Electricity

Los Angeles County officials this week launched a new "solar mapping" website, lacounty.solarmap.org, that lets residents and business owners determine whether their properties would benefit from solar power. The site evaluates a building's potential to generate solar power based on roof size, pitch and shade from nearby trees, buildings and mountains. By typing in an address, users can check a property's roof size, space for solar panels, potential electricity production, electricity savings, carbon reduction, nearby solar installations, utility company rebates and solar panel installer information.

It was still dark outside when a man in his underwear answered the knock at the factory door, releasing a wave of heat and gritty smoke from the noisy room behind him. This, the man was told, was a power raid. The engineers storming past him were here to investigate electricity theft at this basement plastics mill. The problem is rampant in India, but especially in New Delhi, a sprawling city of slums, factories, and politicians unaccustomed to paying for power. When private companies partnered with the government in 2002 to distribute the city's energy, more than half the electricity generated was stolen.

Re: "Edison makes deal for solar power," Aug. 19: Here's a common-sense solution to both our energy and environment needs: Require power companies to install solar panels and maintain them on their subscribers' houses and commercial buildings. Why use thousands of acres of land when we have all the roofs in California that can produce electricity? James C. Preston Gavilan Hills -- Southern California Edison's plan to buy solar power from two solar projects in the Inland Empire sounds promising.

As she pedaled an elliptical exercise machine at the University of Oregon, Wen Lee's face lighted up like the bulbs she was powering. "I could run my television with this," the environmental studies graduate student said between breaths, making the three bulbs on the stand in front of her glow brighter as part of a demonstration of renewable people power. The University of Oregon -- one of its school colors is, after all, green -- is the latest in a growing number of college campuses and exercise clubs across the country where workouts produce watts.

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has filed a lawsuit against Boston-Finney, accusing the Harrisburg, Pa.-based company of operating a "pyramid" marketing scheme in its efforts to enter California's soon-to-be-deregulated electricity market. The suit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court, also named the company's president, Christopher S. Mee, 19. The suit contends that Boston-Finney made many untrue claims to sign up distributors and customers. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Gul Hussein was standing under a pale street lamp in a poor section of east Kabul when the entire neighborhood went black. "As you can see, it is dark everywhere," said Hussein, 62, adding that his family would light a costly kerosene lamp for dinner that evening. "Some of our neighbors are using candles, but candles are expensive too." More than six years after the fall of the Taliban -- and despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid -- dinner by candlelight remains common in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

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.