Free Republic

A new law in Illinois soon requires electric vehicle charging stations in the garage of new or renovated homes. Critics say this will increase costs.State Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, filed Senate Bill 40 to keep Illinois on its path to having one million EVs on the roads by 2030. The bill was signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker Friday with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2024.In 2021, Pritzker signed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act into law, which incentivizes EV production across the state. There are also state tax incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles.State Rep....

Whistleblower Reveals What is Behind the Mass Attacks on US Food Facilities (Video) In the United States, dozens of food processing plants suspiciously caught fire over the past year. Remarkably, no one was present at the time of the fires. The Eco Health Alliance whistleblower, bioterrorism expert, military veteran, and scientist Dr. Andrew Huff has a possible explanation for the food supply fires. Huff has access to government information about simulating a food supply attack. The information comes from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Food and Agriculture Sector Criticality Assessment Tool (FASCAT). This also includes which places are particularly...

80 years ago today, the greatest electrical engineer ever passed away. Feel free to share any nerd comments, or arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Someone has been attacking power plants all over the country, and federal authorities are trying to determine who it is. In recent days, we have seen significant sabotage on both the east and west coasts, and so it can’t just be one individual that is responsible. During the first eight months of this year, there were a total of 106 attacks on the electrical grid in the United States, and that represents the highest number ever recorded in a single year. Hopefully authorities will be able to get to the bottom of this mystery, because winter will soon officially begin....

The United States will provide Ukraine with aid worth $53 million to support the conflict-struck country's electrical system, the State Department said in a note it sent to media outlets on Tuesday.According to the statement, the funds will be used for "the acquisition of critical electricity grid equipment," including "distribution transformers, circuit breakers, surge arresters, disconnectors, vehicles and other key equipment."The announcement came amid power and heat cuts Ukraine has been facing recently, for which Kiev and the West accused Russia.

My last post on Tuesday reported on the Soho Forum climate change debate that had taken place the previous day. Debater Andrew Dessler, arguing in favor of rapid reductions in human greenhouse gas emissions by the method of vastly increasing electricity production from wind and solar generators, had heavily relied on the assertion that wind and solar are now the cheapest ways to generate electricity. An important slide in his presentation showed comparative costs of generation from various sources, with wind and solar clearly shown as least expensive. At the bottom of the slide, the acronym “LCOE” was legible. LCOE...

U.S. power companies are facing supply crunches that may hamper their ability to keep the lights on as the nation heads into the heat of summer and the peak hurricane season. Extreme weather events such as storms, wildfires and drought are becoming more common in the United States. Consumer power use is expected to hit all-time highs this summer, which could strain electric grids at a time when federal agencies are warning the weather could pose reliability issues. Utilities are warning of supply constraints for equipment, which could hamper efforts to restore power during outages. They are also having a...

The shortage threatens the pace of the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels as the Biden administration seeks to decarbonize the grid by 2035.. U.S. renewable energy developers have delayed or scrapped several big battery projects meant to store electrical power on the grid in recent months, scuttling plans to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar energy. At least a dozen storage projects meant to support growing renewable energy supplies have been postponed, canceled or renegotiated as labor and transport bottlenecks, soaring minerals prices, and competition from the electric vehicle industry crimp supply. .... Storing power is considered vital...

How commonly are 5-pin trailer (electrical) connectors used? I'm looking at a combo 7-pin to 4-pin and 5-pin adapter plug on Amazon. (Two in one.) No surprise: It is a few bucks costlier than a simpler 7-pin to 4-pin adapter plug. But, I can't recall ever seeing a 5-pin in the flesh /in use. Are they really very uncommon? Does one particular type of trailer typically use the 5 pin connectors? If very uncommon, I might as well save the few $$ and get a 7-pin to 4-pin (only) adapter. (I may be in the market for a 2nd used...

Colorado regulators will kick off a series of hearings Wednesday that could determine how the state’s largest utility generates its energy in the coming decades — and how much it will contribute to global warming. Xcel Energy, which supplies electricity to 1.5 million people across Colorado, announced plans to phase out its remaining coal plants earlier this year and instead rely more on natural gas, renewable energy, and emerging technology such as hydrogen power. The utility’s plans came as the state, pushed by activists and environmental groups, set a goal to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by half of its...

