IE Questions: Super Grid! Spanning Continents In A Single Bound!

Somewhere in the world, the sun and wind are always shining and blowing, and people are always using electricity. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get renewable power from the windy and sunny places to the power hungry places? That was presumably the thinking behind a question posed by an Inside Energy audience member: Would transmission losses be too high to sustain an international green power electrical grid? We answer it in this video explainer.

Gridlocked: Outside/In Podcast

What if everything you thought you knew about energy was exactly backwards? What if the way that we currently do electricity is actually the most expensive option, and all of that fancy “clean-tech” and “green-tech” actually the cheapest option? Listen to the Outside/In podcast episode GRIDLOCKED for answers.

With Too Much Solar, California Looks To West For Markets

Solar energy is booming in California—so much so that on some days, there’s too much. California would like to send that extra solar to its neighbors in the West, but other western states aren’t sure they want California’s power.

Electricity Losses State By State: Interactive

As part of our IE Questions project, Inside Energy investigated how much energy is lost as electricity travels from a power plant to the plug in your home. In the U.S., five to six percent of the energy in electricity is lost during transmission and distribution, but that varies widely state-to-state and year-to-year. See how your home state measures up.