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Never lacking daring ideas, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is determined to jolt the electricity market. The CEO of electric car maker Tesla Motors hopes to park hundreds of millions of large, solar panel-connected batteries in homes and businesses so the world can disconnect from power plants—and he can profit. On Thursday night, before an adoring crowd and a party-like atmosphere, Musk unveiled how he intends to do it. Musk took the stage at Tesla's design studio near Los Angeles International Airport, an audience of drink-toting enthusiasts cheering him on, in a scene fitting for an audacious dreamer renowned for pursuing...

Public employees will only have to work six hours a day until further notice, and police units will be sent to inspect private businesses to ensure they only use their allotted amounts. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed the measures on climate change. ... The Venezuelan government is responsible for providing electricity in the socialist nation, and concerns that power is running out in the OPEC nation have triggered alarm that power may be next on a list of basic scarcities in Venezuela that include milk, laundry detergent, and vegetable oil. ... Vice President Arreaza also made a bizarre call...

Tesla’s announcement last week about creating a new line of batteries for use by businesses, consumers, and the electrical grid at large is a game-changer for the industry. Currently, when individuals or companies need back-up power, they usually rely on generators. Effective battery storage for large amounts of energy would be a game changer in that it would enable a separation of generation and use of energy produced through clean fuels like solar and wind power. The big problem with solar and wind right now is that the energy is only useful when it is actually produced and, because a...

A study released Tuesday by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) concludes that more time is needed for utilities to develop new generation and transmission than is allowed by the timeline for carbon pollution reductions in the EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP). The draft carbon regulations aim to cut carbon emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, and require steep carbon cuts from many states by 2020. According to NERC, utilities take 4-5 years to build new generation plants and 6-15 years to construct new transmission lines to support them, meaning that both the interim 2020 compliance date...

Tesla shares (TSLA) are getting a charge from a Bloomberg report that the company will unveil a home battery and a large-scale utility battery, at an event at its Hawthorne design studio next week. Bloomberg got a hold of an email from Tesla’s investor-relations chief saying the company will explain the benefits of Tesla’s solutions compared to battery options in the past. There has been speculation that Tesla will look to challenge the traditional utility power grid with home and utility batteries, and a research note from Deutsche Bank says Tesla could be at the forefront of an energy storage...

Coal-fired power generation from existing plants will increase through 2025, this according to the Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (AEO2015) report published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) this week. The report centers its expectations on a middle-of-the-road predictive model called the “AEO2015 Reference case”, but also compares this reference case to alternative predictive models which adjust for variables including: low and high oil prices, low and high economic growth, and high oil and gas resources. The report predicts tradeoffs between fuels used for electricity generation, primarily due to slow growth in demand, combined with rising natural gas prices, environmental...

Did Georgia just pull the plug on the electric car market? Many people are wondering after state legislators voted to eliminate a tax credit that last year helped catapult metro Atlanta to the highest U.S. market share for plug-in electric vehicles. The same bill will impose a $200 registration fee -- the nation's highest -- on noncommercial EVs. When the governor signs the bill, as expected, Georgia will go from first to worst on its support for the EV market. The electric vehicle tax credit ends June 30; the EV fee starts the next day. Local car dealers say they're...

Wind energy in Michigan is approximately two-thirds fossil fuels (predominantly natural gas) used in a less than efficient way, coupled with one-third wind. Most people are unaware of that reality and misinformation flourishes as a result. Case in point: a new study claims to provide comparisons between wind and natural gas by treating them as if they were two totally separate and distinct forms of energy generation. The University of Michigan and Lansing-based consulting firm 5 Lakes Energy are touting a joint study based on a “model” produced at the university. The stated purpose of the study is to provide...

A $1.2 billion project to run a power line from Canada to Ludlow may clear its final hurdle before the end of the year. Jeanne Elias, special counsel and case attorney to the Vermont Public Service Department, said she expects the Vermont Public Service Board to issue a Certificate of Public Good for the proposed New England Clean Power Link, or NECPL by December. The certificate would green-light a power line which would make its way through 150 miles of Vermont, much of it subterranean. Elias said the project’s tentative schedule forecasts construction commencing in 2017. She made the announcement...

Steamboat Springs — Routt County commissioners are among local government officials in Colorado who are railing against the latest plans of the state legislature to appropriate $20 million from the mineral severance tax fund to balance the 2015-16 budget. "Since I’ve been a commissioner, this is the fourth or fifth time they’ve raided the severance tax to take care of the state’s budget, and to the detriment of local governments,” Routt County Commission Chairman Doug Monger said. “If we don’t make noise about it, it will become a normal event. We have to get out there and say ‘This really...

