Portland, Maine-based Ocean Renewable Power Co. says its 60-kilowatt tidal-power generator off Eastport, on the edge of the Bay of Fundy tidal area, is generating “grid-compatible” power - albeit only as a further test. (Mass High Tech article here) The company says it won’t actually send power into the grid from its TideGen system until [...]

For some Baby Boomer New Hampshire-ites, the term “Clamshell Alliance” brings back the sort of memories that other folks associate with Woodstock or attending your first (Insert Minority Group Here) Rights Parade. In the late 1970s and early 1980s this group fought hard against the construction of Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant on New Hampshire’s coast; [...]

I just got my PSNH bill, and for the first time in three years, the amount of electricity we used went up significantly from year to year - 18 kwh/day last July, 21 kwhy/day this July. We don’t have air conditioning, but even so we can the whole-house fan constantly, and on some days even [...]

A Massachusetts firm has designed cross-county transmission pylons - the huge metal ones that carry high-voltage (220kV) lines long distance - that look like people. Here’s their Web site. The idea is that the necessary upgrades to the electric grid might be more palatable if the towers looked cool, which sounds good to me.  The [...]

The Maine Yankee nuclear power plant shut down 14 years ago, but it still has a “dry-cask storage facility” - in other words, a place where drums of nuclear waste are kept - that nobody knows what to do with. The Portland Press-Herald has a story )read it here) about a committee meeting that [...]

Beacon Power in Tyngsboro, Mass., which makes great big flywheels to act as power storage for utility companies, has gotten a $43 million federal loan guarantee, to build a manufacturing facility in New York state. As explained in the Cnet story (read it here), the important job that the system performs is frequency regulation:
Right now, [...]

This link is to the survey to find the reaction to the wind project so far. It’s significant that 99% of those participating support the project and have few problems with the noise issue. As expected, the power generated in the summer months matches the lower wind speeds and the reduced power program at night [...]

Is it the recession or is New England starting to make a difference with energy efficiency and alternative energy? (I suspect it’s the former, but you never know.)
Whatever the reason, New England fell almost 4 percent short of its all-time electricity usage today even. (Story here.) 28,000 megawatt hours was the ISO-New England record on [...]

Quebec has enormous hydro-power reserves - a geeky way of saying it has a lot of rivers that are dammable - and the northeast U.S. uses a lot of electricity. Connecting the two is the idea behind a 2,000-megawatt power line that will probably run through New Hampshire, if the various approvals are given, connecting [...]

For most of us (me, anyway), “smart grid” means devices that provide information and control at the home level about electricity usage, ranging from so-called day part pricing, in which energy is cheaper off peak, to futuristic ideas about “smart” refrigerators that can be ramped down to balance out power loads.
But smart grids are at [...]

A Massachusetts firm called Atlantic Geothermal - which had the great good taste to copy one of my past columns (with permission) on its Web site - wants to test whether central New Hampshire might be suitable for real geothermal power. They’re talking about Iceland-type systems, not the underground heat exchange that’s called geothermal hereabouts.
The [...]

“Biomass” energy - burning wood, usually in the form of processed pellets or other post-scrap, for heat and electricity - has to play a large part in the energy future of the Northeast if we ‘re going to reduce fossil-fuel use, but it’s not as easy as it seems. This Tux Turkel piece in the [...]

Boston-Power get rejected in its request for $100 million from the feds to pay for R&D of better rechargable lithium-ion batteries for cars, but the private sector still likes it: It announced $60 million in new funding, largely to boost development of the batteries for H-P laptops.
Here’s a GreenTech media story; there are plenty [...]

Tonight at 6:30 p.m. in room 301 at UNH-Manchester (400 Commercial St.), I’m going to be moderating a three-person panel with local business leaders about how to transition to a “clean energy” economy.  That’s assuming I can find my coat and tie.
It’s sponsored by “Repower New Hampshire,” a project of the Alliance for Climate [...]

On Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in Manchester, “Repower New Hampshire,” a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, will hold a conference with local business leaders about how a transition to clean energy sources. The roundtable will include Amanda Grappone of Grappone Auto Group, Dawn Wivell of the International Trade Resource Center Director Dawn Wivell, [...]