Utility funding for community resilience against fire-prevention outages doesn’t go far enough, microgrid groups argue. California regulators have approved a microgrid plan directing $200 million to help communities build networks that can supply power through the state’s extended wildfire-prevention blackouts, a task expected to take years to move from planning to completing its first projects. […]
Sri Lanka’s power supply, blackouts, and how to prevent them
Sri Lanka recently had a nationwide blackout that cost millions, and even compromised its security. A blackout may be compared to a sudden heart attack, leaving a debilitated individual. This was the fifth “heart attack” suffered by the grid since the end of the Eelam wars, with blackouts in 2009, 2015, twice in 2016, and […]
Span Raises $10M to Scale Up Deployments of Smart Electrical Panels
Led by a Tesla alum, the California startup looks to tap growing demand for solar and storage in key markets of California and Hawaii. Span.IO, the San Francisco-based startup that makes a smart home electrical panel that can track and control behind-the-meter batteries, rooftop solar inverters, EV chargers and other key household loads via smartphone, […]
Australia’s electricity grid can easily support electric cars – if we get smart
Following opposition leader Bill Shorten’s policy announcement that 50% of new cars will be electric by 2030, questions have been raised about the ability of the electricity grid to cope with the increased demand associated with a substantial increase in the use of electric vehicles. These concerns are not completely unfounded. Modelling and research at […]
Soon, a green end to power blackouts
At the turn of the last year, Union power minister R K Singh announced that from April 1 2019, India would not face any blackouts, except in a couple of sectors like agriculture where electricity is not required 24×7. The minister made the statement in the context of state distribution companies, or discoms, often resorting […]
