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 future grid


The Download: a controversial proposal to solve climate change, and our future grids

MIT Technology Review

Plus: Australia's social media ban for teens has just come into force. Stardust Solutions believes that it can solve climate change--for a price. The Israel-based geoengineering startup has said it expects nations will soon pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch specially equipped aircraft into the stratosphere. Once they've reached the necessary altitude, those planes will disperse particles engineered to reflect away enough sunlight to cool down the planet, purportedly without causing environmental side effects. But numerous solar geoengineering researchers are skeptical that Stardust will line up the customers it needs to carry out a global deployment in the next decade. MIT Technology Review Narrated: Is this the electric grid of the future?


The Download: future grids, and bad boy bots

MIT Technology Review

Is this the electric grid of the future? Lincoln Electric System, a publicly owned utility in Nebraska, is used to weathering severe blizzards. But what will happen soon--not only at Lincoln Electric but for all electric utilities--is a challenge of a different order. Utilities must keep the lights on in the face of more extreme and more frequent storms and fires, growing risks of cyberattacks and physical disruptions, and a wildly uncertain policy and regulatory landscape. They must keep prices low amid inflationary costs. And they must adapt to an epochal change in how the grid works, as the industry attempts to transition from power generated with fossil fuels to power generated from renewable sources like solar and wind.