Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Most N.E. governors want the power grid to change (guess which one doesn’t?)
Governors of five New England states have called for big changes in the regional electricity market, as well as the transmission planning process and how the New England power system operator is run. There are, of course, six New England states. No prizes for guessing...
Electric Co-op members add “broadband” to utility’s job
According to reports, 88.4% of New Hampshire Electric Cooperative members approved adding broadband internet service to its core function. That far surpassed the 67% needed to change the bylaws and turnout was about 10,000, which I'm told was "a whopping big turnout...
Vermont embraces “virtual battery” w/ homeowners’ Powerwalls
Green Mountain Power's pilot program in which the utility controls Tesla Powerwall batteries in hundreds of customer homes to create a virtual statewide energy-storage system as gotten the official stamp of approval: Regulators have given it a "tariff," or an amount...
How many peep-able leaves are in New Hampshire?
(Regular readers: Yes, you've seen this column before. But it's timely and it's not easy right now to find items that don't involve COVID or the election.) In 2009, in the spirit of finding something to write about when news gets slow over the holidays – no, wait, I...
New Hampshire patents through Oct. 18
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Oct. 11 to Oct. 18. *** BAE Systems Information & Electronic Systems Integration Assigned Patent for Link 16 Transceiver with Integral Signal Nulling System BAE Systems Information...
COVID cases rising fast in N.H. as colder weather arrives
The long-feared autumn rise in New Hampshire COVID-19 has started to arrive, as reflected in a deterioration of the Monitor’s weekly tracking – for the first time in months we are missing two of our goals – as well as the state’s concern that community-wide...
Here’s a story about the state’s energy efficiency push that doesn’t use “negawatt”! (Such self-restraint)
It has long been known that the cheapest and cleanest unit of energy is the one you don’t need to use, and a group that includes the state’s utilities is rushing to put this into practice statewide despite the scheduling complications of COVID-19. “We were put on hold...
Science fiction awards from N.H.
The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College gives annual awards for speculative fiction. Not quite as well known as the Hugos or Nebula awards but not bad. Here's the story from Dartmouth News Service: Debut author Cadwell Turnbull won for The...
The biggest Excel error ever? British COVID mixup!
Great Britain lost more than 16,000 positive COVID-19 test results, apparently because they use an old version of Excel that doesn't have enough rows or columns to handle the data. Australian mathematics comedian Matt Parker, a well-known spreadsheet fan, has fun...
Men, you’ll be amazed to hear, take COVID-19 less seriously than women
in the U.S. right now, dudes - I think that's an appropriate term to use here - are more likely to pretend that COVID-19 isn't a big problem than women are. That extremely non-surprising result, obvious to anybody who goes into any public area and counts the gender...
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