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In today’s environment, buying a new car has become a stretch for many households - fueling demand in the used-car market. But not all used vehicles are created equal, and reliability plays a major role in long-term ownership costs.For buyers looking to avoid expensive repairs down the road, brand reputation is more important than ever.In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu ranked the best used-car brands of 2025, using data from Consumer Reports.Data & MethodologyTo come up with these reliability scores, Consumer Reports asked its members to report how many problems they’ve had with their vehicles over the past 12...

Data Center Alley, a 30-square-mile stretch outside Washington D.C. and home to more than 200 data centers, consumes roughly the same electricity as Boston. So power company officials were alarmed when a big chunk of those centers – 60 of them – suddenly dropped off the grid one day last summer and switched to on-site generators. The mass reaction was triggered by a standard safety mechanism across the data center industry, intended to protect computer chips and electronic equipment from damage caused by voltage fluctuations. But it caused a huge surge in excess electricity, according to federal regulators and utility...

Talen Energy has reached an agreement with PJM Interconnection, the Maryland Public Service Commission, Maryland electric utilities, consumer representatives, and the Sierra Club to extend operations at its 1.3-GW coal-fired Brandon Shores power plant and 774-MW oil-fired H.A. Wagner units until May 31, 2029, under a reliability-must-run (RMR) contract. If approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the settlement will allow Talen to run the plants well beyond their May 2025 retirement dates and provide the independent power producer with fixed payments of $312/MW per day for Brandon Shores and $137/MW per day for Wagner. The figures include performance...

Hundreds of millions of Americans risk experiencing power shortages this winter if weather conditions are harsh, according to a new report published by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a power grid watchdog. Nearly all residents of the Northeast, Texas and Midwest could face energy shortfalls in the event of a colder-than-usual winter, the NERC report states. The lack of grid reliability is driven largely by growing electricity demand as well as the replacement of coal-fired and older natural gas-fired generators with energy-limited resources such as solar power. ... “Foreseeable extreme cold temperatures have the potential to push the...

Buying a car is a major investment. Not only does it need to get you safely from point A to point B, but the vehicle should also be reliable for many years. However, rather than determining if a car is “good” by how long it lasts, experts recommend going by how many miles you can accrue on it without encountering any major issues. For example, a car with 100,000 miles in five years that only needed maintenance (oil change, tire rotation, for example) would be considered “better” than a car with 100,000 miles in seven years but needed major repairs.Here...

I frequently write about how the mandates for energy transition that New York has adopted are impossible and irreconcilable in the real world; and therefore it is inevitable that they will have to be abandoned at some point when implementation of the project runs up against physical reality. Probably the most frequent question that I get asked is, OK, how and when will that occur? The question is important because for as long as the impossible mandates remain in place they are causing massive ongoing damage to our electricity system and to consumers. As examples, on the electricity generation side,...

Reliability is one of the most important aspects to consider when buying a new vehicle, especially as cars become ever more technologically complex...In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu visualizes the results of J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study, which ranked automakers by the number of problems per 100 vehicles (PP100).Data and MethodologyTo come up with this ranking, J.D. Power collected responses from 30,595 original owners of 2021 model-year vehicles after three years of ownership. Their study was fielded from August to November 2023, and covers nine categories of problems:ExteriorSeatsThe driving experienceClimateFeatures/controls/displaysInteriorInfotainmentPowertrainDriving AssistanceThe data shown in this infographic is...

Coal and natural gas plants provide 60% of the U.S.’ affordable, reliable, and baseload power. In a time of increased electricity demand, America needs to double down on harnessing these sources—not abandon them.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP) rule, however, takes the country in the wrong direction. Under this regulation, one that is arguably illegal, existing coal and new natural gas power plants will be mandated to install emissions control technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable. Plants that don’t comply risk permanent closure. This unrealistic mandate is advanced under the guise of reducing greenhouse...

If you must exchange Christmas gifts this year, let it be something old and sturdy. Let’s give the landfills a break.The current minimalism fad might be the only sane response to having so much cheap junk in our lives. When considering Christmas gifts to buy or receive, many weary shoppers find that the most appealing present seems to be nothing at all. It’s a weariness induced by material overload of items that just don’t work.Writing on his Substack, author Walter Kirn bemoans living in “Generation Junk.” In painful detail, to which so many of us can relate, Kirn describes the...

Electric vehicles are failing to live up to their promise, with a new report from Consumer Reports showing that they have an incredible 79 percent more problems than their conventional counterparts, in addition to being less reliable. Plug-in hybrids fared even worse, registering 146 percent more problems than vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines.

