Word: kilowatter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like a giant vessel left ashore by the tide, the Seabrook nuclear power plant sits forlornly on the marshy New Hampshire coastline. The reactor has produced not a single kilowatt of electricity -- nor a penny of income -- since ground was broken for the project in 1976. Result: Seabrook is generating a financial disaster for its principal owner, Public Service of New Hampshire, an otherwise healthy electric utility that has poured $2.1 billion into the plant. Strapped for cash, Public Service last week did something that utilities virtually never do: it defaulted. The company deliberately missed a $37.5 million semiannual interest...
Take the transmission of electricity, for example. As much as 20% of the energy sent through high-tension lines is now lost in the form of heat generated as the current encounters resistance in the copper wire. If the electricity could be sent through superconducting cable, however, not a kilowatt-second of energy would be lost, thus saving the utilities, and presumably consumers, billions of dollars. Furthermore, at least in theory, all of a large city's electrical energy needs could be supplied through a handful of underground cables...
...Governor Robert Orr is recommending a 3% rate hike in each of the next five years to pay for the $2.8 billion spent for the abandoned plants in Marble Hill. That means 540,000 customers in 69 counties would be paying for plants that never produced a single kilowatt of power. -By John S. DeMott. Reported by Barbara B. Dolan/Detroit and Thomas McCarroll/New York
...planning and incompetent management. Brazil and Paraguay are cooperating in the construction of Itaipu, the world's largest hydroelectric project, which has a dam almost five miles long. To date, nine years after it was begun, Itaipu has cost $18 billion and has generated not a single kilowatt of electricity for Brazil and only a small amount for Paraguay. Says Joāo Camilo Penna, the Minister of Industry and Commerce: "We have $50 billion worth of incomplete projects with zero degree of usefulness...
Some Congressmen have meanwhile gone ahead on the issue. A bill co-sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman and Gerald Sikorski spreads the burden of paying for emissions reductions. Under the plan, a 1 cent per kilowatt tax would be levied nationwide on utility customers. The $2 billion raised by the tax would be used to subsidize scrubbers for the dirtiest Midwestern power plants. Tax revenues would finance nearly 90 percent of the cost of the scrubbers, which could reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions by about 40 percent in 10 years' time...