Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Vineyard Wind OK’d to restart some construction
Canary Media reports that Vineyard Wind has been given permission to resume building supports for its offshore wind turbines after the blade on one of them broke, fell in the see, and floated onto the beach. It has not gotten permission to install blades while the...
NH finally getting a large (well, large-ish) utility solar array
Unitil, an electric and natural gas provider in New England, is about to build the first utility-owned solar array in New Hampshire. Its 4.9 MW in capacity - sneaking under the state's 5 MW limit on net metering. It's in Kingston, sufficiently remote that they're...
Heat pumps are great, say those who have them, but they’re not magic
There’s a good reason why the federal government is giving $450 million to New England to help get electric heat pumps into homes and businesses: They’re great machines and not just for climate change reasons. “I have been saving about $1,000 a year,” said Natch...
NH patents through Aug. 11
(Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Aug. 11 *** Trigger Housing for a Firearm Q, LLC, Portsmouth, New Hampshire...
There’s a new pay phone in Vermont (except it’s free)
The Valley News has a good story about an electrical engineer who put a public pay phone into the general store in North Tunbridge, Vermont - it hooks into the internet and is free. The whole story is here. The operation is called, semi-tongue-in-cheek, the Randoph...
If you like funky stamps, get mail from the Aviation Museum of NH
When the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire sends out snail mail, the envelopes are often covered with old aviation-related stamps, as shown above. The museum buys air mail stamps in bulk from dealers at a discount - "sometimes as much as 50 percent," according to a...
Recycling virtually all of a nation’s food waste is possible – Vermont’s not as crazy as I thought
Vermont is in the process of mandating that no food waste go into landfills. That sounds extreme, but the Washington Post reports (here) that South Korea does it, nationwide. When they were first implemented, South Korea’s food waste policies were met with pushback...
Iron-air batteries in Maine help bridge weak spot in the grid
A former paper mill in Lincoln, Maine, will host a large scale battery storage facility partially funded with a $147 million federal grant. Story from Maine Public is here. Lincoln is way up there - past Bangor en route to Mt. Katahdin. Two things of geeky interest:...
Cryptocurrency is a boon to scam artists; is anybody else benefiting?
It's been 15 years since bitcoin came on the scene and there still isn't any legitimate use for it, which says something very unflattering about the whole idea of cryptocurrency. Illegitimate uses, on the other hand, are all over the place. That realization was...
This plant isn’t endangered any more but not for the reason you think
Today’s column, I’m happy to say, involves good news about the environment. It’s not huge news, admittedly, and it’s not quite as exciting as I thought it was going to be, but in today’s world, I’ll take anything I can get. The story concerns a wetlands plant called...
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