JCL Journal

Solar Energy vs. Traditional Utilities

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide… I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” -Thomas Edison

By Lynn Dula | September 19, 2022

Hi, My Name Is: Solar Energy Last month, the JCL Energy Journal explored how electricity gets from power plant to you and took a look at how electric utilities work. As it usually happens, the more you know, the more questions that you have. One…

Read More...

Behind the Scenes: Electric Utilities Explained

“Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.” -Karl Marx

By Lynn Dula | August 25, 2022

Electric Utilities Explained Websters defines utility as “something useful; a useful thing.” To narrow it further, a public utility is “a public service, as a system to provide water or electricity, a railroad line, a cell tower network, or the like.” If you are anything…

Read More...

From Power Plant to You

“Electricity is really just organized lightning” (George Carlin)

By Lynn Dula | August 11, 2022

The JCL Energy Journal recently took a look at the US Electric Grid to learn how the American power grid is organized, and how it functions as a whole. Now we go deeper and map the journey of electricity, from power plant to you. Electrical…

Read More...

Extreme Weather and the Electric Grid

“Climate change is a controversial subject, right? People will debate whether there is climate change... that's a whole political debate that I don't want to get into. I want to talk about the frequency of extreme weather situations, which is not political.” -Andrew Cuomo

By Lynn Dula | July 28, 2022

Today’s Forecast : Cloudy With a Chance of Power Outages Earlier this month the JCL Energy Journal took a look at the US Electric Grid. As we learned about how the grid was structured, we also learned another not-so-fun fact. Extreme weather is affecting the…

Read More...

The US Electric Grid: America’s Heartbeat

“The grid is awesomely complex. It is the largest machine in the world.” (Gretchen Bakke, The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future)

By Lynn Dula | July 14, 2022

Let’s play a guessing game, see if you can guess what I’m describing… You use it everyday in many ways. You rely on it, but don’t often think about it. When it stops working, it causes massive problems. If you guessed the U.S. Electric Grid,…

Read More...