An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: There’s an old truism in the business world: what gets measured gets managed. One of the challenges in managing the greenhouse gas emissions warming the atmosphere is that they aren’t measured very well. The ultimate solution to this problem– the killer app, as it were — would be real-time tracking of all global…
Tag: Power Grid
Ripple20 Vulnerabilities Will Haunt the IoT Landscape For Years To Come
Cyber-security experts have revealed today 19 vulnerabilities in a small library designed in the 90s that has been widely used and integrated into countless of enterprise and consumer-grade products over the last 20+ years. From a report: Affected products include smart home devices, power grid equipment, healthcare systems, industrial gear, transportation systems, printers, routers, mobile/satellite communications equipment, data center devices, commercial…
Why Remote Work Is So Hard — and How It Can Be Fixed
Cal Newport, writing at the New Yorker: Technological transitions often stumble when we expect them to sprint. In 1989, the Stanford economist Paul David wanted to understand why so many companies were so slow to adopt computer technology; for historical perspective, he turned to the history of the electric dynamo, which had been invented around a hundred years before, and which,…
Tesla’s Secret Batteries Aim To Rework the Math For Electric Cars and the Grid
Electric car maker Tesla plans to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in its Model 3 sedan in China later this year or early next that it expects will bring the cost of electric vehicles in line with gasoline models, and allow EV batteries to have second and third lives in the electric power grid. Reuters reports: For months, Tesla Chief…
Are Decentralized Renewable Microgrids ‘The Power Plant of the Future’?
Long-time Slashdot reader joemite shared Wired’s report about a small town of Basalt Vista, Colorado, where homeowners like Katela Escobar are testing highly scaleable “advanced power grid technologies that could turn every home into an appendage of a decentralized power plant.” Basalt Vista is designed to be an all-electric community that produces as much power as it uses. Each home comes…
Volkwagen Touts Massive Energy Storage Potential of Vehicle-to-Grid Electric Car Batteries
Volkswagen’s chief strategist Michael Jost predicts their vehicle-to-grid electric car batteries could open up a new business opportunity: selling their electricity back to the power grid during peak demand. Reuters reports: “By 2025 we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt…
Radical Hydrogen-Boron Reactor Leapfrogs Current Nuclear Fusion Tech
HB11 Energy, a spin-out company originating at the University of New South Wales, claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected. Along with this announcement, the company also announced a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation. New Atlas reports: The results of decades of…
Helmet trouble strikes second all-female spacewalk
Two NASA astronauts ventured out Wednesday on a second all-female spacewalk to finish upgrades to the International Space Station’s power grid, but quickly ran into a helmet problem. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-helmet-all-female-spacewalk.html…
Are California’s Utilities Undermining Rooftop Solar Installations?
California now has one million solar roofs, representing about 14% of all renewable power generated in the state. But solar advocates “said the milestone has come despite escalating efforts by utilities to undermine rooftop solar installations,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They said those attacks include everything from hefty fees on ratepayers to calling for dramatic cuts to the credits…
‘We’re missing something fundamental about the sun’
Parker Solar Probe – now in its 4th orbit around our local star – is designed to endure the sun’s heat and radiation like no previous mission. Data collected during the craft’s first 2 orbits were released last month. This week, 4 new studies in Nature have space scientists buzzing. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/parker-solar-probe-4-new-studies-dec-4-2019…