Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Petrofascism: The Koch Brothers’ Dirty War on Solar Power
February 16th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: Rolling Stone: After decades of false starts, solar power in America is finally poised for its breakthrough moment. The price of solar panels has dropped by more than 80 percent since President Obama took office, and the industry is beginning to compete with coal […]
Entergy Says Indian Point Nuclear Plant Leak Isn’t Safety Risk
February 8th, 2016Mmm hmm. Via: Bloomberg: Entergy Corp. said elevated levels of radioactive material found in groundwater at the 2,000-megawatt Indian Point nuclear power facility north of New York City don’t pose a threat to public safety. Increased levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, were found in three monitoring wells out of several dozen at […]
France to Pave 1000km of Roads with Solar Panels
January 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — 😯 Via: Treehugger: Over the next five years, France will install some 621 miles (1,000km) of solar roadway using Colas’ Wattway solar pavement. … No, this is not the crowdfunded solar road project that blew up the internet a few years ago, but is a […]
Obama Declares Emergency in Michigan Over Lead-Contaminated Water
January 17th, 2016Via: CBC: U.S. President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration Saturday that clears the way for federal aid for Flint, Michigan, which is undergoing a drinking water crisis due to lead-contaminated water. … The tap water in Flint, population 99,000, became contaminated after the city switched from the Detroit water system to the Flint River […]
Attacks on Just Nine Substations in U.S. Could Cause Blackout Across Entire Grid
January 11th, 2016Via: Information Week: Turns out free and publicly available information can be used to determine the most critical electric substations in the US, which if attacked, could result in a nationwide blackout. Remember that million-dollar Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) study in 2013 that found that attacks on just nine electric substations in the US […]
The Cyberthreat Under the Street
November 8th, 2015It’s a bit of a worry that a nearly point-by-point facsimile of my 2002 warning about this has just appeared in the New York Times… God damn conspiracy theorists! If the whole thing suddenly goes pop, just know that the feds knew about this at least as far back as the mid-1990s, when I was […]
U.S. Announces Plans to Deal with EMP Threat
November 2nd, 2015In other news, Naval Academy Reinstates Celestial Navigation. Via: USA Today: Space weather, which can disrupt satellites, stifle communications networks and paralyze the electric power grid, is getting some special scrutiny from the Obama administration. The White House announced a new strategy Thursday to identify and respond to interstellar phenomena such as solar flares that […]
Washington: How a Group of Neighbors Created Their Own Internet Service
November 2nd, 2015Via: Ars Technica: When you live somewhere with slow and unreliable Internet access, it usually seems like there’s nothing to do but complain. And that’s exactly what residents of Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, were doing in late 2013. Faced with CenturyLink service that was slow and outage-prone, residents […]
Morocco Poised to Become a Solar Superpower with Launch of Desert Mega-Project
October 26th, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: Guardian: When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the world , and the first phase, called Noor 1, will go live next month. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive […]
Ask the Cryptogonners: Run Freezer Off Van and 12v Inverter? [Confirmed: Yes.]
October 11th, 2015Update: Success! I bought a NOMAD MOBILE 1500w pure sine wave inverter from waveinverter.co.nz (I have no affiliate relationship with them, I’m just a customer). For testing, I unplugged the freezer (Westinghouse WCM5000WC) for a couple of hours and let it warm up a bit. Then I connected the inverter to our van’s battery terminals […]
