Tag Archives: Utility Industry

Atlassian co-founder takes big step toward shutting down Australia’s coal power

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Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes just scored a major coup in his quest to end Australia's use of coal energy. The Wall Street Journalreports AGL Energy, Australia's worst emissions producer, has withdrawn plans to 'demerge' its retail power and generation units (thus keeping coal power plants running longer) after Cannon-Brookes bought over 11 percent of the company's stock. The breakup plan is unlikely to pass a shareholder vote after the tech executive's move, AGL said.

Both the chairman and CEO of AGL are stepping down as a result of the failed demerger. The board of directors is also conducting a review of the company's strategy, and plans broader changes to the board as well as overall management. The directors want to deliver the best value in light of "Australia's energy transition," the company added.

Cannon-Brookes hopes AGL can shut down the coal plants about 10 years sooner than the company's 2045 goal. He originally tried to buy AGL outright with help from Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management, but resorted to buying stock after the energy provider rejected the offers.

The Atlassian exec's renewable energy push began in 2017, when he learned of Tesla's proposal to end southern Australian blackouts using large-scale battery storage. He has long singled out AGL as a target. According to Cannon-Brookes, AGL represents about 8 percent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. That's more than every car in the country, and more than some entire developed countries.

The stock ploy won't guarantee that AGL shuts down its coal plants ahead of schedule. Still, it's a relatively unique effort in the tech world to accelerate the shift toward clean energy. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and others have generally focused on reducing their own emissions by either buying renewables or installing solar and wind power at their facilities — Atlassian's co-creator is trying to engineer change across an entire country.

Coinbase reportedly pauses hiring amid plummeting crypto market

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In the wake of the cryptocurrency market crashing, Coinbase said this week it was joining a number of tech companies by slowing down its hiring plans for this year. More details have emerged about Coinbase's efforts to cut costs after The Information obtained emails that were sent to employees.

The company is said to have frozen hiring for two weeks (though it will honor offers that have already been sent) and put new projects on hold. It is also reportedly trying to reduce how much it spends on hosting services.

Along with not hiring as many people as it previously expected to this year, Coinbase is looking to minimize employee attrition. According to the report, the company is giving workers more shares. Coinbase's stock has dropped by over 75 percent in the last six months.

Coinbase is said to have paused some projects, such as a business banking initiative, while it focuses on increasing revenue from core products, including retail and institutional trading. It's reportedly planning to offer retail customers more cryptocurrencies and to expand operations outside of the US.

When asked for comment, a Coinbase spokesperson directed Engadget to a tweet thread from chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee. While the company is renewing focus on its "high-impact products" and trying to "improve efficiencies by seeking improvements in developer productivity," Chatterjee noted that Coinbase doesn't plan to stop investing in strategic and venture projects. "We believe the down market is a great time to build for the longer term," Chatterjee wrote.

The company revealed in its first-quarter earnings report last week that, at $1.16 billion, net revenue fell by 27 percent year-over-year and by over half from the previous quarter. Trading volume also dropped. Amid a hiring spree (it's said to have brought in more than 1,200 new employees this year), operating expenses increased by nine percent from the previous quarter to $1.7 billion. Coinbase had a net loss of $430 million in Q1. All of that was before the cryptocurrency market nosedived earlier this month.

Stablecoin TerraUSD (which is supposed to be pegged to the value of the US dollar) and sister token Luna effectively collapsed, causing a ripple effect to other cryptocurrency prices. Though it has since rebounded a bit, the price of bitcoin also dipped below $26,000 for the first time in 16 months last week amid a sell off that saw over $200 billion wiped from the crypto market in one day.

Coinbase's shift in hiring strategy reflects a broader trend among prominent tech companies. Meta and Uber are among the major businesses that are cutting costs and slowing down recruitment plans. Meanwhile, Netflix laid off around 150 staff in the US this week and canceled some animated projects. The company's stock plummeted after it reported its first-ever quarterly drop in subscriber numbers last month.

Volta’s electric urban delivery trucks will come to the US in 2023

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You might soon see more electric trucks ferrying cargo around town. Volta has revealed that it's bringing its urban delivery EVs to the US, starting with a test fleet of 100 Class 7 (16.5 US tons) Zero trucks coming to Los Angeles in mid-2023. American production should start in 2024, with an "experienced" manufacturer chosen late this year. This inaugural truck will be followed by lighter-duty Class 5 (9.8-ton) and Class 6 (13-ton) models in 2024 and 2025.

The Class 7 Volta Zero's range is short, with modular batteries offering between 95 to 125 miles of driving. That's more than enough for city deliveries, however. Volta is also betting that 250kW DC fast charging will ease any range anxiety. You completely recharge the Zero in slightly over an hour at the right station. Moreover, the company has taken advantage of the switch to electric motors to improve safety — a lower, center-mounted driver's seat should reduce the usual truck blind spots.

