Free Republic

After tapping into solar, wind, geothermal and now natural gas resources on post, Fort Knox has become the first U.S. military installation to go “off the grid.” The installation announced Wednesday it added 28 natural gas wells to its arsenal of energy-creating sources which already includes almost 6,000 geothermal wells, two wind turbines and 3.59 megawatts of solar panels. With the additions, Fort Knox will be able to produce more energy than it needs — about 44 megawatts a day. It typically uses about 20 daily, but has approached 50 before, officials said. With that kind of power, when Hardin...

Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon: The fuse is lit and America and the world are holding their breath. An incredible statement appeared in USA Today concerning the Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon that is a shocker: “The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.” Well, not the whole civilization since the destruction depends on the size of the bomb and how high in the atmosphere it explodes. In recent years, I have been castigated by friends and foes for making far less alarming statements! At least I am no longer alone or in the presence of crazies, complainers, charlatans,...

Pry provided details of recent attacks on electricity systems and said that ISIS could easily team with Mexican drug cartels to ravage America. He told Secrets, for example, that the Knights Templar drug gang blacked out the electric grid of the Mexican state of Michoacan in 2013 to provide cover for killing those fighting the drug trade. “The Knights Templars and other criminal gangs in Mexico will do anything for money, and ISIS, the richest terrorist organization in history, has hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal,” said Pry. “ISIS could hire one of the Mexican cartels, or one...

Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open. Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout their upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has even added hotel rooms and a nightclub. […] In the heyday of bathhouses in the late 1970s, there were nearly 200 gay bathhouses in cities across the U.S., but by 1990, the total had dropped to approximately 90, according to Damron, the publisher of an annual gay travel guide. In the last decade, bathhouses,...

There’s nothing like the approach of a possible hurricane, such as this season's first named storm, Tropical Storm Arthur, to get everyone in its expected path thinking about generators. But for some prospective buyers, the noise and the quality of power that a portable generator supplies is a turn-off. That’s where an inverter model comes in. Using new technology, inverter generators deliver cleaner power and are typically quieter, lighter, and more energy efficient. But as Consumer Reports is learning in its ongoing generator tests, not every inverter generator is worth the 100-to-200-percent premium you’ll pay over the usual cost of...

AFP news says: The US security firm Symantec said it identified malware targeting industrial control systems which could sabotage electric grids, power generators and pipelines This Stuxnet-like malware attack is likely to be government-sponsored, says Symantec. No word about nuclear power plants. From Security Week quoting AFP (6/30/2014; emphasis is mine): Malware Aims at US, Europe Energy Sector: Researchers WASHINGTON - Cyberattackers, probably state sponsored, have been targeting energy operations in the United States and Europe since 2011 and were capable of causing significant damage, security researchers said Monday. The US security firm Symantec said it identified malware targeting industrial...

A sophisticated hacking group recently attacked a U.S. public utility and compromised its control system network, but there was no evidence that the utility's operations were affected, according to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS did not identify the utility in a report that was issued this week by the agency's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT. ICS-CERT said in the report posted on its website that investigators had determined the utility had likely been the victim of previous intrusions. It did not elaborate.

"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. … Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?” ― Henry David Thoreau Living with less, as Thoreau described in Walden, is something many of us seek. We need a reprieve from our gadget-filled lives, so we travel deep into the wilderness, where utility services are sparse and renewable resources are necessary. But what if we want to extend our...

hey fellow freepers, I need some advice. I'm trying to set up a small solar panel system in case the grid goes down. I know I won't be able to power the whole house, but I want to be able to run a 750 watt deep well pump, a couple of 40 watt lights, a ceiling fan or box fan, cb base station and maybe a small freezer/refrigerator. I've got a 12v 100 watt solar panel, a 2000w 12v pure sine wave inverter and a 200 amp hour agm battery. Plus a 30 amp charge controller. Will this be enough?...

The Texas electric grid operator extended its call for residents and businesses to conserve power until Tuesday morning as a late arctic cold front that barreled as far as South Texas boosted the state's electricity consumption to a monthly record on Monday. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state's primary grid, had issued a public call for conservation on Sunday evening, citing freezing temperatures that would strain available generation capacity. "With the continued cold weather, we expect conditions to remain tight, especially during the early evening tonight and early morning hours tomorrow," said Dan Woodfin, director of system...

