southern california

LOS ANGELES--I'm sitting across from a soldier named Garza, trying to get him to open up about why he got caught drinking and driving.

This is a serious offense in the military, and Garza could lose his rank, if not get kicked out of the Army altogether. And it's my job as his superior officer to try to understand that Garza -- who used to be among the best in his unit -- may be struggling with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This, of course, is a simulation. I'm not in the military, and Garza doesn'… Read more

Tesla Motors and Electric Power Research Institute join U.S. Department of Energy, automaker research teams and energy companies to accelerate the development of new energy-efficient technologies for cars and light trucks and the infrastructure needed to support them.

According to the DOE, the collaborative effort formerly known as FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, is now U.S. DRIVE--Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle efficiency and Energy sustainability. The goal is to beef up research and development of not only new vehicle technologies, but to also work on a broad range of energy infrastructure technologies.

"Government-industry partnerships like U.… Read more

Southern California Edison announced yesterday it has added seven new community solar plants to its energy repertoire that together generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 8,125 households.

SCE now has a total of 10 community-size solar stations, a network of small neighborhood solar stations, which consist of mainly rooftop solar installations on local buildings, connecting to its grid.

Four community solar stations in Ontario, Calif., for example, consist of 32,950 photovoltaic panels installed on the rooftops of warehouses owned by ProLogis. SCE leased what amounts to about 1.8 million square feet of roof space from … Read more

Ford Motor Co. today announced that it's expanding the range of its plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) research program Progress Energy expands its role by adding a Ford Escape PHEV to its Florida operations.

Ford and Progress Energy will work together advance the commercialization of electric vehicles under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy. Progress Energy is already road-testing Ford Escape PHEV in Raleigh, N.C. The new agreement will expand these efforts into Florida.

In Florida, Progress Energy will road-test a 2010 Escape PHEV equipped with one of the industry's first vehicle-to-electric "… Read more

Newly formed thermal solar energy company Solar Trust announced on Tuesday it acquired the rights to Solar Millennium's potentially lucrative agreement with Southern California Edison (SCE).

The power purchase agreement, which was announced in June, gives Solar Trust the opportunity to build up to 726 megawatts' worth of solar power plants.

If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the project would include the construction and installation of two or three 242-megawatt power plants that would be operational by 2013 or 2014.

Solar Trust's strategy is to offer what it calls a "turnkey solution" to thermal … Read more

Southern California Edison has signed a deal under which First Solar will build two solar power generation stations with the potential to provide electricity to 170,000 homes, the utility giant said Tuesday.

The contract, which is subject to the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission, has solar module maker First Solar completing two solar stations by 2015 that together would create 550-megawatt generation capacity.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but once up-and-running the plants would be capable of producing about 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours of energy annually, according to Southern California Edison.

Specifically, a 250-megawatt … Read more

Veterans are often reluctant to seek therapy for service-related conditions, but rather than write them off, scientists are creating a virtual online community where servicemembers can find the camaraderie and resources to ease their return to civilian life.

The "Transitional Online Post-deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds" created by the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) will be ensconced within a corner of the virtual landscape of Second Life, a popular online 3D grid where people interact through avatars (PDF).

Also known as Coming Home, this world will contain three main areas: one for … Read more

In five minutes, please walk away from your computer, take out your moral compass, and ask it for an update. Then, please tweet the results.

Yes, after the powerful and persuasive arguments of M'lady Greenfield of England--she who declared that Facebook was making us infantile--we now have further cause to worry about ourselves and our children.

Scientists at the University of Southern California have broken away from their task of finding the next 20 or so great football talents for the university to conduct research suggesting that Twitter may take the nerve endings out of our sense of … Read more

Southern California Edison (SCE) on Thursday launched a program to build the equivalent of a small power plant on commercial rooftops with thousands of solar panels.

The program calls for SCE to put enough solar photovoltaic panels on commercial buildings to turn out 250 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply about 162,000 homes.

Once completed, the panels will take up 65,000,000 square feet of roofs in Southern California, or 2 square miles.

The total cost would be about $875 million and is projected to take about five years.

The utility, which has the backing of California Gov. … Read more