Space-based Solar Power beamed down to earth sounds pretty far out, but the technology is further along than many suppose, the sun never sets in space, and space is a Saudi Arabia of unlimited energy for the nation with the technology to harness it. PG&E (California) in conjunction with SolarEn has announced a 200MW space solar project to be up by 2016.
posted by stbalbach on Apr 20, 2009 - 87 comments

Pics of the new Tesla S-Model have been leaked. With an anticipated price tag of 50K and a potential 45-minute recharge time, will this finally kick-start a true replacement to the internal combustion engine? And if so, where will the electricity come from? What future is there for the fuel-cell vehicle, or will fuel cells remain stationary? Is that really it for hydrogen? [more inside]
posted by molecicco on Mar 28, 2009 - 68 comments

Internet Archive - probably the single largest depository of Open Source content (and the Wayback Machine) - has transitioned its data center from racks of Linux machines to a Sun MD, basically a 3 petabyte data center housed in a liquid cooled shipping container, currently sitting in Sun's Santa Clara campus court yard. Sun and IA have put together an interesting interactive tour of how it works and what it looks like. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Mar 25, 2009 - 37 comments

Sparks of Life. "That the electric 'spark of life' figured prominently in debates over the nature of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is well known. Less well known is the fact that prior to this period, gunpowder was often identified with the substances that were necessary to life, if not as a vitalistic spirit, then as an essential element in the animation of the body. The idea of a spark of life went back to ancient times, likening living beings to the glowing embers of a fire. In the Old Testament, for example, the wise woman of Tekoah begs for the life of her son, pleading 'they will stamp out my last live ember.' But from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this vital flame was often equated with gunpowder. There was fire in the blood: not electric, but pyrotechnic fire."
posted by homunculus on Feb 20, 2009 - 11 comments

The Amish Hackers - How the Amish modify modern technology to meet their needs, and the motivation behind those needs.
posted by SpecialK on Feb 11, 2009 - 72 comments

Dorkbot is a "monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties who are involved in the creative use of electricity." Started in NYC in 2000 by Douglas Repetto, Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as well as one of Wired's 10 Sexiest Geeks, there are now dozens all over the world. Past presenters have been featured here on the blue. For instance Jeff Han presented his multi-touch interface at dorkbot-nyc in April of 2006. Miru Kim presented her naked city spleen at dorkbot-nyc in October of 2006. Bummed that there's not one in your own city? Start your own! [more inside]
posted by funkiwan on Dec 30, 2008 - 19 comments

electric stimulus to face
posted by chrismear on Oct 27, 2008 - 41 comments

Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military ‘surge’ using nighttime light signatures (PDF). A team of UCLA geographers using satellite imagery to track the amount of light emitted in Baghdad at night found that electricity use in Sunni neighborhoods fell prior to the surge and never returned, indicating that ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias drove the Sunnis away before the surge began and was largely responsible for the subsequent decrease in violence. [Via Passport]
posted by homunculus on Sep 23, 2008 - 33 comments

"A Smart Garage energy paradigm could simultaneously reduce the environmental impact of both the transport sector and the electricity sector. Driving a vehicle that uses electricity creates fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than driving a vehicle that uses gasoline, even if the electricity is made from fossil fuels (such as coal)."
posted by flabdablet on Aug 29, 2008 - 8 comments

Madrid's "Air Tree" is a working experiment in combining public spaces with energy generation.
posted by Burhanistan on Jan 25, 2008 - 21 comments

Popular Science has named Nanosolar the #1 innovative product of the year. Finally, cheap and ubiquitous solar power has arrived, “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it,” The only problem is demand, so they're building the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturing facility in San Jose. See 96 other innovations in PopSci's Best of 2007.
posted by stbalbach on Nov 17, 2007 - 25 comments

CARMA, released today, is a map/database that shows the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies in every country on Earth, showing not only the worst but the best. Find out how much CO2 comes from electricity plants in a particular city, county, congressional district, company, town, ZIP code, or an individual plant.
posted by stbalbach on Nov 14, 2007 - 13 comments

High Voltage Cable Inspection
posted by gwint on Sep 25, 2007 - 56 comments

Steve Ward's Singing Tesla Coil video. Previously.
posted by nthdegx on Jul 15, 2007 - 22 comments

Weather shock horror! Survivors live to tell the tale!
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 12, 2007 - 11 comments

Fry Little Doggie, FRY!
posted by Stynxno on Jul 6, 2007 - 30 comments

William Kamkwamba decided to build a windmill to power lights in his home: "For many years we had only paraffin candles to light my home at night. They are expensive, smoky, smelly and have to be purchased about 8 km from home."
posted by letitrain on Jul 5, 2007 - 31 comments

Creepy High Voltage Installations The Russian countryside yields sometimes most improbable sights - abandoned artifacts and installations from bizarre military/scientific research, strangely futuristic forms left to rust and decay - to be found by a curious photographer. "Master" stumbled upon this installation close to Russian city of Istra (50 km from Moscow) quite by chance, and these mysterious shots were percolating for a while around the web, until the answer was found. According to this little, cryptic, and quite secretive website [in Russian], the weird alien-like towers are the Experimental Grounds for High-Voltage Generation, the only open-air kind in the world. Amazingly, it's still in use... as the powerful lightnings rip through the night and the darkened forest - much like in "The Prestige" movie.
posted by psmealey on Jul 4, 2007 - 38 comments