Mike Janke used to be a Navy SEAL sniper. These days he's taking on the government and corporate America. He's the founder of Blackphone, an Android-based smartphone with privacy as its main selling point. It's not NSA-proof — in that everything is hackable if you try hard enough. But Janke says it's taking on the entire mobile economy that lets law enforcement and companies in way too easily.Take apps that look free but mine your data to earn big dollars. Facebook tries to get your contacts, Google Maps tries to get your geolocation, Pandora gets your music preferences. Blackphone has...

Someone is installing a solar power system in the U.S. every four minutes. Generous state and federal tax credits for hooking up solar panels on roofs or in fields make solar energy attractive to homeowners and businesses. Another bonus is that those who generate solar energy can roll over what they don’t use as credit against their next utility bills, like rollover minutes on a cellphone bill, or sell excess energy back to the utilities. Utility companies aren’t happy. As the solar industry thrives, states are bracing for more showdowns this year between solar advocates and utility companies over how...

Shooters armed with assault rifles and some knowledge of electrical utilities have prompted new worries on the vulnerability of California's vast power grid. A 2013 attack on an electric substation near San Jose that nearly knocked out Silicon Valley's power supply was initially downplayed as vandalism by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the facility's owner. Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons did extensive damage to 17 transformers that sent grid operators scrambling to avoid a blackout. But this week, a former top power regulator offered a far more ominous interpretation: The attack was terrorism, he said, and if circumstances had been just...

In a period of anxiety about cyberattacks and the vulnerability of the nation’s infrastructure, news that GridEx II would be held engendered yet more nervousness, some of it bizarre. One website tried to connect a joint training exercise in Hawaii between American and Chinese military personnel with the electricity drill .

When U.S. officials warn about "attacks" on electric power facilities these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a computer hacker trying to shut the lights off in a city with malware. But a more traditional attack on a power station in California has U.S. officials puzzled and worried about the physical security of the the electrical grid--from attackers who come in with guns blazing. Around 1:00 AM on April 16, at least one individual (possibly two) entered two different manholes at the PG&E Metcalf power substation, southeast of San Jose, and cut fiber cables in the...

SNIPPET: "A federal grand jury has issued an eight-count indictment against a central Arkansas man accused of damaging electric cooperative and other power facilities. Jason Woodring, 37, was indicted on charges relating to sabotage of high-voltage power lines and power stations earlier this year in several cities. Among them: a terrorist attack against a railroad carrier and destruction of energy facilities, including a 115,000-volt transmission line owned by First Electric Cooperative in Jacksonville. Woodring faces up to 20 years in prison on the energy facility destruction charges, and life in prison if convicted on the terrorism charge. According to an...

WASHINGTON — In a sprawling complex of laboratories and futuristic gadgets in Golden, Colo., a supercomputer named Peregrine does a quadrillion calculations per second to help scientists figure out how to keep the lights on. Peregrine was turned on this year by the U.S. Energy Department. It has the world's largest "petascale" computing capability. It is the size of a Mack truck. Its job is to figure out how to cope with a risk from something the public generally thinks of as benign — renewable energy. Energy officials worry a lot these days about the stability of the massive patchwork...

A catastrophic, prolonged failure of the electrical grid—the sort of event whose effects are depicted in National Geographic Channel’s upcoming American Blackout, which premieres Sunday—may seem like just apocalyptic science fiction to some viewers. Unfortunately, though, the possibility of such a breakdown is all too real. (See related interactive: “Survive the Blackout.”) Government and utility industry officials are so concerned, in fact, that in November, they will stage a massive emergency drill, called GridEx II, that will involve thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, FBI antiterrorism experts and government officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. They’ll...

A recent series of spectacular medical cases has electrified researchers around the world—cases in which therapy has allowed the HIV patient to permanently keep the virus under control. In 2009, doctors at Berlin’s Charité Hospital reported on a HIV-positive man named Timothy Ray Brown, known as the Berlin patient, who received a bone-marrow stem-cell transplant as treatment for leukemia. The donor was, thanks to genetics, immune to HIV—and the immunity seemed to have passed to Brown, who no longer needed antiretroviral therapy to control the HIV. Doctors eventually declared him cured. In 2013, doctors at Harvard Medical School reported similar...

The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11. This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for...