Heavy-Iron Lite

Digital Power, Reports

So what about heavy-iron? The 15 to 250 MW turbines? In the Powercosm, or out? In. Some, at least. Leave it to the Economist, the Worldwatch Institute, the small-is-beautiful crowd, to tell you that micropower rules, that big power is finished, that utility-scale heavy iron has as much future as a thirty-year-old IBM 360. Micropower…

Gates in the Grid

Digital Power, Reports

It’s a clear day in Silicon Valley. We’re on Sun Microsystems (SUNW) sprawling corporate campus. Why is the air around us literally humming? That’s the sound of electrons, as they pulse through five main megawatt-level transformers — truck-sized gray boxes of copper wire.