electric utilities

  • Mark Webber driving a 2016 Porsche 919 Hybrid in London

    Norway and The Netherlands started the trend a few years ago, though they're relatively tiny car markets. Then France and the U.K. joined in. China, the world's largest new-car market by far, is doing it—though the country hasn't decided when. All of those countries plan to ban, or work the end of, sales of new vehicles with internal-combustion engines. DON'T MISS: 2017's most important story: internal-combustion engine ban in China While such an idea remains unthinkable on a national level in the U.S., a bill to that effect was introduced in California in January. Now there's pressure...

  • Prototype plug-in electric delivery van with fuel-cell range extender to be tested by UPS in 2017
    UPS adds battery energy storage for 118 electric vans in UK

    Electric vehicles are not only zero-emission and quieter and more pleasant to drive, they also clearly lower emissions of the carbon dioxide linked to climate change under most circumstances. For fleet operators who recharge large fleets of electric vehicles overnight, however, the load on electric...

  • 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV
    Automakers, electric utilities want electric-car tax credit extended

    With Tesla likely to hit 200,000 electric cars sold in the U.S. later this year, it will begin a phasedown process during which the income-tax credits available to its buyers start to dwindle on a set schedule. General Motors is likely to hit the same cap a couple of quarters after Tesla. Now those...

  • 2017 BMW i3 REx range-extended electric car     [photo: Chris Neff]
    More ways to get $10K off BMW i3 electric car: new utilities add discount

    How badly do you want to buy a BMW i3 electric car? Initially, it looked like you'd have to move to areas of California where Southern California Edison would be your electric utility. But soon enough, those areas expanded to other parts of California, some areas of New Jersey where PSE&G...

  • Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
    If you own an electric car, what's your at-home charging from? Twitter poll results

    Over the years, we've noted the paucity of solid data on the intersection of home solar energy and driving plug-in electric cars. A California-only study from 2012 still gets quoted occasionally, and we continue to seek more recent and more comprehensive data. Out of a mix of curiosity and...

  • Photovoltaic solar panel installation on house, Fremont, California   [image: Shiva Singh]
    If you own an electric car, what's your at-home charging source? Take our Twitter poll

    Drivers who buy an electric car that plugs into the power grid to recharge the battery often start to consider the source of their energy. A 2012 analysis from California, in the earliest days of modern electric cars, indicated as many as four in 10 electric-car drivers were already using or...

  • 2018 Kia Niro Plug-In Hybrid charging at office park, Santa Cruz, California, Dec 2017

    The subject of carbon dioxide emissions is hardly a simple one, especially when it comes to electric cars. They may not have tailpipes, but the electricity generated in order to keep them going has to come from somewhere. Electric utilities, it turns out, are doing their bit to reduce carbon emissions—and that makes it even more important that vehicles of all sorts move from gasoline to electricity to do the same. DON'T MISS: All renewable energy types to be cost-competitive by 2020: report Most electric grids in the U.S. are lowering their carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour generated...

  • Nissan Leaf in Scotland
    Scotland power boss: Peak charging could cause grid problems

    Vastly greater numbers of electric cars on United Kingdom roads could pose problems for the power supplies used to recharge them—if, that is, they all plug in during the day. Frank Mitchell, head of SP Energy Networks a unit of ScottishPower, said a rush to electric cars in the U.K. could...

  • 2018 Kia Niro Plug-In Hybrid charging at Crevier BMW, Santa Ana, California, Dec 2017
    PG&E launches program to install 7,500 electric-car charging stations in California

    Finding a charging station will soon get a lot easier—at least in California. America's largest electric-vehicle market will see a significant boost in the number of available charging stations in the state following an investment by its largest electricity producer. Electricity provider...

  • Nikola Tesla on Serbian dinar banknote
    What you need to know about electric-car namesake Nikola Tesla

    This month marks the 75th year since the death of famed inventor and and electrical innovator Nikola Tesla, a man whose life is as interesting as his technical achievements. Tesla, a Serbian who was born in what's now Croatia, brought the world numerous innovations in electricity that, to this day...

  • Wind farm outside Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada   [photographer: Joel Bennett]
    All renewable energy types to be cost-competitive by 2020: report

    Renewable-energy generation costs are falling like photons onto a solar panel. By 2020, it's expected all types of renewable-energy generation will be able to compete with fossil fuels on cost. That's right: saving our environment will actually save electric utilities some money, too. DON'T MISS...

  • U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in 2008, when he was governor of Texas
    U.S. regulator rejects coal, nuclear bailout, says renewable energy may double by 2020

    For much of last year, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry pursued a plan that, in essence, would prop up the financially challenged U.S. coal and nuclear industries. His proposal, submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last fall, provided financial subsidies to electric-generation...

