Category: Freeing Energy 101
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What is the best way to make electricity?
Coal, nuclear, wind, solar, or natural gas? What criteria should we use when comparing various types of electricity…
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How much solar would it take to power the U.S.?
Critics claim that there simply isn’t enough land in the U.S. to power the country with solar. We…
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How Edison’s protege made the power industry into a regulated monopoly (Part 3 of 3)
This is the third and final part in my series exploring the events that shaped the electric industry…
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Follow the money to understand the century-old business model of electricity
Most Americans give little thought to their electricity. Even though we spend between 3% and 7% of our…
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AC vs DC: How better economics ultimately beat out a bizarre publicity campaign (Part 2 of 3)
This is the second in a three-part series on the origins of the modern power industry. Part 1…
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Choreographing electrons and the hidden sophistication of the US electric grid
Flip the switch. Your light turns on. Simple, right? Actually, the light switch is straightforward but the system…
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How Edison, Tesla, and other visionaries invented the modern grid (Part 1 of 3)
Take a moment to imagine a world without electricity. You will quickly realize how dependent our 21st-century lives…
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Using new business models to unleash competition and innovation in the power industry
Competition is all about price, features, and customer experience. Right? That’s what business schools have been teaching for…
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The most important question each of us needs to ask about energy
The dirty secret of power plants Every time we turn on a light, crank up the air conditioning…
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If we used this much fossil fuel in Edison’s time, we’d have already run out
We WILL run out of fossil fuels. In fact, we will run out of natural gas, coal, and…
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Clean energy seems obvious so why haven’t utilities embraced it more quickly?
Have you ever wondered why utilities don’t embrace clean energy more aggressively? While it’s true that some of…
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Local Energy can be expensive and hard today but so were websites in 1998
(Reading time: 4 minutes) Ask most experts and they’ll tell you that local energy systems like microgrids and community…
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A TED talk on accelerating the shift to clean energy
Electricity powers nearly every aspect of our modern, convenient lives. It’s so pervasive and easy that most of…