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Photograph by Joe McNally
As daylight fades, Manhattan continues to gorge on power. New York City is tied to fuels like natural gas, with less than one percent of its electricity coming from wind or solar.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Helicopter drop-ins were the only way to build much of a new transmission line through southern California’s Angeles National Forest. It will bring wind power to as many as three million homes.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
From PlayStations to iMacs, the small electronic devices that appeal to Corbin Stafford (at right) and Aaron Bear Paul, of Boulder, Colorado, have a big impact. Worldwide they account for about 15 percent of residential electricity consumption.
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Photograph by Vincent Laforet: New York Times/Redux
The brains of the electrical grid, control centers match supply and demand to avoid a repeat of disasters like the 2003 blackout that struck New York and much of the Northeast.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
In Pennsylvania, PJM Interconnection, a large regional operator, is replacing its old control room with two new ones—a safeguard against an emergency.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Southern California Edison’s fleet of electric vehicles, almost 300 strong, has logged 18.3 million tailpipe-emission-free miles. Its test center evaluates how cycles of charging and discharging affect vehicle batteries—which one day may not only draw energy from the grid but also return some at moments of peak demand.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
On a windy day each of these turbines near Abilene, Texas, can power more than 500 homes. A transformer at the base of each 260-foot-tall tower feeds power to a substation and the grid.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Superconducting cables at the Long Island Power Authority were turned on in 2008. They can move two to five times as much power as conventional cables of the same size, freeing valuable space in crowded transmission corridors and postponing or eliminating the need to upgrade transmission systems for higher voltages.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
The Vincent substation along California’s State Route 14 is crucial to bringing wind and solar power to the Los Angeles Basin. But first it must be expanded and modernized to service new high-voltage transmission lines that will carry renewable energy generated by winds that blow through mountain passes between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Suspended in a basket from a transmission tower, two linemen prepare to string high-voltage wires for a segment of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project in California’s Antelope Valley. Above them, a pulleylike device called a traveler makes it possible to draw wires from tower to tower.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Painted gray to be less obtrusive, these turbines at the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, near Abilene, Texas, shut themselves down if the wind isn’t blowing. The ideal speed is 1,440 rpm, and gears inside the turbines try to keep that constant. In 25-mile-an-hour winds the tip of each blade travels at 180 to 190 mph. “You’re looking at a blade that’s 126 feet and weighs seven tons,” says Lindsey Hunt of Next Era Energy Resources in Houston. “It doesn’t look like it’s going that fast.”
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Photograph by Joe McNally
Horse Hollow is one of the world’s largest wind facilities. The Texas center can generate power for 220,600 homes. The 421 turbines are arranged to follow the lay of the land—the higher the better for catching wind. Servicing them requires workers like Matthew Cartwright (above) to climb inside the 260-foot towers, which narrow to a tiny point.
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Photograph by Joe McNally
In the city that never sleeps a new awareness about energy means the Empire State Building now uses bright lights at night only to celebrate holidays and special events. And power-hungry Manhattan has generating potential of its own: A tidal-energy project under development in the swift-flowing East River could power a thousand homes.
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