Electricity

The tiny coastal town of Cohasset could join the growing ranks of communities that allow private developers to install solar panels on public rooftops and land, in exchange for the promise of cheap electricity. And while similar plans have met stiff resistance in some towns - Carver residents, for example, want a bylaw to outlaw commercial solar arrays in residential neighborhoods - the Cohasset proposal sailed through a Special Town Meeting last week. Voters overwhelmingly agreed to allow town officials to lease both the roof of the Cohasset Middle/High School and the closed...

Yes, "Polisse" is the sort of cop thriller where people do things like angrily bang on a desktop or sweep everything off it. If it happens once, it must happen six times. But every time it did, I wanted to stand up and cheer, which I‘ve never wanted to do for any such thriller. All the cops in this movie are mad. The Paris police department here is tightening the screws on its child-protection division, and the bureaucracy has further shortened fuses that were already nubby to begin with.

By Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff Newton is poised to become the first municipality in the state to buy all its electricity from renewable sources, Mayor Setti Warren announced Tuesday. Starting on July 1, city buildings, schools and streetlights will all be illuminated by electricity generated by such sources as wind and solar power. "We're really proud of this accomplishment," Warren said. "It's part of our overall effort in the City of Newton. " Cities and local governments have a leading role to play in pushing for a more environmentally-geared economy,...

Liquid Metal Battery Corp. announced today it has raised an additional $15 million in funding, completing its Series B round. The round was led by Khosla Ventures. The company's Series A round investors, Bill Gates of Microsoft fame and the energy company Total, fully participated in this Series B round, Liquid Metal Battery Corp. said. The Cambridge company is working on commercializing a new battery technology that seeks to transform grid-scale electricity storage.

A storm ravaging southwestern Sweden has cut off the electricity supply to some 12,000 homes and has disrupted ferry services between Sweden and Germany. Ferry operator Scandlines said Sunday it has canceled its operations between Swedish town Trelleborg and Sassnitz in Germany due to the storm. Another operator, TT-Line said its ferries from Trelleborg to Rostock and Travemunde were severely delayed. Utilities Vattenfall, Fortum and Eon said the storm has cut off electricity supply to around 12,000 of their clients.

WASHINGTON -- As soldiers, hikers, and students can testify, it takes energy to haul around a heavy backpack. Now, researchers have developed a backpack that turns that energy into electricity. It only cranks out about 7 watts -- but that's enough to run an MP3 player, a personal data assistant, night vision goggles, a hand-held global positioning system, or a GSM cellphone. The development could eventually allow field scientists, hikers, explorers, soldiers, and disaster workers to produce their own electricity.

HARTFORD -- More than 18,000 customers remained without power last evening, a day after strong winds and an ice storm tore through the state, and electricity won't be restored to most places until today. Connecticut Light & Power officials said 39,000 customers were without electricity at the height of the storm. Southern Fairfield County was hit the hardest. A company spokesman said power will be restored for 99 percent of customers by midday today and the remainder will get their electricity back by late in the day. The Red Cross set up shelters in Stamford,...

HAVANA -- Several dozen government employees arriving home from work milled for hours outside their 20-story apartment building and waited for power to be restored so they could take the elevator up and cook dinner. Across town in a tiny, dilapidated apartment, 76-year-old Angela Vargas gasped as the image of President Fidel Castro flickered out and back on again on the television screen -- a sign of the continued instability in Cuba's aging electrical system. Sweltering summer heat in the 90s, blackouts of more than 12 hours, and water shortages have increasingly frayed...

NEWBURYPORT - The waves just keep coming. That's the idea powering Resolute Marine Energy Inc., a start-up company that has its wave-energy research and development lab in the Newburyport CleanTech Center on Mulliken Way. The ocean isn't the only sustainable power source around, but solar panels face cloudy days, and wind turbines fall still when the air is calm. While the ocean does have calm days, they're far more predictable than a passing cloud, and waves are also "much more powerful" than wind, according to Resolute's chief executive, Bill...

