Stories by Melissa C. Lott

This photo was taken of the city of Signal Hill, California in 1923. Located near Los Angeles and Long Beach, Signal Hill was a part of the Long Beach Oil Field and home to one of the nation’s most well known oil wells – The Alamitos No.

This photo of wind turbines near Palm Springs, California, USA and Joshua Tree National Park was taken in December 2013. Photo credit: This photo was taken byvxla and found using Creative Commons, used under this license.

This week, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its latest Electric Power Annual report, with data through the end of 2012.

In 2010, Texas became the first state in the United States toexceed 10 GW of installed wind generation capacity. This achievement was due in part tothe Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) transmission projects.

This photo shows one of Pariss electric vehicle charging stations. This station is dedicated for use by the citys electric car share program, Autolib.

Paris’s autolib car share program is, in essence, one of the world’s largest real-world electric vehicle testing laboratories. This photo shows one of the enrollment centers, where new users can register for the service, along with two of the program’s electric vehicles.

This month, the Kyocera Corporation announced the launch of the Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant. This 70 MW solar field covers an area the size of 27 baseball fields and cost about 276 million USD to construct.

The superconducting wires shown in the photo above are capable of moving 5x the amount of electricity as copper wires, with lower heat and energy losses, which make it possible to more efficiently transmit electricity over long distances.

The Itaipú Dam is a hydroelectric power generation facility on the border between Brazil and Paraguay, on the Parana River. The name means “the sounding stone” in Guarani, an indigenous language in South America and one of the official languages in Paraguay.

The Meru GK Prison is a government institution in Kenya’s eastern province in Meru County.  Spanning a 15 hectare area, this prison houses more than 1200 inmates and employs approximately 300 staff.

In this photo, University of California – Davis graduate student Judy Xu is shown adjusting a lab prototype of a daylight harvesting device developed and tested at the university’s California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC). The self-calibrating photocontrol reduces electric lighting power based on the amount of daylight available through skylights.

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Incubator Program announced the award of $16M to 17 solar startups that are working to reduce the hard and soft costs of solar power.

At the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) in Boulder, Colorado, USA Jonathan Wiley and Eric Kuntzelman rappel more than 300 feet from the top of a 3 megawatt wind turbine.

The U.S. electricity grid includes more than 200,000 miles of high voltage (230 kilovolts and higher) power lines. This network of wires helps to maintain a reliable supply of electricity across the country.

Assistant Development Engineer My Nguyen uses a spectral goniophotometer (a.k.a. a light angle measurement device) at the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) at the University of California, Davis. In this photo, Nguyen is using the instrument to measure how light is distributed from a prototype light fixture (luminaire).

Photo Credit: Lightening bolts hitting Atlanta skyscrapers on June 9, 2008 – photo by David Selby and found using Creative Commons.

By Joshua D. Rhodes [1] and Charles R. Upshaw The smart grid is here in some places, and coming in others. But, the smart grid by itself is not enough to solve all the energy problems in the built environment.

Tower mills first appeared in history books in the 13th century and were a major source of power for hundreds of years. Common applications were found in food processing as well as pulp and paper works.

This photo shows the town of Emmerich, Germany at sunrise. Taken by Denmark’s Dave Heuts in 2009, this landscape shows not only the morning fog, but also a peak at Germany’s energy infrastructure.

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy and MIT will host the second “C3E Women in Clean Energy Symposium.” This annual meeting’s goal is to provide a venue for women who work in clean energy to gather together and share their experiences.

On top of this solar shade at the sun-baked Camp Lemonier in Djibouti sit 72 solar panels that absorb sunlight to produce two kilowatts of power daily.

According to the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global food waste represents more greenhouse gas emissions than any country in the world except for China and the United States.

Situated on the River Ouse, the Drax Power Station provides about 7% of the United Kingdom’s electricity supply.  With its 4 GW capacity, Drax is the second largest coal-fired power plant in Europe and the U.K.’s number one emitter of carbon dioxide.  This spring, facility directors announced that half of the plant’s capacity would be converted to [...]

This photo was taken in September 1908 in a coal mine in Gary, West Virginia, USA by Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940). Today, a copy is held at the U.S.