Last week a massively huge energy storage project was announced in Utah. Details are scarce, but since the announcement included both Utah Governor Gary Herbert and US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, the companies involved were able to draw on some heavy firepower and maybe there is some government funding…
Today during TT Week, Mugen’s riders Michael Rutter and John McGuinness took both the #1 and #2 positions, with Michael Rutter breaking the 120 miles/hr lap speed threshold and setting a new TT Zero lap record. Along the way John McGuinness had a fantastic speed at the Sulby Speed Trap,…
Over the weekend an explosion at the Air Products facility in Santa Clara CA damaged several trucks used for hydrogen delivery. Nobody was injured by the explosion and fire. But subsequently, hydrogen delivery has been suspended at all Fuel Cell EV refueling stations because Air Products has pulled all its…
Earlier this month a group of 22 US Senators co-authored a Letter saying the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should preserve the ability of local electricity providers to maintain control over the electricity grid. At issue is whether Distributed Energy Resources, a.k.a. DER’s, can sell electricity to the wholesale electricity market.…
On Thursday the mayor of Bucharest signed 11 financing contracts, that have European Union backing, to purchase 80 streetcars and 100 electric buses. These new vehicles will be used to upgrade Bucharest’s overwhelmed public transit system. By being electric, the new vehicles are also expected to reduce air pollution in…
Electrify America recently announced plans for upgrading the electric car charging user experience. In the immediate term the company will launch a mobile app to help customers find charging stations, reiterated its commitment to keep charging stations open to all through allowing payment using a credit card, while announcing membership…
Here in Silicon Valley there are so many electric cars driving around that it’s easy to forget what it was like in 2011 or before. Back in the 2000’s owning an electric vehicle was outright weird, but today the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley has one of the…
A move in Illinois to increase the annual EV registration fee to $1000 is alarming electric vehicle owners, but EV owners must see this in the context of the bigger picture. How are the roads paid for? When and how will electric vehicle owners pay their fair share of the…
As a reminder, this story began in 2014 in the aftermath of what we might think of as a US-backed coup in Ukraine. During 2013 the US/EU was negotiating with Ukraine for the country to shift focus to engagement with the West, but in late 2013 then-Pres. Yanukovych suddenly flipped…
Friday night, April 19, an explosion at a grid-scale energy storage unit near Phoenix injured four firefighters who were investigating a report of smoke rising from the facility. The APS McMicken Energy Storage facility is operated by Fluence, a company formed by Siemens after they bought out AES Corp, the…
Recently on Facebook a claim has gone around that Tesla is phasing out the J1772 adapter. This adapter is required for a Tesla car to charge at a regular charging station, since Tesla cars have a Tesla-specific charging port. There is a lot of history behind why Tesla has a…
Yesterday the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and, while it was saved from complete destruction, a question has come up about restoring the building. Where will they get timbers big enough to replace the roof? Those timbers were cut 800+ years ago when Primal Forest was still available,…
Back in 2014 then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was named to the Board of The Burisma Group, the largest privately-held natural gas company in Ukraine. On April 1, 2019, The Hill reported on an event where Joe Biden bragged over having pressured Ukraine, in March 2016, to fire…
The latest step in the marketing/sales chaos that is Tesla has the company on the one hand making it almost impossible to buy a $35,000 MSRP Tesla Model 3, on the other hand starting a lease program, while still continuing to display misleading pricing on the Tesla website. This follows…
Over the weekend Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a bunch of tweets including the above charging advice. At least these tweets did not get him in trouble with the SEC, as he has done so many times over the last year. But this particular advice seems (to me) to not…