This fellow reads up on electricity generating machines in old books and then builds them.
posted by tellurian on Jun 25, 2007 - 14 comments

Google went solar yesterday! Google's PV solar system went live yesterday (or at least the stats page did.) Also, they converted 100 Priuses to plug-in electric vehicles, to be recharged by the PV solar panels. Pictures.
posted by joeblough on Jun 19, 2007 - 25 comments

Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. "The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days. Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates."
posted by mr_crash_davis on Mar 16, 2007 - 28 comments

Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas. The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power.
posted by stbalbach on Feb 19, 2007 - 88 comments

CitizenRe is a solar power rental company for the home. Free to install (!), a monthly rental fee is equal to what would normally be paid to the power company. Video.
posted by stbalbach on Jan 11, 2007 - 67 comments

"The Science Service Historical Image Collection represents twentieth-century scientific research consisting of images and original captions as they appeared in period publications." For an easy browse, check out the fun randomly selected thumbnail images. Science Service is a nonprofit organization founded in 1921 to increase public interest in science. These images, culled from their past publications, span 40 years of innovations in electricity. Science Service currently publishes Science News.
posted by unknowncommand on Jan 4, 2007 - 6 comments

A Mall Divided (youtube) - a musical tale of commerce, employment and electrical distribution for our times.
posted by Artw on Dec 18, 2006 - 9 comments

The Spark Museum John Jenkins' collection of vintage wireless, radio, scientific and electrical equipment, including Crookes and Geissler tubes, Barlow wheels and other early electric motors, loudspeakers and many more oddball electrical devices. [via TeamDroid]
posted by mediareport on Nov 13, 2006 - 9 comments

In 1987, Canadian photographer Robin Collyer began documenting houses that aren't houses at all – they're architecturally-disguised electrical substations, complete with windows, blinds, and bourgeois landscaping.
posted by signal on Jun 12, 2006 - 31 comments

Fables of the reconstruction. The Bush administration does not intend to seek any further funding for Iraqi reconstruction, leaving only $3.5 billion left to spend out of the $18.4 billion the US budgeted. Approximately half of all reconstruction costs spent so far -- $7.5 billion -- have been eaten up by increased costs due to the insurgency. All remaining reconstruction costs will depend entirely upon foriegn contributions and Iraq's oil industry. But will foriegn aid come through if its too dangerous to work there? Can Iraq's oil industry pay for reconstruction when its output has been in a tailspin for well over a year, falling from 2.8 million barrels a day in May 2004, to 1.82 million barrels per day in January 2005, to 1.2 million barrels a day by November. and ending the year with a low of 1.1 million barrels a day in December? As for the Iraqi infrastructure left to be rebuilt, water and sanitation is still poor in most areas, and electricity production, which looked promising last summer after imports from Iran and Turkey, has deteriorated again, falling to only 3700 megawatts in November 2005, essentially at the same level produced in May 2004.
posted by insomnia_lj on Jan 2, 2006 - 26 comments

Be. The. Battery.
A brilliantly simple concept will allow anyone who needs (a small amount of) power to generate their own just by walking around while wearing this special backpack. By mounting the pack's load on springs connected to a rack and pinion device that is, in turn, connected to a small generator, the wearer's natural walking motion can generate up to 7.4 watts of power. Plenty enough to keep your Nofriendo DS charged. Or your sniper rifle's night scope.

The bonus? By having the pack's load on springs, the backpack is more comfortable and ergonomic than a traditional backpack too.
posted by fenriq on Dec 8, 2005 - 40 comments

Double-discharge Lichtenberg figure [qtvr] : what they are and how they're made.
posted by crunchland on Dec 1, 2005 - 18 comments

Hamster driven micro Power Plants ... the Hamster powered Night Light from the Otherpower.com guys .... also the school project of a London teen ... "Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about 30 minutes talk time on my phone." The teenage inventor was given a C for his project and has been awarded a D overall for the course" Please no Richard Gere jokes OK?
posted by celerystick on Nov 7, 2005 - 17 comments

Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction. An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.
posted by gottabefunky on Sep 16, 2005 - 51 comments

Power Cut Shuts Down Iraq Oil Exports ASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's oil exports were shut down Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country's only functioning oil export terminals, Iraqi and foreign oil officials said.
posted by celerystick on Aug 22, 2005 - 21 comments

Electric power transmission and distribution explosions and fireworks for your Fourth of July weekend.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Jul 2, 2005 - 6 comments

Lightning On Demand is a volunteer organization of engineers, artists, scientists and machinists. Our key objective is to produce a controllable discharge of lightning at the greatest physical scale imaginable using modern technology. They've built the worlds biggest Tesla coil, Electrum, a Taser Cannon and some other projects
posted by warbaby on Apr 30, 2005 - 19 comments

