Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Have another lager – the cows are hungry
(This report is from UNH News Service. I'm a little surprised because I thought spent brewing grains were already used as farm feed - my neighbors the chicken farmers get a couple hundred pounds of them each week.) Wet brewers grains, the abundant residues of the...
That auction for future electricity had a problem: Some renewables were shut out
The annual forward capacity auction run for the six-state power grid (I wrote about it yesterday) might have produced record-low prices, but it also frustrated some renewable energy creators because of a ultra-wonky regulatory issue: whether state or federal rules...
Dartmouth-industry collaborative for power electronics
Dartmouth College is partnering with four electrical tech companies – GE Research, Analog Devices, Empower Semiconductor, and Ampt – to form a National Science Foundation-funded Industry-University Collaborative Research Center, the first one focusing on integrated...
Explaining ‘green hydrogen’ (which might be coming to the North Country)
The most intriguing clean-tech story in New Hampshire these days is the secretive-ish company moving into a closed mill in Groveton, where it says it has a new technology can use water power to create hydrogen cleanly. (Here's my last story on it.) This is cool but...
Future electricity prices in New England keep going down, down, down
Making electricity in New England is going to keep getting cheaper, judging from the results of the latest regional auction for power production three years down the road. The 14th annual Forward Capacity Auction, in which firms predict the cost of...
Looking for a better flight schedule? Math to the rescue!
Recently I flew to D.C. to visit my family and had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to make my flight in Manchester because the next flight was way too late. Between yawns, I muttered deprecations about American Airlines all day. Vikrant Vaze, an assistant professor of...
The Iowa caucus was like ranked-choice voting, except not really
(Update: In response to this piece, a former colleague noted that he has described the Iowa caucuses as "ranked-choice voting presented as performative dance" - which is such a great line that I had to include it here.) Here in New Hampshire we pretend the Iowa...
Speaking of ranked-choice voting, Maine’s faces another obstacle
Maine might be the nation's leader in alternative voting systems, since it is the first place to hold them for statewide races as we've discussed many times (including at Science Cafe N.H. in Concord in January). But that doesn't mean everybody is happy about it. The...
Long-disputed N.H. wind farm is finally finished
New Hampshire has its fourth utility scale wind farm: The 29-MW Antrim Wind Farm has finally gone online, reports the Keene Sentinel. Like pretty much anything being built these days, the wind farm was opposed by neighbors and groups who thought it was ugly, or would...
Amtrak sets passenger record while Manchester airport’s numbers keep slipping
Two pieces of New Hampshire transportation usage data came out over the weekend. First, Amtrak's Downeaster, the passenger trains that run between Boston and Brunswick, Maine, (not Bangor, as I initially said) with several stops in the Seacoast area, is doing quite...
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