Infrastructure

Small Hydroelectric Plants Could Provide Emergency Power During Outages
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is seeking a hydropower utility to collaborate on a case study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), to understand how small hydroelectric plants operating at 10 megawatts or less can be upgraded to provide emergency power to critical loads (e.g., hospitals and emergency service providers) during outages.
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America’s Grid Isn’t Ready for a Renewable Future. A New Federal Rule Could Change That.
America’s energy system has a problem: Solar and wind developers want to build renewable energy at a breakneck pace, but too often the power that these projects can produce has nowhere to go. That’s because the high-voltage lines that move energy across the country don’t have the capacity to handle what these panels and turbines generate. At the same time, electric vehicles, data centers, and new factories are pushing electricity demand well beyond what was expected just a few years ago.
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Texas Flooding Brings New Urgency to Houston Home Buyout Program
The San Jacinto River is a national hotspot for ‘managed retreat,’ but recent floods show how far local officials still have to go.
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Addressing the Colorado River Crisis
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the Southwest was top of mind for participants and attendees at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference.
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Making Batteries Takes Lots of Lithium: Almost Half of It Could Come from Pennsylvania Wastewater
Most batteries used in technology like smartwatches and electric cars are made with lithium that travels across the world before even getting to manufacturers. But what if nearly half of the lithium used in the U.S. could come from Pennsylvania wastewater?
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Texas Delegation Urges Congress to Withhold Aid to Mexico Over Water Treaty Dispute
A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers are demanding appropriators withhold funds for the country until Mexico lives up to its end of a 1944 water treaty that requires it to send 1.75 million acre-feet to the U.S. every five years.
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Decayed Power Pole Sparked the Largest Wildfire in State History, Texas House Committee Confirms
A decayed utility pole that broke, causing power wires to fall on dry grass in the Texas Panhandle, sparked the state’s largest wildfire in history. A lack of air support and ineffective coordination hurt efforts to contain this year’s Panhandle fires, the committee said.
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Resilient Power Systems in the Context of Climate Change
As extreme weather events increase in frequency and society’s dependence on electricity grows, scientists are focusing on issues at the nexus of water and energy, recognizing that water and energy systems are strongly coupled and already stressed.
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Securing Competitiveness of Energy-Intensive industries Through Relocation: The Pulling Power of Renewables
Countries with limited potential for renewables could save up to 20 percent of costs for green steel and up to 40 percent for green chemicals from green hydrogen if they relocated their energy-intensive production and would import from countries where renewable energy is cheaper.
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New Cybersecurity Center to Protect Grids Integrated with Renewables, Microgrids
Bringing renewable energy to the power grid raises all kinds of “internet-of-things” issues because “everything is connected,” says an expert. Solar inverters are connected to the internet. Wind farm controllers are connected to the internet. And with each internet connection, energy resources distributed across the countryside are potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks.
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First Regional Cybersecurity Center to Protect the Nation’s Electricity Grid
U.S. Department of Energy awards $10 million grant to develop innovative solutions to mitigating cyber threats across the U.S. A new center will bring together experts from the private sector, academia and government to share information and generate innovative real-world solutions to protect the nation’s power grid and other key sectors.
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For the Colorado River and Beyond, a New Market Could Save the Day
The Colorado River, “the lifeblood of the West,” is in trouble. Decades of overuse and drought have sharply reduced its water supply, threatening an ecosystem that supports 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. Stanford economist Paul Milgrom won a Nobel Prize in part for his role in enabling today’s mobile world. Now he’s tackling a different 21st century challenge: water scarcity.
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Rivers Are the West’s Largest Source of Clean Energy. What Happens When Drought Strikes?
With rivers across the West running low, utilities must get creative if they are to meet demand without increasing emissions.
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Chinese Government Poses 'Bold and Unrelenting' Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure: FBI
FBI Director Christopher Wray on 18 April warned that risks the government of China poses to U.S. national and economic security are “upon us now”—and that U.S. critical infrastructure is a prime target. He said that partnerships, joint operations, and private sector vigilance can help us fight back.
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In a First, California Cracks Down on Farms Guzzling Groundwater
In much of the United States, groundwater extraction is unregulated and unlimited. This lack of regulation has allowed farmers nationwide to empty aquifers of trillions of gallons of water for irrigation and livestock. In many places, such as California’s Central Valley, the results have been devastating. California has just imposed a first-of-its-kind mandatory fee on water pumping by farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin, one of the state’s largest farming areas.
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