Hurricane Michael

3rd most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall on U.S. mainland Another dangerous hurricane hits the U.S. mainland this week, as Hurricane Michael made landfall Wednesday night, hitting the Florida panhandle with winds just 2 miles per hour shy of being a Category 5 storm. As is customary with storms of such degree, evacuations were […]

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Battery Breakthrough

Zinc batteries said to enable carbon-free energy storage Lithium-ion batteries have a bold new challenger in the emerging energy storage market. During the One Planet Summit in New York City Wednesday, Patrick Soon-Shiong, chairman of NantEnergy and founder of that company’s research arm NantWorks, proclaimed a breakthrough in battery storage. Soon-Shiong unveiled that newly cultivated […]

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Kopp Shop

Buffalo native, 77, brought us the surge protector When it comes to successful inventions, a recorded lineage of hits and misses exists in consumer electronics. Practicality is the name of the game; and safety can often be the genesis of that requirement. Harold P. Kopp, who passed away last month at age 77, put a […]

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High Voltage Hipots

New portable AC hipot released from upstate N.Y. company Upstate New York-based company High Voltage, Inc., a test equipment manufacturer that produces over half its inventory for the export market, announced the release of a new CE marked portable AC hipot this week. The new portable can be used for testing switchgear, vacuum interrupters, and […]

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Duke Ash Spill

Sutton Power Station hit by Hurricane Florence, situation monitored Almost exactly one year ago to the day, we had Duke Energy’s ongoing saga of coal ash plants playing out against the backdrop of a catastrophic hurricane. Last year, the company was battling in court over coal ash practices, while helping its Florida customers recover from […]

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WEF Awards

2018 WEF Awards honor wastewater industry’s best research Ahead of WEFTEC 2018, which will be held September 29 to October 3 in New Orleans, The Water Environment Federation (WEF), announced its 2018 award recipients for published papers this week. The WEF Published Papers Awards recognize WEF members for valuable research that has the potential for […]

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Dark Side Of The Sun

A recent storm in Hawaii reveals the plus-minus of rooftop solar Downpours from Tropical Storm Lane battered Hawaii in late August, and the highly touted solar industry there, recently championed for being one of the first sustainable systems to power an entire state, felt it had dodged a bullet. 13,000 Hawaiian Electric (HECO) customers lost […]

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Hurricane Florence

Utilities in the Carolinas brace for an unpredictable storm Hurricane season is upon us again, and a new region is threatened this September. The Carolinas, which were last impacted severely by Hurricane Matthew in 2015, evacuated coastal areas earlier this week expecting an overnight landfall of Hurricane Florence in the early hours of Thursday morning. […]

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Old King Coal

Phasing out, across America and abroad Coal-fired power plants, as well as their nuclear cousins, have been shutting down in recent years. This is no secret. Many more have been forced into early retirement at an increased rate over the last five years, especially, due to the rise of renewable energy resources, environmental regulations, and […]

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Defense Distributed

Second amendment advocate evades court ruling, sells blueprints Updates, updates, we’ve got updates. This week has been chock full of developments to very significant items, some of them potentially landmark decisions, featured in the past month of EA’s Direct & Current. As with the resurrection of (some form of) NAFTA and the vague cancellation of […]

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