There's pressure for Volta to move quickly. Fellow Swedish company Volvo has already introduced multiple electric medium-duty trucks, and American rival Freightliner has the eM2. Still, these are typically conventional designs that just happen to be electric, rather than from-scratch EVs. Volta might reel customers in simply by making a more compelling case for ditching diesel- and gas-based fleets.

Recommended Reading: The rise and fall of Pebble

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Success and failure at Pebble

Eric Migicovsky, Medium

The founder of Pebble, one of the hottest products ever to hit Kickstarter, reflects on why the startup failed during the 10-year anniversary of its crowdfunding launch. "We succeeded at inventing the smartwatch and an entirely new product category," he writes. "But in the end, we failed to create a sustainable, profitable business."

The Goodman experiment

Alan Siegel, The Ringer

Bob Odenkirk and the folks who created Saul Goodman offer an oral history on how the character eventually got his own show even though it wasn't intended to work out that way. "Not long after Saul made his debut midway through Season 2 of Breaking Bad, it became very apparent that he was more than just comic relief," Siegel explains.

Mark Zuckerberg's augmented reality

Alex Heath, The Verge

The Verge offers a detailed look at Meta's AR roadmap, including info on a number of different augmented reality glasses models the company is working on. 

Thermophotovoltaic cell converts 40 percent of heat energy to electricity

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Researchers have revealed a new thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell that converts heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency, performance nearly on par with traditional steam turbine power plants. The cells have the potential to be used in grid-scale "thermal batteries," generating energy dependably with no moving parts. 

Thermophotovoltaic cells work by heating semiconducting materials enough to significantly boost the energy of photons. At high enough energies, those photos can kick an electron across the material's "bandgap," generating electricity. So far, TPV cells have achieved up to just 32 percent efficiency because they operate at lower temperatures. 

By contrast, the new design from MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) takes power from white-hot heat sources between 1,900 to 2,400 degree Celsius (3,452 to 4,352 degrees F). To do that, it uses "high-bandgap" metal alloys sitting over a slightly lower-bandgap alloy.  

The high-bandgap layer captures the highest-energy photons from a heat source and converts them to electricity, while lower-energy photons pass through the first layer and add to the voltage. Any photons that run the two-layer gauntlet are reflected by a mirror back to the heat source to avoid wasting energy.

This is an absolutely critical step on the path to proliferate renewable energy and get to a fully decarbonized grid.

Measuring the efficiency using a heat flux sensor, the team found that power varied with temperature. Between 1,900 to 2,400 degrees Celsius, the new TPV design produced electricity with about 40 percent efficiency.

Steam turbines can deliver the same efficiency, but are far more complicated and restricted to lower temperatures. "One of the advantages of solid-state energy converters are that they can operate at higher temperatures with lower maintenance costs because they have no moving parts," MIT Professor Asegun Henry told MIT News. "They just sit there and reliably generate electricity."

In a grid-scale thermal battery, the system would absorb excess energy from renewable sources like the sun and store it in heavily insulated banks of hot graphite. When needed, the TPV cells could then convert that heat to electricity and send it to the power grid. The experimental cell was just a square centimeter, so the team would have to ramp that up to around 10,000 square feet for grid-level power, but the technology already exists to create cells on that scale, Henry notes. 

"Thermophotovoltaic cells were the last key step toward demonstrating that thermal batteries are a viable concept," he said. "This is an absolutely critical step on the path to proliferate renewable energy and get to a fully decarbonized grid."

DuckDuckGo opens its privacy-centric Mac browser to beta testers

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DuckDuckGo has revealed something it says its users have been requesting for years: a desktop browser. It will be available on Mac first, and a Windows version is coming in the near future. Until now, the only browser DuckDuckGo offered was on mobile.

As you might expect from a DuckDuckGo product, privacy is at the forefront. The browser uses DuckDuckGo's search engine by default, and the Smarter Encryption feature will make sure you use the encrypted HTTPS version of websites more often. There's a tracker blocker, email protection and the company's famed Fire Button, which closes all tabs and wipes your browser data with a single click.

In-app data such as your history, bookmarks and passwords are by default only stored on your system. You can import your bookmarks and passwords from some other browsers and password managers.

DuckDuckGo Mac browser
DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo says the browser will do away with many of those annoying cookie consent popups as well. It can clear them for you on certain sites by automatically rejecting as much cookie tracking as possible. This feature will be available for around half of all websites at the outset. DuckDuckGo says that figure will grow during the beta period.

In the privacy feed, you'll be able to see which sites tried to track you. There's the option to clear stored data from certain websites and to return to recently viewed pages, albeit with some extra privacy protection. DuckDuckGo claims its Mac browser is fast, too. It uses the same built-in rendering engine as Safari and blocks trackers before they load.

The Mac browser is in an invite-only beta. To sign up for the waitlist, either download the DuckDuckGo mobile app or update it to the latest version. From the "More from DuckDuckGo" menu in settings, select DuckDuckGo for Desktop and tap "Join the Private Waitlist." You'll eventually receive a notification with an invite code and link to snag the browser on your Mac. The process is a little unusual, but, appropriately enough, you won't have to provide any personal details.

