Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Nikola Tesla Would Not Approve of Your Online Viewing Habits

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Since March 11, a 2 minute, 4 second rap smackdown pitting eccentric genius Nikola Tesla against more mercantile electric genius Thomas Edison has gotten 13,952,858 people to watch it (as of the time of this writing). Not bad for a feud that reached its peak in 1897. Tesla, though, hated to waste time—even for sleep—so he probably would not have approved of the 474,397 hours the world's collective eyeballs have spent watching this video alone. Nor of the electrical use—5,692.7 kilowatt hours of electricity used by YouTube's servers, or approximately enough to power an American household ... Read More

More like this: Science
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The Big One

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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One percent of all U.S. dairy farms produce 35 percent of America's milk. One American milk cow produces an average of 22,000 pounds of milk per year—up from 8,000 pounds per year in 1965. One percent of patients account for 22 percent of all health care spending in the U.S., costing more than $90,000 per person. One percent of all drivers on weekend nights have blood alcohol levels above 0.15, nearly twice the limit; such drivers are involved in over 20 percent of all fatal crashes. One percent of U.S. electricity consumption—the output of seven large electric power ... Read More

More like this: May-June 2013
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Germany Unplugs Nuclear Power, Doesn’t Plug in Anything Else

April 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Two years after deciding to phase out nuclear power, Germany's government just reported that it is still producing more energy than it needs. Europe's largest economy has suffered no shortfalls in electricity supply and quadrupled its energy exports to neighbors compared to 2010—before the phase-out. That's according to Germany's state statistical service. Before the drawdown, German nuclear plants represented 20-25 percent of the country's electricity supply. Solar and wind alternatives, meanwhile, are not yet online in sufficient force to take up the shortfall. The lights, however, have ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Could the Smart Grid Finally Do Some Good for Consumers?

September 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Americans shop for viciously for bargains, whether it’s getting plane tickets from discount web sites or driving across town to save 30 cents on a tank of gas. But when it comes to electricity, we’ve been simply writing checks for the bills we receive at the end of the month. Few of us know how much we pay for a kilowatt hour, or how many kilowatt hours we use—or what a kilowatt hour actually is. Since the 1920s, Americans have paid flat regulated prices per hour for electricity. But de-regulated wholesale electricity prices now gyrate extravagantly from nearly zero at night to as ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Electric Forecast Calls for Increasing Blackouts

July 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Lights on in only one house

It’s not just a feeling: Power outages have become normal in the United States. Last month’s heat and derecho storms that left more than 300,000 people in the Mid-Atlantic states without power (some for as long as a week) are part of a larger trend. In 2008, according to the Eaton Blackout Tracker, there were 2,169 power outages in the U.S. affecting 25 million people. In 2011, there were more than 3,000 outages affecting 41.8 million people. According to Eaton, the majority of power outages in the U.S. are caused by weather, in particular storms blowing trees on the lines, and heat ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Making Electricity From Dirt

July 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Light bulb in dirt lights up

In the United States, renewable power is mostly about being bigger. Take BrightSource’s plans for a solar thermal power plant in the California desert: hundreds of mirrors will focus the sun’s rays on a central “boiler,” creating enough power for 140,000 homes. Billions of dollars thousands of acres of land; 392 megawatts of production—more than a standard coal fired plant. But the development of renewable energy also has another path, particularly outside the U.S. That path is very tiny. Miniscule, in some cases. It strives to supply exactly the right number of electrons at ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Who’s Saving Electricity in Your Neighborhood?

March 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It was late afternoon at Opower headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, but the energy start-up’s hive mind was thrumming steadily. “Let’s take a walk,” said Marc Laitin, senior director of consumer marketing. “I think best when I’m moving.” Laitin is a typical Opower manager — Harvard educated, safely under 40, animated like a street theater puppet, and dressed like he was going to a Decemberists’ concert. He set off down the hall on a talking jag, punctuating his ideas with wild arms. He wanted to make an idea about turning down the heat in winter go viral. People ... Read More

More like this: Environment, March-April 2012, News and Options
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Vehicle-to-Grid: A New Spin on Car Payments

October 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Willett Kempton is an anthropologist. And an electrical engineer. On this winter morning at the University of Delaware, both skill sets come in handy as he courts two Japanese businessmen. They’ve traveled here from Tokyo to see how much progress he’s made toward a revolutionary idea: electric cars that will make several thousand dollars a year for their owners, and speed the switch to renewable energy sources. Observing Japanese business etiquette, Kempton presents his business card to the senior visitor, Makoto Horiguchi, then the two exchange bows. He repeats the ceremony with ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Magazine Feature Story, November-December 2011
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Rooftop Solar Power to the People?

April 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Are New Solar Power Projects Anti-Environmental?

While chasing the mirage of a game-changing renewable energy source in the form of industrial-scale solar plants capable of powering hundreds of thousands of homes, the federal government has turned its back on a better, cheaper form of energy from the sun: distributed solar power generation, sometimes known as rooftop solar. At least, that's the way desert environmental advocates see it. A coalition of scientists and local land conservationists calling itself Solar Done Right envisions roofing homes, commercial buildings and parking lots throughout the Southwest with a vast network of ... Read More

More like this: Environment, May-June 2011, Science & Environment
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A Genuine Jolt to the Memory

February 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s a universal moment of dread. Someone with a familiar face approaches and panic ensues; you can’t remember his or her name. New research suggests that this embarrassing incapacity may be helped by a shock — of electricity, that is. Scientists from Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania discovered that a low jolt of electrical current to the brain improved name recall in young adults by 11 per cent, according to a study published in Neuropsychologia. A subsequent experiment on older adults replicated the findings, and that study is being prepared for ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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