Electricity

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.

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.

One warm August afternoon in 2003, a power failure originating in Ohio coursed through the electrical grid in the Northeast, sparking the nation's largest blackout and leaving millions in eight states without air conditioning, traffic lights and cellphone service. Energy experts say that shutdown, which cost an estimated $6 billion, might have been averted by a "smart grid."

The Gaza Strip's only electric power plant shut down Sunday evening after Israel halted the shipment of diesel that fuels it, plunging most of this city into darkness and threatening such vital services as hospitals, bakeries, water supply and sewage. Many of Gaza City's 400,000 inhabitants rushed to stock up on candles, batteries and bread, trudging up and down stairs as elevators ground to a halt, and then shivered through a night of temperatures in the low 50s.

California's energy crisis ended seven years ago, but electricity customers are still paying for it, lawyers are arguing over it and regulators are reigniting debate over the policies that led up to it. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today about whether the high-priced energy contracts signed amid the crisis can be reopened to make sure the rates are fair.

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday heard a recounting of what lawyers called "the worst electricity market crisis in history." And they heard the story of how Enron Corp. and others helped create the spike in electricity prices in California and the West during 2000 and 2001.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed new rules to improve competition in wholesale power markets amid criticism of rising electricity costs. Average U.S. retail power prices climbed 9.3% to 8.9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2006, the largest increase since 1981, according to the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department.

California utility regulators forged ahead Thursday with a controversial plan that could clear the way for another try at deregulating the state's electricity market -- a concept last tested in the years leading up to the devastating 2000-01 energy crisis. State law prohibits the Public Utilities Commission from reinstating competition between the state's major utilities and unregulated power providers before 2015.

There is wide agreement that the nation needs to upgrade the aging system that delivers electricity from power plants to consumers -- a grid that is already overtaxed and facing a 43% increase in demand over the next two decades. But opposition is growing to the way the Bush administration has interpreted Congress' instructions to improve the grid.

A blast that killed one firefighter and injured another this week in Westchester was a freak occurrence and indirectly the result of the decaying underground infrastructure, officials said Friday. Firefighter Brent A. Lovrien, 35, was fatally injured Wednesday when a spark ignited combustible smoke behind an electrical panel door that he was trying to open with a circular saw. Smoke had migrated into the electrical room from the underground burning of a conduit 200 feet away.