Word: grid
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...clean energy, points out that in 1996 the California legislature discontinued a policy that encouraged alternatives and efficiency by allowing utilities to make money even if they sold less power (a policy that was reinstituted in April). Policies that allow solar and wind power to be sold to the grid during peak production periods--now in place in more than 30 states--also are encouraging use of renewables...
...would have been bad news for the research hospital where I work. Although it has backup power sources, they take a few minutes to come on. All non-essential machinery (that is, everything but patient’s ventilators and lights in the operating room) lose power when the grid turns off. Such disruptions mean crashed computers, half-completed chemical reactions, and temperature fluctuations in strictly climate-controlled cell incubators. If the hospital fails to switch to its own massive diesel generators in time, the penalties from the power companies are enormous...
What’s an honest Californian to do? For now, I’m keeping the thermostat on 80 and making sure not to use expensive scientific equipment when the grid goes down. I’m also doing some reading on Andres Pico, the Mexican leader at the Battle of San Pasqual. That is, if the lights stay...
...production and increases in gasoline-refining capacity. "Market forces are already correcting some of the problems," says Bill Richardson, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Energy and is now teaching public policy at Harvard. Meanwhile, utilities may be adding new power plants to the grid at the rate of one a day. Richardson says the boost should enable the Midwest and Northeast to avoid blackouts this summer. And he expects the lights to stay on in New York City, which recently rushed emergency facilities into place...
...lifeblood [of the economy], transmission is the arteries and the veins," says Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents major power companies. But "congestion on the system has increased a tremendous amount," Kuhn notes, because the U.S. hasn't expanded its 2,000-mile grid of high-voltage lines in more than a decade...