Electricity

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

That ray of light you see peeking through all the clouds darkening California's future? That's the sun. More specifically, solar power, in which California is the hands-down national leader. The state's installed solar generating capacity of about 1.2 gigawatts - the equivalent of two big conventional power plants and enough to fill the electrical demand from nearly 200,000 homes for a year - easily outstrips the next 10 highest-ranked states. It's also the fastest-growing solar market in the country.

Hoping to pressure out-of-state electricity sellers accused of exploiting California during the long energy emergency, a legislative committee on Monday urged Gov. Gray Davis to begin seizing power plants. The Senate Rules Committee approved a nonbinding resolution that tells the governor the Senate would support seizures if Davis takes such a step. All three Democrats on the committee, including Senate leader John Burton of San Francisco, author of the measure, voted to send it to the full Senate, where approval is expected.

Tesla Motors Inc. said it will begin delivering its first mass production electric car -– the high-end Model S to customers starting June 22, about a month ahead of the expected schedule. The Palo Alto-based company says it has more than 10,000 orders for the battery-powered car but that not all will be delivered this year.

The words "Invisible Forces" blink in fluorescent white and blue neon at the entrance to a new exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. In the entryway, a wormlike electric current sputters its way up two antennas. "It used to be referred to as Jacob's ladder by scientists, but it's more commonly associated with the apparatus in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory," said John Sirugo, educational director for Southern California Edison Co., which is sponsoring the month-old exhibit on electricity and magnetism.

Here are some things Californians deserve from their power providers: a fair and reasonable price for electricity, household bills that are easy to understand and based on the actual cost of producing power, and rates that encourage conservation yet don't punish low-income customers who can't afford to make their homes more energy efficient. The price of a kilowatt hour should speak, and this is what it should be saying: Don't waste energy, and if you can avoid it, don't run your dishwasher or do your laundry at times when California's power plants are already straining to meet demand.

That 52-inch, flat-screen television on the family room wall may have a terrific picture, but there's a big drawback: It's an energy hog. State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011.

Rows of wax votive candles, usually flickering in an alcove under a statue of a saint, have been a traditional sight in Roman Catholic churches. With roots in the ancient custom of lighting candles in fulfillment of a private vow (votum), the candles are lit today as a sign of continuing prayerful thoughts. Donations, or "votive offerings," also are customary. But the candles tend to blacken walls and ceilings with soot and, for some churches, create a potential fire hazard.

Electricity? We don't need no stinking electricity. We got sunlight, beaches and babes in bikinis. Turn the lights out. JOHN JAEGER Irvine

Could this be the end of electric power cords? A Massachusetts company said that within 18 months it will have on the market a wireless electricity system to power -- through the air -- lights, computers, televisions and even the chargers for electric cars. The announcement was made at the TEDGlobal conference, a gathering of technologists and scientists, that wrapped up Friday in Oxford, England. The company, WiTricity of Watertown, Mass.

U.S. auto-safety regulators are joining inquiries into a Texas garage fire that destroyed a Fisker Automotive Inc. Karma, a $103,000 plug-in electric vehicle. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent investigators to help investigate the cause of the fire at a home in Sugar Land, Texas, that Fisker learned of May 3, Claude Harris, the agency's director of vehicle safety compliance, said Friday. "We are conducting an ongoing field inquiry for an EV incident in Texas," Harris said at a Transportation Department electric-vehicle safety forum in Washington.

The growing number of electric vehicle drivers in Los Angeles are behaving differently from the national norm. Not only are EV drivers in L.A. traveling farther than those in other cities, but they charge their vehicles more often at public locations and are more likely to charge at night to obtain less expensive electricity rates, according to Ecotality in San Francisco. Ecotality oversees the EV Project, a $230-million deployment of electric-vehicle charging infrastructure funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy to aid the rollout of electric vehicles and conduct research.

California's energy grid operator announced that two mothballed generators at a natural-gas-powered plant on the Huntington Beach coastline are back in service, a critical piece of the plan to replace power from the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant this summer. San Onofre has been shut down for three months because of equipment issues, and it's unclear when it will return to operation. Officials have expressed concern that in the event of a heat wave or transmission outage, parts of Los Angeles County, south Orange County and San Diego County could face power shortages over the summer without the plant's 2,200 megawatts of energy.

The first electric motorcycle that promises to deliver near the performance of traditional sport bikes was unveiled in Hollywood. The Brammo Empulse is designed to be "the first viable motorcycle that just happens to be electric," said Brammo Chief Executive Craig Bramscher, whose team started working on the bike in 2010. The company, based in Ashland, Ore., said the Empulse is capable of going at least 100 mph and as far as 121 miles per charge in city riding. It carries a 9.3-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery pack and liquid-cooled motor.

Re "Electric or gas? Choice comes into Focus," Business, April 26 Having trouble deciding between an electric or gasoline car? I have experience with both. A Nissan Leaf, after federal and state rebates, costs about $25,000, the same as a gas-powered Ford Focus. An electric Focus will cost a couple thousand more. With the gas car, over 10 years you'll spend $25,000 on fuel and emit asthma-causing pollutants and more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is irreversibly changing our climate.

Car shoppers will soon find two Ford Focus sedans sitting side by side when they visit the dealership — one with a gas tank and another with batteries. In a milestone for the auto industry, an automaker will give consumers an option to purchase the same model of a vehicle with either a traditional combustion engine or one powered only by electricity. It will mark the first time that buyers can compare the different powertrains on the same car. An electric Focus, next to the gas version, provides, "more transparency to what it means to pay for an electric vehicle," said Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst at research firm Gartner Inc. Ford Motor Co.'s strategy of producing an electric car that shares the platform, body style and many components of the standard gasoline model is a departure from other automakers pioneering the electric car market.

Central California is home to nearly 1.6 million dairy cows and their manure -- up to 192 million pounds per day. It's a mountain of waste and a potential environmental hazard. But for dairyman John Fiscalini, the dung on his farm is renewable gold: He's converting it into electricity. At his farm outside Modesto, a torrent of water washes across the barn's concrete floor several times a day, flushing tons of manure away from his herd of fuzzy-faced Holsteins and into nearby tanks.

Electricity and magnetism are important in many of the objects you use daily in your house. In fact, the generator that provides electricity for your house uses magnets. The electric current is produced by a magnet circulating around a wire. Find out more about electricity and magnetism as you use the sites at the Times Launch Point Web site: http://www.latimes.com/launchpoint/ Level 1 Magnequench: MagnetZone: Just like the Earth, every magnet has a north pole and a south pole.

Dear Liz: Last year I bought an electric vehicle, motivated in part by the $7,500 federal tax credit. I consulted with my tax preparer, a CPA, to ensure I would generate enough income to fully use the one-time, use-it-or-lose-it credit. In December 2011, I informed her of the exact type of that year's income (earned income, capital gains, dividends, interest and so on) and detailed all my deductions. She assured me that based on those numbers my tax burden was $8,600, more than sufficient to use the credit.

Whether an electric car such as the Nissan Leaf protects the atmosphere from greenhouse gases depends on where it's charged, according to a new study. Electric vehicles are no better than a standard gasoline-powered subcompact such as a Hyundai Elantra in cities such as Denver and Wichita, Kan., but far exceed even the best hybrids in Southern California. That's the finding of a study of electricity generation, greenhouse gas emissions and electric vehicles by the Union of Concerned Scientists.