EarlyBird News

Maui County has filed suit against Hawaiian Electric, alleging that the utility is responsible for catastrophic damages from wildfires that tore through Maui this month. The utility “acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical equipment despite a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning” on August 7th, Maui County alleges. The suit says Hawaiian Electric’s […]

One of the nation’s largest grid operators PJM says the energy transition into renewables and away from coal and natural gas could lead to electricity shortages before 2030. “We can’t simply shut down all thermal resources nuclear or fossil fuels and replace them with non-thermal [renewables],” PJM vice president Asim Haque told Kentucky lawmakers last […]

Texas electricity prices for the grid surged more than 800% to top $2,500/MWh for Sunday evening, up from Saturday’s high of about ~$275, Bloomberg reported, citing data from grid operator ERCOT. ERCOT said the surplus of available power capacity on the grid relative to power consumption will narrow to 1.6 GW in the hour ending at […]

Recently, social media has been aflutter over a claim for a new superconductor that works not only well above room temperatures but also at ambient pressure. If true, the discovery would be one of the biggest ever in condensed matter physics. It could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued a final ruling in its quest to streamline generator interconnection and alleviate clogged queues across the U.S. At the end of 2022, more than 2,000 GW of generation and storage were waiting in interconnection queues, according to FERC. The ruling on July 27 came out of a Notice […]

After years of cautionary warnings about the risk of winter-time electricity shortages and possible brownouts, the operator of the New England power grid is putting that message on hold for several years. An analysis by ISO New England indicates supply and demand for electricity should roughly balance out in the region through 2027. The analysis credits […]

Amazon recently delayed its pledge to make 50% of its shipments net-zero carbon by 2030. The company disclosed plans to defer its carbon emission goals across all its operations by 2040, a decade later than the 50% goal, which was called “Shipment Zero” at the time.  Reportedly, the company had immensely underestimated its carbon footprint. […]

Vicinity Energy, the private equity-backed owner of Boston’s and Cambridge’s steam system, has signed an agreement with MAN Energy Solutions to build a low-temperature source heat pump system at Vicinity’s plant near Cambridge’s Kendall Square to make steam. The source of those low temperatures? Water from the Charles River. Vicinity is already retrofitting its Kendall […]

President Joe Biden’s latest EV charging rollout will add more than 100,000 public EV chargers to the already 135,000 available nationwide. Biden aims to have half a million chargers across the nation by 2030. The Biden administration said Monday that it has signed on a new round of public and private commitments to add EV […]

Natural gas prices have dropped nearly 80% since August. As of Wednesday, February 22, 2023, prices have plunged to $2.043 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) early on Wednesday, down by 1.59%. The plunge in prices has been significant in recent weeks due to a mild start to January, consistently high supply, and the outage […]