Puerto Rico is slowly recovering from an island-wide blackout

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Puerto Rico is gradually recovering from an island-wide power outage that started on Wednesday evening. However, hundreds of thousands of people still lack electricity as the territory continues to struggle with its fragile power grid.

The outage was the result of a failed circuit breaker at Costa Sur power plant. According to The New York Times, the plant produces more electricity than any other facility on the island. Luma, a private Canadian-American entity that took over management of the power grid from a public utility last year, said there was "extensive damage" to the plant. An investigation is underway to determine the exact cause, though it appears there was a fire.

According to poweroutage.us, a site that tracks power interruptions, more than 429,000 customers out of 1.47 million were without power as of 1:25PM Eastern time on Friday. As of Friday morning, Luma said it couldn't provide an estimate on how long it would take to fully restore power.

Critical facilities such as hospitals are up and running, though public school service was canceled on Friday. Around 182,000 or 10 percent of water and sewer customers didn't have water on Thursday.

When it started running the island's power transmission and distribution, Luma said it would make blackouts less frequent. However, according to reports, outages have persisted and lasted longer than when the public utility was managing the grid.

After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, there was a power outage across the island. Some folks had to wait for more than a year before electricity was restored, a situation that highlighted the precarious condition of the territory's power grid.

Puerto Rico is slowly recovering from an island-wide blackout

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Puerto Rico is gradually recovering from an island-wide power outage that started on Wednesday evening. However, hundreds of thousands of people still lack electricity as the territory continues to struggle with its fragile power grid.

The outage was the result of a failed circuit breaker at Costa Sur power plant. According to The New York Times, the plant produces more electricity than any other facility on the island. Luma, a private Canadian-American entity that took over management of the power grid from a public utility last year, said there was "extensive damage" to the plant. An investigation is underway to determine the exact cause, though it appears there was a fire.

According to poweroutage.us, a site that tracks power interruptions, more than 429,000 customers out of 1.47 million were without power as of 1:25PM Eastern time on Friday. As of Friday morning, Luma said it couldn't provide an estimate on how long it would take to fully restore power.

Critical facilities such as hospitals are up and running, though public school service was canceled on Friday. Around 182,000 or 10 percent of water and sewer customers didn't have water on Thursday.

When it started running the island's power transmission and distribution, Luma said it would make blackouts less frequent. However, according to reports, outages have persisted and lasted longer than when the public utility was managing the grid.

After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, there was a power outage across the island. Some folks had to wait for more than a year before electricity was restored, a situation that highlighted the precarious condition of the territory's power grid.

The original ‘Angry Birds’ game returns to app stores

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The original Angry Birds game is back. Sure, there are other, newer entries in the Angry Birds franchise out there — and even a couple of movies — but this one's for those who have a special place in their hearts for the game that started it all. In a letter to fans published last year, Rovio explained that it had to take its older titles out of circulation, because they used outdated game engines and design. "Today’s mobile technology and games landscape has evolved to a place where supporting them was untenable," the company wrote. The developer also couldn't leave them up without updating them, because they'll soon be incompatible with the latest mobile operating systems. 

Apparently, there was a "big outcry" for Rovio to bring back the older games, especially the original, so it decided to work on bringing the classic experiences back. The company said at the time that it has to figure out "what is possible and for which games," so it's unclear if other older titles will also get remakes. Rovio rebuilt the original Angry Birds from the ground up using Unity, which allowed the company to recreate the feel of the classic for newer devices. That's a much more involved process than simply touching up older graphics or updating game mechanics. 

The new version of the game called Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, is now available from the Apple App Store and from Google Play. It will set you back 99 cents to download, but it doesn't have in-app purchases and even makes the Mighty Eagle (an old in-app purchase) available at no extra cost. 

Netflix’s latest mobile game raises awareness for drinking water scarcity

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Netflix is now using its growing mobile game collection to support a good cause. The streaming service has launched three Android and iOS games headlined by This Is A True Story, a game meant to raise awareness about the lack of safe drinking water. The team-up between Frosty Pop and Charity:Water is an educational RPG that challenges you walk miles in sub-Saharan Africa to find water while dealing with poachers, windstorms and other hazards. It's a frank commentary on a dire state of affairs (771 million people don't have access to clean water), although the hand-painted backdrops might keep you coming back after you understand the message.

The other games are less poignant, but may still be worth a try. Pik Pok has unveiled both Into the Dead 2: Unleashed, a sequel to its endless runner/shooter hybrid, as well as Shatter Remastered, a modernization of its brick-breaker/shoot-em-up crossover for the PS3.

All three games should be available on Android and iOS today (March 22nd) at 1PM Eastern. As with other Netflix games, the latest selection is 'free' once you've signed in with your account. These releases probably won't convince you to sign up for Netflix. However, This Is A True Story might just use Netflix's size to reach a large audience.