White House, State Department Lose Power Due To Scattered Outages April 7, 2015 1:09 PM Share on email View Comments Related Tags: Power Outage, State Department, White House Latest News College CheerleadersCheerleader Roundup: College Edition Best Of Washington D.C.D.C.'s Food Court Cute AnimalsCute Animal Alert You've Earned Points for Reading!Claim points in our Reward Center, and earn more tomorrow.Claim Points WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — The White House and State Department lost power Tuesday afternoon due to scattered outages across the nation’s capital. The power went out at the White House for nearly 10 seconds while the State Department conducted its press...

The White House and State Department lost power Tuesday afternoon due to a major power outage across the nation’s capital and parts of Maryland. The power went out at the White House for nearly 10 seconds while the State Department conducted its press briefing in the dark. The Justice Department’s power also went down. The power outage stretched to the University of Maryland’s campus in College Park.

Exploding A Nuclear Bomb In The Sky Creates An Interesting Phenomenon In 1962, during the depths of the Cold War, the U.S. military exploded a nuclear weapon high above an atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Dubbed Operation Starfish, this exercise was part of a larger project to evaluate the impacts of nuclear explosions in space. The missile, launched from Johnson Island, 900 miles from Hawaii, was armed with a 1.4 megaton warhead, programmed to explode at 240 miles above the earth. It detonated as expected. What was not entirely expected was the magnitude of the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The...

American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) is preparing to close six coal-fired power plants in four states on May 31 to comply with stricter federal emissions standards. Columbus, Ohio-based AEP recently gave notices of the closures to the states and to workers at the Philip Sporn, Kammer and Kanawha Valley plants in West Virginia, the Muskingum River Plant in Ohio, the Tanners Creek Plant in Indiana and the Glen Lyn Plant in Virginia. The notices are required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. More than 250 workers will be affected by the plant shutdowns, which were announced by...

A power outage last week that affected more than 70 million people in Turkey was likely caused by mismanagement, and the head of the electricity distribution company (TEIAS) has resigned, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Monday. The shutdown of two plants in Izmir and Adana Cukurova led to an outage...

1) What happened in Turkey on March 31? At 10:36 a.m., a massive blackout hit Turkey. Out of the 81 Turkish provinces, electricity was not totally cut only in the eastern province of Van, which receives some of its energy from Iran. In total, more than 76 million citizens were affected in one way or another. Described by the Energy Ministry as the worst national blackout since the 1999 Marmara earthquake, the outage wreaked havoc in daily life throughout the country with mass transit and traffic lights ceasing to work, hospitals sounding the alarm, factories halting production, mobile phone connections...

STOCKTON (CBS13) — A power surge left thousands without power for most of the day in Stockton after smart meters on their homes exploded on Monday. The explosions started after a truck crashed into a utility pole, causing a surge around 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

Coal is pretty important to West Virginia. Coal-fired electric power plants accounted for 95 percent of West Virginia's net electricity generation in 2013 and the state produces about 15 percent of all fossil fuel energy in the US. What’s more, the Mountain State leads the nation in underground coal mine production. One government agency seems poised to slow these miners down, but not if Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) can help it. “West Virginia is blessed to be abundant in natural resources," Mooney said. "Unfortunately, the President is intent on destroying coal as a domestic energy source.” Rep. Mooney introduced the...

A legislative package sponsored by House Majority Floor Leader Aric Nesbitt, R-Lawton, would bring significant changes to Michigan’s electricity market. The provision drawing the most attention repeals the only remaining piece of a 2000 reform led by then-Gov. John Engler, which ended the monopoly status of Michigan's largest electric utilities. Under that reform, known as “Energy Choice,” customers could buy their power from an alternative generator, while the power lines through which the juice flows remained a regulated monopoly. Not surprisingly, the state’s two large utilities, Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison, were not pleased, and never stopped pressuring lawmakers to...

Senate Republicans are proposing a budget amendment that would let states opt out of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) controversial climate rule for power plants.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed the amendment Tuesday on behalf of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who is up for reelection in 2016. ADVERTISEMENT Under the amendment, a state’s governor or legislature would be able to opt out of the rule’s requirements for a variety of reasons.In order to be exempt from the rule, a governor or legislature would have to cite one of the following reasons: that the rule would hurt low-income or fixed-income...