Socioecology Research Today

Earlier this year, industry group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) published a Disruptive Challenges report outlining the risks to the financial well-being of utilities from distributed energy. It recommends a push to reexamine policies that create incentives for renewable energy, particularly net metering, and advocating pricing changes that ensure utilities can recover the cost of [...]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C3EE24040A This analysis indicates that energy storage could provide some grid flexibility but its build up will require decades. Reducing financial cost is not sufficient for creating a scalable energy storage infrastructure. Most importantly, for grid integrated storage, cycle life must be improved to improve the scalability of battery technologies. As a result of the [...]

Some places could be without power for months, and “chronic shortages for multiple years are possible,” according to the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences.Still, this sunspot cycle has been quieter than most. And even if the Sun unleashes a huge burst, as it did last July, the odds [...]

Pepco, which serves Washington D.C. and parts of Maryland, is using these two-way meters to automatically locate where power outages on its network occurred. Once power is restored, the utility can also ping meters to verify service, rather than send out a crew or make a phone call, according to a Pepco representative.The widespread disruption [...]

The total range in transmission costs per kW of wind implicit in the study sample is vast – ranging from $0/kW to over $1500/kW. The median cost of transmission from all scenarios in the sample is $300/kW, roughly 15–20% of the cost of building a wind project. The median cost of transmission is near the [...]

Creating highly electrically conducting cables from macroscopic aggregates of carbon nanotubes, to replace metallic wires, is still a dream. Here we report the fabrication of iodine-doped, double-walled nanotube cables having electrical resistivity reaching ~10−7 Ω.m. Due to the low density, their specific conductivity (conductivity/weight) is higher than copper and aluminum and is only just below [...]

Rather than generate electricity at the African solar concentrators, says Müller’s group, engineers should direct the sunlight to reactors filled with limestone (CaCO3). At around 1000°C, the limestone would convert to quicklime (CaO) and CO2, which could be converted using other solar energy and hydrogen into useful fuel such as methane. Meanwhile, the lime could [...]

This week, GM announced a new system that came from its partnership with power electronics and automation giant ABB. The system pairs a battery designed for the Chevrolet Volt with a commercial inverter for interfacing with the power grid. The system employs five to 10 used batteries and could provide a few hours of backup [...]

Rice University scientists have achieved a pivotal breakthrough in the development of a cable that will make an efficient electric grid of the future possible. Armchair quantum wire (AQW) will be a weave of metallic nanotubes that can carry electricity with negligible loss over long distances. It will be an ideal replacement for the nation’s [...]

If your home Wi-Fi router wasn’t cooped up indoors, it could send a signal about a 20th of a mile before the signal became too weak and distorted for a computer to receive it. Technology developed by San Diego startup On-Ramp Wireless uses the same frequency, but less power, to send data signals 45 miles, [...]