DENVER — Xcel Energy customers could see higher bills in 2022. The company submitted a proposal to raise rates to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. They say the increase will help fund “next-generation technology investments that expand and strengthen the reliability of the electric grid for customers, advance Colorado’s clean energy policies, and increase capacity to meet growing customer needs and expectations.” Xcel said that since 2019 and through 2022, it will spend for $4 billion on the investments. How much will my bill increase? Residential customers would see their bills increase by an average of $9.46 a month, or...

Thanks to experience with numerous hurricanes, we were prepared for the Texas power outage and no one slept in the cold at our house. When you are prepared, three days is not that bad.I have lived along the Gulf Coast my entire life, mostly in the Houston Area. I lived and worked in Louisiana when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Gustav slammed into South Louisiana and have learned from my successes and failures and those of my friends.After moving back home to Texas and a long period of relatively quiet storm activity, Hurricane Harvey was a test of different beast until...

I’m renovating my patio and wanted to take the ceiling fan off of a switched circuit and run a dedicated feed for power since the fan is always on anyway. I found some drops in the wall near my entertainment center that seemed like a sure thing, so I killed the breaker, cut the line and started running everything to splice in the new fan circuit. While I was stripping wires, my arm touched a ground and I got nice jolt. Yes, my arm touched a ground and got jolted. Grounds are supposed to be dead, right? Well, despite a...

Gov. Gavin Newsom has appealed directly to investor Warren Buffett to support demolishing four hydroelectric dams on a river along the Oregon-California border ... which would be the largest dam removal in U.S. history. The dams are owned by PacificCorp, an Oregon-based utility that is part of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate. The $450 million project would reshape California’s second-largest river and empty giant reservoirs. ... Newsom supports a 2016 agreement under which PacifiCorp would transfer its federal hydroelectric licenses for the dams to a nonprofit coalition, the Klamath River Renewal Corp., that was formed to oversee the demolition. ......

Representative K.C. Becker and Senator Faith Winter have introduced legislation that would give Xcel Energy a green light and blank check to prematurely close existing power plants, replace them with expensive, intermittent resources, and then force captive electric ratepayers to pick up the tab with interest for the massive fuel switching scheme and workforce transition plans. ... Colorado Energy Plan (CEP) .. The monopoly utility is more than willing to build and build and build so it can fuel switch to utility-scale wind, solar, and batteries (which don’t really exist yet) at the expense of Colorado ratepayers. Instead of saving...

It was a spectacular display of light that left thousands of Kenner residents in the dark on Thursday. Dramatic cellphone video from WWL-TV viewer Giovanni Bommarito showed several large electrical explosions and power lines sparking up and down Williams Boulevard.

Xcel again proved its preeminent power over every crack and crevasse of state government when the governor’s appointed Public Utilities Commission approved Xcel’s plan to close two state-of-the-art power plants a decade before they’re supposed to. At the same time the PUC acknowledges Xcel was lying when they said the move would save us money. ... The public relations spin on this corporate heist is glorious. Even though the coal-fired power plants, Comanche 1 and 2, are the most clean-burning that modern technology allows, making them the cleanest in the nation, they still use vilified coal, so this move looks...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors - devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state. The state Energy Commission said that when fully implemented, the plan will save consumers $373 million a year and conserve as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes. Final approval of the standards, expected at a meeting in Sacramento of the five-member commission, caps a nearly two-year planning process that had...

The topic here is this little guy: Somewhere around the early 90s Honda and Toyota started making cars to last longer than their owners last. I have a 96 Honda Accord with around 210K miles on it, synthetic oil all the way, bulletproof 5-speed manual transmission and all the main parts of the car seem set to live for another 30 years, assuming I replace spark plugs, timing belts, radiators, windshield wipers and that sort of thing once in a while. But I've seen cars killed by over-engineering things and that fuel relay is just that. When one of the...

One objective might be significant damage to a coal/oil fired plant that provides electricity to the Grid. How would they do that? A simple example would be my electric tea pot at home. Every morning I fill the tea pot with water and turn it on. When the water comes to a boil, I turn it off and pour the water into a cup. My tea pot has a mechanical on-off switch but if I leave it on, the water boils out and the overheat safety switch automatically turns it off. If it was controlled by a computer a cyber...