That coffee you’re drinking while gazing at your iPad? It cost more than all the electricity needed to run those games, emails, videos and news stories for a year. The annual cost to charge an iPad is just $1.36, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research and development group funded by electric …
Continue reading “It cost just $1.36 to charge an iPad for a year – iPhone $0.38”
They sent customary congratulations from round the world – the Iranians and the Emiratis, the US, the British and Hamas. Even Israel said it “respected the outcome”. William Hague, the foreign secretary, was almost effusive. “I congratulate the Egyptian people for their commitment to the democratic process,” he said. The US called on the government …
Continue reading “Analysis of Egypt’s election – Mohammed Morsi won, but is not in charge”
NRC OVERSIGHT HAS FAILED AT SAN ONOFRE This letter was sent to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, with a copy to The Orange County Register: Dear Chairman, We were stunned to learn recently that for nearly three decades, the San Onofre nuclear reactors have been operating with inherently flawed backup emergency diesel generators, …
Continue reading “Update on San Onofre Nuclear Plant – backup emergency generators also flawed”
Captain America’s shield Captain America harnesses the power of “Vibranium,” a metal extracted from a meteorite that crashed in Africa. The shield is capable of absorbing, storing and redirecting kinetic energy, and the material becomes more powerful as more weapons are turned against it. In the movie, Captain America redirects a shot from Iron Man’s …
Continue reading “Five awesome ways they bent physics for ‘The Avengers’”
I’ve been seeing a lot more solar panels installed on homes. Which has me wondering, what is the impact on cost, inconvenience, and utilities. Scott over on the Zero Waste Blog has the perfect, written-by-an-engineer, write-up. It is worth reading the whole thing, but here is a meaty excerpt: So what has the impact been? …
Continue reading “What’s it like going solar (installing panels on your roof)?”
– …illustrate the variability of wind and solar generation relative to the comparatively smooth output from other generation sources – Power produced by geothermal, biomass, biogas, and small hydro generators can be easily dispatched, meaning it can be either increased, decreased, or controlled to remain fairly constant. – Wind resources are often more available at …
Continue reading “Renewable energy production variability by hour of day, and by season (graph)”
The current explosion in cloud computing offered by major IT companies is driving significant new demand for dirty energy like coal and nuclear power, according to a new report from Greenpeace International. The report, “How Clean is Your Cloud?” shows a growing split within the tech industry between companies that are taking steps to power …
Continue reading “Apple, Amazon, & Microsoft build data centers around dirty energy”
Harnessing the power of supercomputers and their million hours of processing power has allowed some very intriguing physics calculations to take place. One of them is the study of matter in the universe on a subatomic level. The question, how did we arrive at a universe composed almost exclusively of matter with virtually no antimatter? …
100% of Minnesota’s electricity generation needs can be met by wind and solar sources combined with improvements to the state’s electric grid system and energy efficiency policies, according to a report released today. Renewable Minnesota: Aanalysis of a 100% renewable-energy based electricity system for Minnesota Researched and written by Dr. Arjun Makhijani and Christina Mills …
Continue reading “Myth = 100% of our energy cannot come form renewable sources”
In a previous post, I reported that 58% of Americans think nuclear power is safe. After reading the below reports one has to wonder why that is… 14 Near Meltdowns Among the litany of violations at U.S. nuclear power plants are missing or mishandled nuclear material, inadequate emergency plans, faulty backup power generators, corroded cooling pipes …