Why is defending the Gospels important? Christianity hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus didn’t resurrect, then Christianity is false. So any claim that the Gospel writers lied, is a claim that they lied about Jesus’ resurrection, and therefore Christianity is false. Most importantly, if things didn’t happen the way the Gospel writers said they did, then Jesus did not fulfill Old Testament prophecies. If He didn’t fulfill the prophecies, He’s not the Messiah.Here are six ways we can know the Gospel writers didn't lie. 1. The Gospels contain details that embarrass the writersIf you were going to make...

We’re on the precipice of a radical experiment with a national electricity grid The AEMO (manager of the Australian grid) has finally released the major report on problems coming in the next ten years on our national grid, and it’s worse than they thought even six months ago. They euphemistically refer to the coming “reliability gaps”. They could have said “blackouts” instead, but a gap in reliability sounds so much nicer. Bizarrely, the lead graph of the 175 page AEMO report goes right off the scale, mysteriously peaking in the unknown and invisible real estate off the top of the...

TOYOTA IS ON TOP Last year's second-place finisher has replaced its sister luxury brand Lexus at the top of Consumer Report's reliability ranking list. The two tied with a rounded-up predicted reliability score of 72, but Toyota was a few decimals better, and they were followed by BMW (65), Mazda (65) and Honda (62). The study surveyed more than 300,000 owners of 2000 to early 2023 model year cars about 17 potential problem areas. " Consumers tell us reliability is one of the most important factors when buying a car," Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer...

The Texas grid may fail again this year, according to a local investigative journalist who this week raised the alarm about the grid's state of preparedness ahead of an Arctic weather front. "This is not a good start. Tried checking @ERCOT_ISO dashboard about grid conditions and it's down. Tried checking hourly resource outage data, that's down too," Jeremy Rogalski from K-HOU TV tweeted on Wednesday. He later added that he had gotten in touch with a spokesperson for the Energy Reliability Council of Texas who'd told him that the grid operator was having issues from an upgrade made back in...

A public database that collects reports of vaccine side effects and injuries isn’t considered a reliable source of information about risks associated with COVID-19 vaccines. Established in 1990, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) collects reports of potential side effects from licensed vaccines. Interest in the database, publicly available online, has grown since COVID-19 vaccines were approved, but the data can be misleading if used to make a direct connection to the reported deaths and injuries. Dr. . Russell Bush, director and chief medical examiner at the Michigan Institute of Forensic Science & Medicine, said conclusions shouldn’t be drawn...

Industry leaders called for 'urgent action' after the National Grid warned electricity supplies would be 'tight'.. ... Latest sign of a grim winter outlook for UK with economy clobbered by rising inflation and supply chain issues.. The supply of electricity to Britain this winter will be 'tight' and there is a greater risk of blackouts, the National Grid warned today - as soaring energy prices leave families facing sky- high bills. ... Gas is in high demand due to the reopening of the global economy, colder temperatures, and reduced wind and solar output due to unfavourable conditions. ... Omni Energy...

California's Independent System Operator has issued a statewide flex alert for Thursday June 17 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Cal ISO issued the voluntary call to conserve energy Wednesday afternoon as temperatures in the Bay Area soared in the first heat wave of the season and record breaking heat blankets the West Coast this week. By Wednesday, Fairfield reached triple digits. Many other spots in the East Bay, including Fremont, Walnut Creek and Concord are already getting close. The heat is expected to peak on Thursday, with an excessive heat warning in effect through Friday night for many areas...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the regulatory agency that manages Texas’ power grid, said tight grid conditions are expected this week due to high number of forced generation outages, and urged Texans to conserve energy. The announcement came one month after it published its latest seasonal assessment projecting a less than a 1% chance of blackouts occurring this summer. It also came just four months after the state’s historic power grid failure left millions of Texans in the cold and dark. Without heat and water during sub-zero temperatures in mid-February, 111 Texans died. On Monday, ERCOT asked Texans...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas announced in a Tuesday notice to the Public Utility Commission of Texas that four of its board members will resign effective Wednesday, Feb. 24.. A fifth board member separately submitted her resignation. Gov. Greg Abbott sent out a statement saying he welcomed the resignations. ... All five members who are resigning live out of state, ... Last week, amid growing frustrations and public outcry during the winter storms in Texas, ERCOT removed the names of its board members from its website. It has since restored those names. Prior to being pulled down, the biographies...

A Public Utility Commission order stated that ERCOT should correct any past prices to reflect the current shortage of energy... TEXAS, USA — With nearly 4 million Texans in need of power amid the winter storm that struck the state, demand for energy is exceptionally high. The demand has exceeded the supply that the state has to offer. As a result, the Public Utility Commission of Texas held an emergency meeting on Monday where officials introduced an order that would adjust energy prices. The order said in part, "Energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply. If customer load is...