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The Energy Blog reports that a private vendor is working with Con Edison to make the grid more secure. We’re intrigued - but concerned that the grid will remain heavily centralized - and not in a position to accept many small, decentralized production nodes - e.g., the solar panel that you’re thinking about putting on your roof.

American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) (NASDAQ: AMSC) and Consolidated Edison, Inc. (Con Ed) (NYSE: ED) have teamed with the Department of Homeland Security on a project to protect New York’s power grid with surge suppressing superconductor cable technology.

Work has started on what is expected to be a $39.3 million project for Con Ed to develop and deploy new high temperature superconductor (HTS) power grid technology in Con Ed’s network in New York City. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is expected to invest up to $25 million in the development of this technology to enable “Secure Super Grids” in the United States. Secure Super Grids utilize customized HTS wires, HTS power cables and ancillary controls to deliver more power through the grid while also being able to suppress power surges that can disrupt service.

Concurrently AMSC introduced a new surge-suppressing, high-capacity superconductor power grid technology – a system-level solution that increases the capacity of power grids while also being able to rapidly suppress power surges. This technology is expected to significantly enhance the capacity, security and efficiency of electric power infrastructures in urban and metropolitan areas around the world, enabling “Secure Super Grids.”

Read more at The Fraser Domain’s Energy Blog.

In a country so harsh about other matters of personal autonomy (sex, in particular) I found it surprising that Iran would have a progressive syringe exchange policy and and a fairly gentle drug regime. From Nazila Fathi’s June 27th piece in the Times, "Iran Fights Scourge of Addiction in Plain View, Stressing Treatment:"

More than a million Iranians are addicted to some form of opium, heroin or other opium derivative, according to the government, and some estimates run as high as 10 million.

In a country where the discussion of some social and cultural issues, like homosexuality, can be all but taboo, drug addiction has been widely acknowledged as a serious problem. It is talked about openly in schools and on television. Posters have encouraged people to think of addiction as a disease and to seek treatment.

Iran’s theocratic government has encouraged and financed a vast expansion in the number of drug treatment centers to help users confront their addictions and to combat the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, through shared needles.

The center in central Tehran, which is called Congress 60 and is run by a private nonprofit agency, is one of 600 centers that provide drug treatment across the country with help from government money. An additional 1,250 centers offer methadone, free needles and other services for addicts who are not ready to quit, including food and treatment for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections.

Iran’s government, trying to curb addiction’s huge social costs, has been more supportive of drug treatment than any other government in the Islamic world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

It was not always this way. After the 1979 revolution, the government tried a more traditional approach: arresting drug users and putting them in jail.

But two decades later, it recognized that this approach had failed. A sharp increase in the crime rate and the number of people infected with H.I.V., both directly linked to a surge in narcotics use, persuaded the government to shift strategies.

"We have realized that an addict is a social reality," said Muhammad-Reza Jahani, the vice president for the Committee Combating Drugs, which coordinates the government’s efforts to fight drug addiction and trafficking. "We don’t want to fight addicts; we want to fight addiction. We need to manage addiction."

Apart from the observation that this is yet another piece of evidence that non-punitive approaches are more effective than "war on drugs" - it also suggest that the Iranian government is capable of changing course, rethinking problems - and thus perhaps - under the right circumstances - able to negotiate.

Tags: drug policy, harm reduction, heroin, Iran, HIV, syringe exchange

Via the Bridge and Tunnel Club:

Fact is, DEP seems to be hoarding its olfactory facts:

From The Daily News of December 3^rd, Matthew Lysiak reports in “DEP dumps pine deodorizer to cover smell from Brooklyn pipe project” that
For more than a year, residents of one Brooklyn neighborhood have been complaining about a stomach-churning smell wafting from the site of a former sewer pipe project.

The city’s response? Tossing nylon socks filled with pine deodorizer into the catch basins.

That hasn’t stanched the stench. In fact, locals say the scent of raw sewage is even more noticeable now.

“I think that adding the pine made the existing smell even more potent,” said Aaron Green, 27, one of the Bay Ridge residents who is sick of the stink.

The stink has been hovering over a stretch of Fort Hamilton Parkway between Marine Ave. and 99th St.

The odor cropped up in the summer of 2006 after the completion of a $6.9 million project to combine the underground sewer pipes there, residents say.

As complaints mounted, the community board notified the city Department of Environmental Protection, which began dumping piney perfume onto the site.

“It seems to have improved the situation,” said Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann.

Not everyone agrees.

“The minute I walk out of my car it hits me,” said Arlene Ross, who lives a few sniffs away. “Whatever they put down there didn’t make it better.”

DEP spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla adamantly refused to say what is causing the smell or how the agency plans to stop it.

Told of the neighborhood complaints, she said more pine socks would be put in the catch basins over the next few weeks.

Pressed further, she said the DEP would eventually install filters.

“We are aware of the odor and we are monitoring the situation closely,” Padilla said.

Via the Bridge and Tunnel Club.

UPDATE: In order to avoid prolonging this - and the inevitable Hamlet references (”something rotten in the …,” etc.) - we’ve put a call into the office of Borough President Marty Markowitz - so perhaps we’ll be able to clear the air. So to speak.