) Tony Hisgett/ Wikimedia;(graph) Adapted from Z. Peng et al., Science Researchers have long had high hopes for lithium-air batteries, a device that has the potential to store 10 times more energy than the best lithium-ion batteries on the market today. But so far, lithium-air batteries have been unstable, falling apart after a few charges. Now researchers report that they've made the first stable lithium-air batteries. If the...

Some two weeks after Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta warned of a potential “cyber-Pearl Harbor” involving a possible attack on the electric grid, Mother Nature took the cue and hit the East Coast with a storm that left millions of us for days without electricity from the grid. Some said silent thanks for that old generator they’d thought to stick in the garage. Though it wasn’t a cyberattack, but Mother Nature gave parts of the grid a good lashing anyway. On my country road south of Annapolis, two transformers were blown down from their perches on telephone poles, and...

The mix of fuels used to generate electricity has varied over time. Several factors, especially changes in relative fossil fuel prices, have influenced the mix of energy sources used. EIA recently released a study on the competition between coal, natural gas, and petroleum used for electricity generation, which estimates what economists refer to as the elasticity of substitution among the fuels. The 'elasticity of substitution' concept measures how the use of these fuels varies as their relative prices change. The structure of the power industry varies from region to region. Generation dispatch decisions are made by an individual utility operating...

A plunge in the price of natural gas has made it cheaper for utilities to produce electricity. But the savings aren't translating to lower rates for customers. Instead, U.S. electricity prices are going up. Electricity prices are forecast to rise slightly this summer. But any increase is noteworthy because natural gas, which is used to produce nearly a third of the country's power, is 43 percent cheaper than a year ago. A long-term downward trend in power prices could be starting to reverse, analysts say. "It's caused us to scratch our heads," says Tyler Hodge, an analyst at the Energy...

7 cents per Kwhr equals $2.338 per gallon. Electricity Costs for 1 GGE = 33.40 kWh For Local Rate Per kWh $/Gallon Equivalent $0.07 = $2.338 $0.08 = $2.670 $0.09 = $3.006 $0.10 = $3.340 $0.11 = $3.674 $0.12 = $4.000 $0.13 = $4.342 $0.14 = $4.670 $0.15 = $5.010 $0.16 = $5.344 $0.17 = $5.678 $0.18 = $6.012 $0.19 = $6.346 $0.20 = $6.680 $0.25 = $8.350 $0.27 = $9.018 $0.28 = $9.352 $0.29 = $9.686 $0.30 = $10.020

Easy fix eludes power outage problems in US Buried lines an option, but costly By Chris Khan and Eric Tucker The Capital WASHINGTON — In the aftermath of storms that knocked out power to millions, sweltering residents and elected officials are demanding to know why it's taking so long to restring power lines and why they're not more resilient in the first place. The answer, it turns out, is complicated: Above-ground lines are vulnerable to lashing winds and falling trees, but relocating them underground incurs huge costs - as much as $15 million per mile of buried line - and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the aftermath of storms that knocked out power to millions, sweltering residents and elected officials are demanding to know why it's taking so long to restring power lines and why they're not more resilient in the first place. The answer, it turns out, is complicated: Above-ground lines are vulnerable to lashing winds and falling trees, but relocating them underground incurs huge costs - as much as $15 million per mile of buried line - and that gets passed onto consumers.

(Reuters) - A powerful storm hit the U.S. capital on Friday, downing trees with wind gusts of up to 79 miles per hour, topping hurricane force levels and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes in the Washington area. Bands of rain lashed the city and winds toppled power lines and littered the streets with tree limbs as the fast-moving storm, which started in the Midwest after a day of severe heat, reached Washington and its suburbs late in the evening. WTOP radio said more than 800,000 people in the Washington area were without power. The Washington Post...

With all the news focused on Obamacare, SCOTUS, Fast and Furious, etc., I was just looking at some of the weather forecasts here in Virginia. Remember all the warnings about the effects of shutting down coal plants and the fear that it would potentially cause brown outs or black outs. If they're going to happen this summer, I would think that it's very possible it could happen in the next couple of days. (Hey maybe Obama would even consider martial law to control crime, riots, potential civil unrest in urban areas.) So Freepers have you considered what you would do...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding. Now thanks to Barack Obama’s radical energy policies, electricity rates are skyrocketing across the country and coal plants are shutting their doors. New regulations by the Obama Administration is forcing Arch Coal, Inc. to lay off 750 workers in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

Many people in Germany are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. Skyrocketing electricity prices are making electricity unaffordable for a large number of Germans. The past year over 600,000 households had their power switched off in Germany because they can’t afford the skyrocketing electric bills.(1)

In January of 2008, then Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, talking about his energy plan, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…” He wasn’t kidding. While he was talking about his cap and trade plan, something that went nowhere in Congress, even when Democrats controlled it with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, his objective of changing how we generate electricity hasn’t changed. Neither has his lack of concern for the cost to consumers. President Obama hates coal...