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The Electric Bioreactor Farm Finnish researchers have created a batch of single-cell protein that is nutritious enough to serve for dinner using a system powered by renewable energy. The entire process requires only electricity, water, carbon dioxide, and microbes. The synthetic food was created as part of the Food From Electricity project, which is a collaboration between Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. After exposing the raw materials to electrolysis in a bioreactor, the process forms a powder that consists of more than 50 percent protein and 25 percent carbohydrates — the texture...

A power company in California reported a squirrel was responsible for an outage that left thousands of customers in the dark. San Diego Gas and Electric reported a substation was down on Tuesday afternoon after the squirrel came in contact with a high voltage transmission line. "A substation is currently down and we are working hard to repair," SDG&E tweeted. "Thank you for your patience." About 45,000 customers in Balboa Park, Chollas Creek, City Heights, Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Normal Heights, North Park, Oak Park, Old Town and surrounding areas were left without power beginning at about 12:30 p.m. Utility crews...

California is the poster child for solar energy: in 2016, 13% of the state's power came from solar sources. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, California is in the lead for the cumulative amount of solar electric capacity installed in 2016. In fact, the California is generating so much solar energy that it is resorting to paying other states to take the excess electricity in order to prevent overloading power lines. According to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona residents have already saved millions in 2017 thanks to California’s contribution.

In a decision that evokes former President Obama’s environmental agenda, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on March 23, 2017, expanded its authority in a way that’s likely to drive up electricity rates. Every four years, Xcel Energy undergoes a resource planning process that outlines their ability to meet ratepayers’ electricity demand. They present portfolios containing cost analyses regarding the utility’s generation, and the Commission selects the “lowest cost resources available to provide the company with enough capacity and energy to in turn be able to provide customers with reliable electricity.” However, in the 2016 Energy Resource Plan, the Public...

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century. This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries. Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch...

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CHARLOTTE—Duke Energy has launched its Power/Forward Carolinas project -- a $13 billion, 10-year program to modernize the state's electric system. It says the initiative will result in nearly 14,000 new jobs a year and more than $1 billion in tax benefits to communities. Duke says project upgrades will harden the system against storms and outages; make it safer and more resilient against cyber-attacks and physical threats; help expand renewable energy; generate jobs and stimulate economic growth. It will also give 7 million people in North Carolina more information to manage their energy use. David Fountain, Duke Energy's North Carolina president...

An expensive solar road project in Idaho can’t even power a microwave most days, according to the project’s energy data. The Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways project generated an average of 0.62 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per day since it began publicly posting power data in late March. To put that in perspective, the average microwave or blow drier consumes about 1 kWh per day. On March 29th, the solar road panels generated 0.26 kWh, or less electricity than a single plasma television consumes. On March 31st, the panels generated 1.06 kWh, enough to barely power a single microwave. The panels...

Jocelyn Bamford, a white hard hat perched over red hair that curls down around her shoulders, has her hands on her hips. Behind safety glasses, her eyes flash. On the shop floor in the bustling Automatic Coating Inc. plant owned by her family, she has to shout to be heard above the squirt of compressed air nozzles, honks from forklifts, the clang of steel as it’s dipped in baths, and the hum of exhaust fans. Bamford might be shouting regardless of the noise since the hydro bill for her Toronto-based company has her mad as hell. Once boasting one of...

Researchers have successfully used graphene to reinvent abandoned heat energy converter technology and to make it more efficient. This will be used to boost the output from older power stations. Power station efficiency has been substantially increased by utilizing satellite-powering technology that was abandoned many years ago. The technology has been reconfigured to function with traditional power stations to aid the conversion of heat to electricity (what’s called thermionic energy conversion) more efficiently. In better news for the environment, this means lower amounts of fossil fuel will be needed to be burnt to produce equivalent amounts of power. Much of...

Households in New England paid electricity prices last month that were 47 percent higher than the national average.. Consumer energy information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its Boston region showed the area's households paid an average of 19.5 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, compared to the national average of 13.3 cents. The region includes Hampden and Worcester counties as well as Greater Boston and parts of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine. The figures came out one day after energy utility Eversource proposed a 10 percent increase in its electricity distribution rates beginning early next year. The...

Officials at Lake Oroville reduced the rate of water release once again Friday as workers continued make repairs to a damaged spillway and clear debris from a hydroelectric plant. State Department of Water Resources engineers will decrease the flow of water in the Oroville Dam's main spillway from 80,000 cubic feet per second to 60,000 by Saturday morning, giving crews space to dredge debris from a pool at the bottom of the spillway, said DWR acting director Bill Croyle. Engineers had been pumping water out of the lake at 100,000 cfs for several days to make room for incoming storm...

The bucolic orchards of Sutter County north of Sacramento had never seen anything like it: a visiting governor and a media swarm — all to christen the first major natural gas power plant in California in more than a decade. At its 2001 launch, the Sutter Energy Center was hailed as the nation’s cleanest power plant. It generated electricity while using less water and natural gas than older designs. A year ago, however, the $300-million plant closed indefinitely, just 15 years into an expected 30- to 40-year lifespan. The power it produces is no longer needed — in large part...

This is where Henry Ford worked while he was building the Model T. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZi2og1YQJA In this segment from 'The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation" you'll learn about the Edison Illuminating Company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjOtZeikN2s

It seems that on a monthly basis, there is a new development in the speed and quality of graphene production, be it with copper substrates, or using it to create the strongest material known to humankind. Yet despite these regular developments, little progress has been made in producing the so-called wonder material faster and cheaper to the point that it can be mass-produced. However, the latest development from Kansas State University (KSU) is certainly taking graphene to a new, explosive level of development. Unlike current production methods that rely on large industrial-scale equipment, the KSU team led by Prof Chris...

Once again, graphene has proven itself to be a rather special material: an international research team led by Professor Fritz Aumayr from the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien was able to demonstrate that the electrons in graphene are extremely mobile and react very quickly. Impacting xenon ions with a particularly high electric charge on a graphene film causes a large number of electrons to be torn away from the graphene in a very precise spot. However, the material was able to replace the electrons within some femtoseconds. This resulted in extremely high currents, which would not be maintained...

At virtually the last possible moment, the Obama administration on Monday rolled out new regulations making it even more difficult and more costly to mine coal in the U.S., a final shot against the already beleaguered coal industry as the president leaves office. The Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule will go into effect 30 after its official release and publication in the federal register, meaning it likely will be implemented Jan. 19 — one day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Mr. Trump has vowed to undo much of his predecessor’s environmental regulations, including rules that target coal mining. The...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

Three windmill-like turbines loom motionless over the city of Port Angeles’ new Waterfront Park. The $107,516 spires stand immobile more than two months after they were erected and more than a year after the city council approved them. Once they are working to generate electricity, they will produce so little power — $1.50 worth of electricity a month in savings — that at least one council member is regretting her decision to purchase them. They have not been activated because the city is involved in an inspection-related dispute with the manufacturer, UGE International Ltd. of New York City, Community and...

By year's end, Portland General Electric will fire up its 550-megawatt power plant in Boardman for a daylong test burn, feeding 8,000 tons of pulverized, roasted wood into its boilers instead of the usual diet of coal. The exercise is meant to gauge whether the aging fossil fuel plant could reliably generate electricity using renewable feedstock such as "torrefied" wood after its scheduled closure in 2020. If it works — technically, economically and environmentally — Oregon's only coal-fired power plant could one day become the country's largest biomass power plant. It's an uncertain, embryonic effort, but some believe the payoff...