La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

The energy infrastructure we have today is the result of thousands of years of technological development, during which the systems evolved based on what had and hadn’t been invented, and where. The R...

A few years ago I was managing an experiment aimed at determining whether it was practical to power cars with hydrogen, instead of gasoline. Most of the cars were small gasoline-engine SUVs which had...

The tide-based currents in the Swinomish Channel may offer a local source of reliable, predictable renewable energy. Several people have asked me whether this natural resource could be developed to...

One probably wouldn’t think that El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, would be particularly influential as regards the future of electric generation in the Pacific Northwest. Surprisingly, he mig...

Reducing energy use during the design and construction phase of a new building is almost always easier than retrofitting the building afterwards. There are many techniques that can be used to reduce t...

Adding up electricity, gas and propane, most (probably half to two-thirds) of the energy you use in your house is for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. One of the most significant other uses...

The Skagit Valley Clean Energy Alliance will be sponsoring a new Solarize program this year, to help facilitate and accelerate the installation of new rooftop solar generation systems throughout...

Viewing parts of the electric grid, such as transmission towers and substations as public art is actually a decades old concept. The colored glass used in high-rise buildings since the early 1960s...

One of the least publicized but nevertheless significant obstacles to the new infrastructure required to support development of new energy resources is that this infrastructure can be unsightly. A...

The La Conner School District is among hundreds of districts nationwide examining the feasibility and long-term cost advantages of switching from diesel to electric school buses. Key advantages...

In 1992, two colleagues and I visited Ukraine and Russia to tour ex-Soviet research laboratories in search of interesting technologies that had been developed by their scientists and engineers. The co...

I wrote earlier that existing technologies aren’t that far from allowing us to produce sustainable energy for as little as a tenth of the cost of conventional electric generation. Solar p... Full story

In the 1880s, thousands of businesses in the U.S. depended on horse-drawn transportation. Carriage manufacturers, blacksmiths, horse breeders, stables and related enterprises were major employers. Of... Full story

The ongoing emergence of low-cost energy technologies is leading to the development of a host of interesting systems that aren’t directly related to the large-scale electric grid. Read this asking you... Full story

The need for electric vehicle charging infrastructure will inevitably increase. People who don’t want EVs now because their initial cost is too high or their range is too low will re-evaluate that d... Full story

Last week I talked about electric vehicle chargers in rural British Columbia. Charger availability there is still improving. Flo.com’s map shows that the charger in Woss, BC (population about 200), h... Full story

About a year ago, Jenelle and I drove from Victoria, on the south end of Vancouver Island, to Port Hardy, near the north end. We took a gasoline-powered car. We weren’t sure whether public charging s... Full story

Pumpkin spice lattes, football, leaves starting to change color, the approach of Halloween … it’s time to talk about vampires and phantoms. Vampire and phantom electric loads, that is. Many con... Full story

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the possibility of buying a second electric car. I’m still giving that some consideration. However, before making a final decision, I’m going to wait till the rec... Full story

The La Conner School District and the La Conner Fire Department have each been awarded a grant from the Washington state Department of Commerce. These grants will fund work required for each to...

Last time, I suggested buying Energy Star electronics to cut your energy bills. What is Energy Star and why is their work relevant? Energy Star is a voluntary program started by the U.S. Environmental...

A typical home in western Washington uses about 10,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. If you add in an electric car, that will increase to about 14,400 kWh. Solar panels in western...

Electricity and natural gas are very unusual products. The end-use customers, homeowners, use these products without knowing how much they’ve used, or how much the products will cost, till they get t... Full story

Lithium-ion batteries have long been in the news because of their role in electric vehicles, but uses for this technology are expanding to the utility industry. Batteries that can be charged and... Full story