Like this, only much, much bigger | Photo: Mick O./Flickr/Creative Commons License

Here's yet another contender in the push to find ways to store electrical power efficiently and effectively: the East Coast firm EOS Energy Storage just announced it's raised $15 million to develop affordable, scalable power storage for the grid using zinc-air battery technology. The company announced a plan to test its grid batteries on Con Edison's grid in New York City earlier this month.

Photo: Will Lee/Flickr/Creative Commons License

A report on the industry thinktank website The Energy Collective suggests that Pacific Gas & Electric might be the first U.S. power company to fall to competition with increasingly cheap rooftop solar.

Foothill Transit battery bus in Pomona | Photo: George Lumbreras/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License

Here's some good news for Northern Californians who like to breathe: the first battery-powered electric buses in the north part of the state are rolling out in Stockton, thanks to the California Energy Commission. Two fast-charging buses will join the San Joaquin Regional Transit District's fleet in the city of Stockton, relieving a bit of the Central Valley airshed's air pollution problem.

Condors 7 and 98 play at the Grand Canyon | Photo: Dug Greenberg/Flickr/Creative Commons License

The Bureau of Land Management has just released the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for an Arizona wind project near the mouth of the Grand Canyon. It may pose a threat to the canyon's population of reintroduced California condors.

BP Wind Energy's proposed Mohave County Wind Farm project would occupy almost 60 square miles of open desert about 20 miles from Hoover Dam. Its 283 wind turbines would generate up to 500 megawatts of electrical power.

The broken blade at Ocotillo Express | Photo: Jim Pelley

A few hours after one of its wind turbines threw a blade in the Imperial County desert town of Ocotillo, builder Siemens Energy announced it is shutting down all its turbines worldwide that use the same blade until their safety can be assessed.

The faulty wind turbine at Pattern Energy's Ocotillo Express Wind facility threw a ten-ton blade late Wednesday night or early Thursday. No one was injured, despite the blade's coming to rest atop a Jeep trail on public lands approximately 150 yards from the turbine.

Rooftop solar in San Diego | Photo: U.S. Army Materiel Command /Flickr/Creative Commons License

And that number keeps climbing. According to the California Solar Statistics website, the number of California roofs generating power from the sun reached 150,428 as of Wednesday, with a total generating capacity of 1,560 megawatts -- about equivalent to three typical coal-fired power plants.