Huff & Puff Energy "Think about it. We go to the gym every day, get on a machine and expend great amounts of energy. Multiply that by everyone in your gym, in all the gyms in all the world and what have you got? a lot of power! This project is a request "for speculative proposals to re-design exercise equipment to generate and store energy; and/or to retrofit gyms to function as local power sources linked to the grid." It envisions a redesign of gyms into power hubs and a linking together of the power hubs into a massive power network. All this and get fit too." [via Treehugger]
posted by azul on Apr 11, 2005 - 54 comments

Electrifying art! This is my favorite, but maybe you'll prefer fine art or kitsch or deco.
posted by centerpunch on Mar 5, 2005 - 4 comments

I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time Ben Frankin's extensive experiments with electricity went well beyond his famous kite flying; he also proved that lightning was electrical (and invented the lightning rod), and was the first one to use the words "positive" and "negative" to describe electrical charges. It would no doubt please the ingenious Mr. Franklin to know that all of his writings on electricity are now available online (Note: link goes to 912k PDF file.) Franklin's excitement over his discoveries is palpable--and high school students can duplicate them on their own, thanks to Ben Franklin As My Lab Partner. And for a demonstration that combines Ben's knowledge of electricity with his mischievous sense of humor and fondness for political subversion, watch Conspirators, or The Treason.
posted by yankeefog on Feb 15, 2005 - 2 comments

It's not the other white meat, but it seems cows have yet another use.

"That's some good shit, man (in my very best Tommy Chong!)."
posted by LouReedsSon on Jan 24, 2005 - 14 comments

Hack a fibre optic display. Blow up smarties. Make a lava lamp (that actually works). Things to make and do from Big Clive.
posted by nthdegx on Dec 21, 2004 - 12 comments

The Bakken: A social history of electricity The Bakken is a growing center "for education and learning that furthers the understanding of the history, cultural context, and applications of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and their benefits to contemporary society." The site includes an illustrated collection of artifacts ranging from static electricity generators and Leyden jars to Victorian therapeutic magnetic belts, and exhibitions on Mesmer and Mesmerism and Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. The institute was founded by Earl Bakken, the co-inventor of the pacemaker.
posted by carter on May 30, 2004 - 2 comments

On the A46 motorway heading towards Bath, Richard Box has "planted" a field of flourescent tubes powered entirely by the electric field surrounding some overhead power lines. A very cool piece of art, but with a serious background: some people believe that the electromagnetic fields around power lines can cause cancer, while others aren't so sure.
posted by bwerdmuller on Feb 23, 2004 - 27 comments

Maybe you've seen the Electric Arc of Death video. OK, so maybe it's just capable of death if you get too close. But, if you work in the power industry like I do, I was amazed to see this rather impressive video of a switchyard problem. Electric arcs involving switchgear for transmission lines are nothing new, and this link provides an excellent analysis of why this arc is occuring. Make sure you turn the volume up for an extra charge of excitement.
posted by insulglass on Jan 16, 2004 - 22 comments

Nuclear plant operation correlates with increased infant mortality rate. Correlation may not prove causation, but these numbers are pretty dramatic.
posted by alms on Nov 3, 2003 - 19 comments

Pay your electricity bill -- or Fluffy gets it. Russia's First Channel television reported Dalenergo, an electricity company in Russia's Far Eastern city Vladivostok, is so frustrated by customers who owe around 300 million roubles (6 million pounds) that it has decided to confiscate their pets.
posted by gregb1007 on Oct 9, 2003 - 7 comments

Wind Power cheaper than coal, electric car does 0 to 60 in 3.7 w/300 mile cruising range

It's official: wind power is now cheaper than electricity from Coal, Stanford Researchers report in a study published in the Journal Science. Quiz for Metafilter science wonks: how much of current US energy consumption could be supplied by spending 200 billion dollars on wind turbines?

Meanwhile...Powered by 6800 lithium-ion batteries, the Tzero "from zero to 100 and through the quarter mile, will run with, or beat, the $281,000 Lamborghini Murci
posted by troutfishing on Sep 24, 2003 - 53 comments

Anyone smell a conspiracy? London and the South East gets hit by a massive power cut in a similar way to New York and the surrounding areas. Complaints from authorities in both cities of "under-investment in the National Grid " and talk of "antiquated infrastructure" strangely mirror each other and it's odd that these two extremely rare events have happened so close together. Was this a deliberate test of our emergency infrastructures, terrorism or just plain coincidence?
posted by andyHollister on Aug 29, 2003 - 31 comments

How Niagara Mohawk and Enron brought energy deregulation to the US. Greg Palast explores the links between Mohawk, Enron, Bush I, and George Pataki and how their successful attempts at deregulation has left the US with a weaker grid and more expensive energy.
posted by skallas on Aug 16, 2003 - 44 comments

BLACKOUT BLOG - Cleveland.com decides a weblog is the best way to cope with their servers getting knocked out in yesterday's power outage.
posted by mrbula on Aug 15, 2003 - 8 comments

Top 10 ways to cope with power outages
From the Iraqis, who've had plenty of exeprience with this recently. (via Tapped)
posted by Gilbert on Aug 15, 2003 - 19 comments