  • Chevrolet Bolt EV being charged outside Go Forth electric-car showroom, Portland   [photo: Forth]

    Remember all those brownouts we experienced last week because everyone plugged in their electric cars? No? Oh right, that didn't happen. It still isn't happening. And it's unlikely to ever happen. That's the conclusion of a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), using infrastructure investment data from California's biggest electricity providers. DON'T MISS: Utility V2G test with BMW shows electric cars can aid the grid Using California—America's largest EV market— the NRDC blog post spells out two key takeaways as part of its study into demand on the grid from...

  • APR Energy's GE TM2500 Gen 8 mobile gas turbines in Puerto Rico
    Why diesel beats solar for disaster recovery in places like Puerto Rico

    Call it the Ikea mindset. On populated islands, space is at a premium, just like those stereotypical Swedish kitchens you see when you stroll through your local assemble-it-yourself retailer. That space restriction is a major reason fossil fuels remain a better power-generation option than...

  • Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
    In Germany, neighborhood solar starts to eat away at utility revenue

    Five years ago, an electric-utility think tank issued a dire warning to its members: Your century-old business model is ending. The continually falling costs of renewable energy generation, especially solar panels, would begin to erode utilities' business from its most profitable customers, the...

  • Electricity grid substation (Image: FirstEnergy Corp on Flickr, used under CC license)
    Under Paris agreement, electric cars will hurt oil demand well before power supply: report

    Electric vehicles have the potential to upend energy markets as their adoption becomes more widespread. But how much of an effect will they have? And on which specific markets? According to a recent report by Wood Mackenzie, the global power grids are likely safe for quite a while, but another...

  • China’s all-electric cargo ship will deliver coal to powerplants. China News/Peng Yonggui
    All-electric Chinese cargo ship will be used to haul coal

    A shipyard in China has built what it says is the world's first all-electric cargo ship, capable of hauling 2,000 metric tons of lading some 50 miles on a single charge. The ship, built and operated by CSSC Offshore & Marine Engineering (Group) Company Ltd under the China State Shipbuilding...

  • Tesla South Australia lithium-ion battery storage
    Tesla builds world's largest lithium-ion battery, for utility use, in Australia

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a bet that he'd build the world's largest lithium-ion battery in Australia in 100 days. If his company failed, Musk would personally pay for the project, but the battery is now ready for its first test ahead of full operation—and on schedule. The massive...

  • Estimated U.S. energy consumption in 2016  [graphic: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]

    One of the interesting side effects of plug-in electric cars turns out to be a greater awareness of energy sources and uses. A 2012 California study, for instance, showed roughly four out of 10 electric-car drivers either had or were considering solar panels to provide electricity to their home. And because electric cars everywhere in the U.S. have lower wells-to-wheels carbon-dioxide emissions than the average new vehicle, their ability to slow those emissions that contribute to climate change is huge. DON'T MISS: Scientists debate: could renewable energy entirely replace fossil fuels in...

  • Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
    Soaring growth of solar power demonstrated in one chart (updated)

    Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. In the case of the rapidly rising rate of solar installations for electricity generation, numerous forecasts by internationally respected bodies have proven woefully conservative. The chart in the tweet below, created by Auke Hoekstra at the...

  • Greenhouse-gas emissions of battery-electric vehicles globally in MPG equivalent [U of Michigan TRI]
    Electric cars emit less carbon than average U.S. new car, everywhere in the world

    When electric cars first arrived in 2011, it was a reasonable question: Aren't you just shifting emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack? The answer is yes, but the carbon emissions per mile of an electric car—properly measured on a wells-to-wheels basis—are virtually always lower...

  • Frame from man-on-the-street interviews on electricity, utilities by E-Source LLC, 2011  [YouTube]
    People have no idea what electricity is or how it works (video)

    Everyone knows what a gallon of gasoline is, or what they paid the last time they put fuel in their car. But trying asking your friends, relatives, and neighbors how much they paid per kilowatt-hour in their last electric bill. Or even what a kilowatt-hour is. We guarantee you that 19 out of 20 of...

  • Containers holding spent nucleat fuel [Nuclear Regulatory Commission photo]
    Fossil-fuel lobbyists join renewable peers against DoE coal, nuclear support plans

    Pity Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the man now running the cabinet department he couldn't remember that he wanted to eliminate altogether during a notorious 2011 presidential debate. He has pulled off an unusual feat, by uniting lobbyists for fossil-fuel interests with their counterparts advocating...

  • Tesla Kauai solar-energy generation and storage project  [photo: Tesla]
    Tesla's solar and battery project in Hawaii: we do the math

    Tesla’s summer announcement of the world’s biggest battery-storage system in South Australia characteristically kept key details confidential. Fortunately, while mystery and mystique still shroud that project, more can be unearthed or inferred for Tesla's solar panel and battery...

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