Electricity

Size and strength of Hurricane Maria is being called “horrifying” as relentless and unprecedented hurricane season continues.

After Hurricane Irma in Florida, millions have been without electricity. But those Floridians who had solar panels plus an inverter or a Tesla powerwall were able to recover electricity immediately. Likewise, cities used solar to power traffic lights and other essential services after the huge storm had blown past.

GAZA — The Gaza Strip — one of the most densely populated areas in the world and often referred to as an open-air prison — rarely makes headlines nowadays, despite a situation there that is becoming increasingly dire for local Palestinians.

Every Palestinian I met on my visits to the Holy Land urged me to tell their story when I got home. Some have written to me with very moving accounts of misery and excruciating hardship under Israel’s brutal occupation, reinforcing the appalling truths I’d seen for myself.
Two years ago a young woman, a war-weary mom of three in a Gaza refugee camp, wrote to tell me that schools in Gaza were working in 2 or 3 shifts a day “especially in areas where displaced people of the last war still shelter in UNRWA schools — they don’t have any other place to go.”

State officials and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) have announced the discovery of high levels of arsenic and lead in groundwater beneath the Allen Fossil Plant, located in southwest Memphis. Officials found the toxins in wells where pollution from ponds containing leftover coal ash is monitored. The Allen Fossil Plant, you see, is powered by coal.

Activists release paper lanterns in solidarity with Palestinians from Gaza, at the Ashkelon beach after Israel cut back its already limited electricity shipments to the Gaza Strip in a step that is expected to worsen the power crunch plaguing the Hamas-controlled seaside territory, June 19, 2017. (AP/Ariel Schalit)
Gaza’s last functioning turbine was shut down late last night due to a severe shortage of fuel, plunging the Strip into near total darkness, according to Haaretz.

I grew up surrounded by farmland and lived near rural Tennessee for a time, yet I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to start a farm. But if I wanted to experience farming on a small scale, Farm From the Box would be the way to go. The tiny house movement has shown us that shipping containers can be turned into stylish homes, and 2-acre farms capable of feeding 150 people come in shipping containers, too.
The really cool part: you can do it off the grid. [1]

Mohammed Abed is a 28-year-old taxi driver from the village of Qarara, near the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He has no teeth.
Lack of medical care and proper dentistry work cost him all of his teeth, which rotted and decayed at a very young age. Yet, his dire financial needs prevented him from acquiring dentures. His community eventually pitched in, collecting the few hundred dollars needed for Mohammed to finally being able to eat.

A Palestinian boy fills tankers with drinking water for sale at a drinking water station in Gaza City. Poor sewage treatment is a feature of life in Gaza, a result of infrastructure damaged during wars with Israel and a chronic shortage of electricity to run wastewater plants. (AP/Khalil Hamra)

Contractors work on Europe’s biggest floating solar panel array on the Queen Elizabeth II Reservoir near Walton-on-Thames in south west London, Monday, March 21, 2016. (AP/Matt Dunham)
Wind, solar and energy efficiency have replaced the vast majority of power previously provided by the UK’s coal fleet, a new analysis shows.