Energy and Technology

Each year, in honor of Bike to Work Month in May, the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition (SCBC) honors one inspiring cyclist as Bike Commuter of the Year. This year’s winner Dr. Tracey Jones is so dedicated to bicycle commuting that when she moved to Santa Rosa for her job at Kaiser, she prioritized choosing a home within cycling distance of the hospital.

With freeze warnings in the forecast across Sonoma County, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is urging customers to be cautious when heating their homes.

As such an integral part of our society, petroleum products are constantly being drilled for, transported, and processed. Being environmentally hazardous there are many laws to protect ecosystems from suffering for the ecologically deleterious nature of our actions.

What’s your bottom line? Is it money or the continuity of life on this planet?

As part of its response to California’s tree mortality crisis, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) will conduct aerial patrols in Sonoma County on Thursday, December 28, to identify dead trees that could pose a wildfire or other public safety risk.

“And then there were none!” I would love to write that, but right now I can only write, “And then there was one.” And that one is the US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases emissions (per capita the first), which last June said it would pull out of the Paris Climate Accords.

Even before the smoke cleared,
people were talking about rebuilding Sonoma County.

But what does that look like?
Who will make the decisions?
How can we all become stronger together?

During the "sunny day" outages of 2014 and 2015, we documented the scope of the telecommunications outages.  Data from those surveys were compiled with other sources (OES reports, AT&T reports, etc) into a comprehensive report which was shared widely with elected representatives, the CPUC, and even the FCC.  They were also cited incomments from CPUC commissioners (pages 8, 9, and 12) in specific proceedings, in anGAO report, and I believe had a role in the positive decision that occurred in the Rural Call Completion in December 2016. 

Daily Acts is excited to announce the 2018 Community Resilience Challenge, an annual community mobilization campaign that runs April through the end of May and inspires thousands of people to save water, grow food, conserve energy, reduce waste, and build community in Sonoma County.

Every day you don’t have solar is another day you are paying too much for electricity. Over the past 18 years, there have been leaps and bounds in the field of grid-tied solar. No longer in the realm of early adopters, solar-powered electricity is a proven technology and investment.

On February 23, roughly 2,000 North Bay residents attended the Rebuild Green Expo in Santa Rosa to learn about options and strategies for rebuilding a greener, healthier, more sustainable and – perhaps most importantly – a more resilient community.

More metallic balloons are sold for Valentine’s Day than any other holiday and, not surprisingly, it’s also around this time of year that customers suffer from outagescaused by unsecured metallic balloons drifting into power lines. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) reminds its customers as they celebrate their sweethearts to make sure balloons are always tied to a weight –as required by California law – and to never release them outdoors.  

His license plate reads WWS ERA, which stands for Mark Z. Jacobson’s predicted era of Wind, Water, and Solar energy. Dr. Jacobson, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford and director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program, spoke at the Praxis Peace Institute in Sonoma on January 4th—an event co-sponsored by Sonoma Clean Power.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) works hard every day to provide safe and reliable electric service to our customers throughout Northern and Central California. In October, strong winds impacted our service area resulting in extraordinary wildfires that devastated parts of Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Mendocino and Lake Counties.

The last three years have been the hottest on record, with last year the hottest year NOT affected by an El Niño. Accompanying this global temperature rise have been record heatwaves, flooding, droughts, Atlantic hurricanes, and, of course, wildfires throughout the Western US, as well as Portugal.

If by this time in the season when you open your stove’s door and smoke pours into the room, the chimney system needs sweeping! With long cold seasons, as this one is, sweeping the chimney 2 times a season is somewhat common.  Don’t ignore this: a clean chimney = good chimney draw (the pull of heat up the chimney) = good heat into the room.