Weird Appliances
Getting ready for the big game? You need a keg fridge. What about a vision toaster so you can see how browned your bread is? And how about a stencil toaster so you can decorate your toast or even write a message on it?
Nikola Tesla and Bob Dylan
July Birthdays
Thomas Davenport built the first direct current motor in the U.S. One of Nikola Tesla's many achievements include the first alternating current induction motor and transformer. And on July 24, 1965, the controversial performance by Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival took place, with electric amps.
POPS Is Here to Stay
Reports of Plain Old Power Service’s death greatly exaggerated
The vast majority of electric consumers want reliable, clean, reasonably priced electricity, and little else.
Marginal Utility
The Carbon Paradigm Shift
The telephone companies dumped land lines for cellular, and prospered, thanks to their size, ability to raise funds, and name recognition. They migrated to a new paradigm. Can’t electricity providers?
Action Needed Now To Prevent More Nuclear Plant Closures
Threat to nearly one-fifth of our nation’s ninety-nine reactors is real
Individually, these closures are understandable financial decisions. But the cumulative impact endangers any chance of meeting U.S. climate change goals.
A Robotic Concrete Crawler
Play Station Controls Guide Robot on Concrete Inspection Trips
EPRI has designed a robot for inspecting hard-to-reach concrete surfaces. A robotic inspection system would eliminate the need to use scaffolding or rappelling for routine structural evaluations, eliminating the associated setup challenges, time requirements, costs, and safety hazards.
Here Comes the Sun
Growing Impacts of Residential Solar on Utility Customer Service
What does PV mean for utilities’ residential customer service operations? From helping customers with supplier selection, through installation and maintenance issues? And with billing? To begin to address this question, we conducted two sets of surveys of residential electricity customers in the second quarter of 2016.
Public Weighs In on Market Conditions Threatening Nuclear Power Plants
Examining the problem for nuclear power shows value in informing the public.
What should be done to create market conditions to prevent the loss of the nation’s only zero-carbon large-scale baseload electricity source?
Ratemaking and the Campaign Against Rooftop Solar
Rate design should balance consumer and investor interests.
Regulators should ensure that changes to rate design seek to balance consumer and utility interests. Rates that are intended to insulate utilities from economic and technological change while providing no benefits to consumers ought to be considered unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory.
Energy Company's Pipe Dream
Why $3.3 Billion Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline Was Defeated
It’s a David and Goliath story. But instead of a slingshot, David in this case fired off a stiff legal challenge to defeat the giant.