Being an ideological partisan, I want to state for the record that I think Edison was right and Westinghouse was wrong - direct current is more efficient and more useful at any particular voltage than alternating current. Direct current motors are more powerful. Direct current doesn't lose energy through impedence, only resistance. It's true AC alternators are more efficient and longer laster than DC generators, and that more power can be transmitted at higher voltages and lower amperage than. But you can easily convert AC to DC using a bridge rectifier with diodes and that buck regulators and boost converters can easily step up or down DC voltage for transmission and use. It's true that diodes and high speed switching transistors didn't exist in Edison's time but I suspect most electrical systems would be largely DC powered today. Probably a lot more solar and local fossil generation would be the norm today, had the grid not been previously built.
"During the solar eclipse that passed across the continental United States on August 21, 2017, solar output on the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) electric system dropped while the sun was partially obscured. Much of the decrease in solar output was made up by increased electricity imports and increased generation from thermal units, most of which is fueled by natural gas."
"Although California was not in the path of totality during the eclipse, meaning the sun was not completely obscured, California contains 43% of the national total for utility-scale solar and 40% of small-scale solar, (as of May 2017). Much of the stateβs solar capacity is located in areas where sunlight was obscured by as much as 60%β70% during the eclipse."
"Based on an average of the previous five weekdays, CAISOβs solar power output typically increases to about 9.1 gigawatts (GW) between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, or to roughly 31% of total load. On August 21, as the moon partially obscured sunlight, CAISOβs solar power output fell to a low of 3.6 GW for that hour, about 60% lower than normal."
Time really does slow down on the summer months.πΆ This morning my Kill a Watt meter reads 59.9 Hz which means that any clock that counts cycles is running slightly slower than normal, losing a few seconds as the day goes on. β²But I’m sure tonight as load decreases off the grid, they’ll make the night a few seconds shorter to accomplish the roughly correct number of cycles for the day.π
"Sure, weβre in the middle of a heat wave β but you may want to think twice before cranking up the AC."
"As the Earth warms and summers become increasingly hotter, we turn to pollutant air conditioners to cool down, furthering environmental damage."
"As many as 1,000 additional people each year along the Eastern U.S. could die from comp"Sure, weβre in the middle of a heat wave β but you may want to think twice before cranking up the%""lications due to higher levels of air pollution from increased air conditioning use, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison said in a new study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine."
"On top of that, the study found that about 13,000 people along the Eastern U.S. could die per year by 2050 from the hazardous particulate matter released into the air as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, and there could be another 3,000 deaths from ozone exposure."
"NASAβs top climate scientist in 1988, Hansen warned the world on a record hot June day 30 years ago that global warming was here and worsening. In a scientific study that came out a couple months later, he even forecast how warm it would get, depending on emissions of heat-trapping gases."
"The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less. Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansenβs predictions given the technology of the time."
"New and tougher rules designed to protect coal miners from the coal and silica dust that causes the fatal disease black lung may not be enough to stem an "epidemic" of the worst stages of the disease or the highest rates of disease in Central Appalachia in 25 years."
"That's the conclusion of a review of the federal government's latest efforts to keep coal miners from being exposed to excessive and toxic amounts of the dust they create as they cut into coal seams."