Newton is poised to become the first municipality in the state to buy all of its electricity from renewable sources, Mayor Setti Warren announced Tuesday. Starting on July 1, city buildings, schools, and streetlights will all be illuminated by electricity generated by such sources as wind and solar power. The city expects to spend $100,000 less annually over the next three years by buying this type of power, said Maureen Lemieux, Newton's chief financial officer. Newton currently spends about $1.5 million buying electricity from a power generator.

America's executions have changed dramatically over the years, morphing from daylong events in the town square to somber and tightly controlled affairs held deep inside prisons. Driving the change was the quest for a less gruesome — even less painful — method of execution. Along the way, the public saw less of what happens when the state puts an inmate to death. Today, nearly all of the 34 states that use lethal injection restrict access to half of every execution, shielding from view the portion when the condemned enters the death chamber and the IV lines are inserted.

Myanmar's government made an uncharacteristic plea for understanding Tuesday after chronic power cuts set off rare protests in the Southeast Asian country that is easing toward democracy after decades of military rule. A candlelight vigil was planned at Yangon's City Hall on Tuesday evening, following two days of rallies in Mandalay that drew hundreds of people and marked the largest protests since the army crushed monk-led demonstrations in 2007. The Electric Power Ministry issued a statement in all three state-run newspapers Tuesday under the...

THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC and hybrid cars depends on one key component: the storage battery, a device that hasn't changed that much since the 19th century. But now, it may be time to say goodbye to the battery as we know it. Using energy storage ideas he developed at MIT Laboratories, engineer and inventor Riccardo Signorelli has developed a battery with a lot more juice. Through his company, the 30-employee FastCAP Systems Inc. of Cambridge, Signorelli, 33, is bringing to market batteries that are supercharged through nanotechnology.

The size of the average ratepayer's monthly electric bill in Massachusetts has shrunk to a six-year low, as utilities reduce rates because falling natural gas prices have made it cheaper to produce power, state energy officials said Thursday. State data show that, on average, the average residential utility customer is now paying about $112 a month for electricity, down roughly 25 percent since 2006 when the cost was about $150 a month. The savings come as natural gas prices hover around their lowest point in about a decade.

Newton is poised to become the first municipality in the state to buy all of its electricity from renewable sources, Mayor Setti Warren announced Tuesday. Starting on July 1, city buildings, schools, and streetlights will all be illuminated by electricity generated by such sources as wind and solar power. The city expects to spend $100,000 less annually over the next three years by buying this type of power, said Maureen Lemieux, Newton's chief financial officer. Newton currently spends about $1.5 million buying electricity from a power generator.

Newton is poised to become the first municipality in the state to buy all of its electricity from renewable sources, Mayor Setti Warren announced Tuesday. Starting on July 1, city buildings, schools, and streetlights will all be illuminated by electricity generated by such sources as wind and solar power. The city expects to spend $100,000 less annually over the next three years by buying this type of power, said Maureen Lemieux, Newton's chief financial officer. Newton currently spends about $1.5 million buying electricity from a power generator.

By Derek McLean, Town Correspondent While many Massachusetts communities are still struggling with power outages, electricity is back on in all Wellesley homes after Irene swept through the area, officials said today. Wellesley, which is not a customer of NSTAR, had seven town line crew members and one contract line crew working to restore electricity. Donald Newell, superintendent of the Wellesley Municipal Light Plant, said the town had seven or eight areas affected by the loss of electricity.

A Massachusetts law requiring utilities to purchase more electricity from renewable energy sources has helped make the state more energy efficient but also threatens to increase the delivery costs of electricity by 7 percent over the next four years, Attorney General Martha Coakley told a legislative committee yesterday. The Green Communities Act, signed in 2008 by Governor Deval Patrick, was intended to help Massachusetts wean itself off fossil fuels and reduce emissions that lead to global warming.

By Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff Newton is poised to become the first municipality in the state to buy all its electricity from renewable sources, Mayor Setti Warren announced Tuesday. Starting on July 1, city buildings, schools and streetlights will all be illuminated by electricity generated by such sources as wind and solar power. "We're really proud of this accomplishment," Warren said. "It's part of our overall effort in the City of Newton. " Cities and local governments have a leading role to play in pushing for a more environmentally-geared economy,...