Extreme Heat Not Causing Blackouts

Florida is set to experience heat index values of up to 115 degrees this week. Persistent, scorching temperatures covered much of the Southwest, expanding into the Midwest and Northeast in July. Record after record was broken.

And yes so far, the nation's electric grid has held firm. No blackouts, as happened in California in 2022. No brownouts as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned could happen this summer. No rolling power outages as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) alerted might be an issue in the hottest summer months.

Instead, several things are going right.

Energy experts say four things have come together to make this summer, while hot, nowhere near as dangerous as it might have been had power systems failed leaving thousands without the air conditioning that's now a matter of survival during heat waves.

1. More diversification of energy sources, including increasing amounts of wind and solar
2. Better planning and preparedness
3. Higher levels of hydroelectric power due to heavy winter rain and snow in the West
4. Demand response programs offer consumers rebates to ease up on energy use in the hottest parts of the day.

"It's kind of sad that we expect the grid to fail," said Kyri Baker, a professor of engineering at the University of Boulder, Colorado who studies power systems. While the energy grid as a whole is getting creaky, the energy sources are diversifying and making it more flexible.  READ MORE...

Humaniod Robot Has Moves

Boston Dynamics, the company known for its robotic dogs, now has a humanoid robot capable of doing gymnastics.

The robotics company previously has shown how its robot dogs can go down stairs and open doors. Some police departments have begun using the robot dogs, typically called Spot, to help patrol. And Atlas, which the company dubbed "the world's most dynamic humanoid," showed in an earlier video how the robot can jog and jump over a log.

In a new video, Atlas now can do parkour – a sport of moving through obstacles – jumping and running along uneven platforms. Then, two humanoid robots do synchronized movements including turning, spinning and two flips, mirroring each other moves.

Having the robots perform parkour sequences including running along a balance beam, jumping and doing flips helps in the development of a robot capable of multiple tasks, “a go-anywhere, do-anything robot of the future," said Scott Kuindersma, leader of Boston Dynamics' Atlas team, in a blog post accompanying the new videos.

"The work that we are doing now is really just foundation building," he said. "We are building the core capabilities that we think any useful robot will need and in doing so we are really just defining the next set of challenges that we are going to be working on over the next two to five years."  READ MORE