Tech
If every US home and personal vehicle goes electric, power outages could spike unless key measures are taken
A future where all homes and vehicles in the U.S. are fully electrified could overwhelm power supply and risk outages unless key upgrades are made, says a new study conducted by Purdue University engineers. But a few strategies could cut two-thirds of the potential costs of reinforcing the nation’s distribution grid to handle this demand.
Electrifying would mean switching a home’s heating system from a boiler to a heat pump and transitioning from gas- or diesel-fueled vehicles to electric vehicles.
“If we install a whole bunch of new electric heating systems for homes and use more electric vehicles and electric water heaters, then we’re going to increase electricity demand a lot. And that’s basically going to require putting in thicker wires, bigger transformers and other infrastructure into the power grid,” said Kevin Kircher, a Purdue assistant professor of mechanical engineering and faculty member in the university’s Ray W. Herrick Laboratories. “And if that happens, utilities will pass the cost of those upgrades to us, the customers.”
The study, published in Cell Reports Sustainability on Sept. 16, found that reinforcing the U.S. distribution grid, which provides power to residential areas, could cost $350–$790 billion—about $2,000–$6,400 total per household between now and 2050. Much of this cost would be due to increased electric space heating, with the coldest regions of the U.S. experiencing electricity demand peaks up to five times higher than today’s peaks.
But taking measures such as installing better insulation and air sealing, improving equipment efficiency, and coordinating the operation of the home’s electric devices could mitigate the costs of upgrading the grid.
An example of boosting the efficiency of a home’s electrical equipment would be using ground-source heat pumps instead of air-source heat pumps, because the constant ground temperature reduces the energy needed to heat and cool homes. Coordinating the home’s electrical device operation could mean adjusting when the home’s electric vehicle charges so that it doesn’t happen at the same time as the heat pump is in use.
“If electric vehicles could communicate with the heating, ventilation and air conditioning units that we install in the house, and if they can coordinate when they have to charge or when they have to heat or precool the homes, this strategy could contribute to a 40% decrease in grid reinforcement costs,” said Priyadarshan, a Ph.D. student in Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering and the first author of this paper.
“Let’s say there’s a cold snap coming. The heat pump could preheat the house, and the home’s electric vehicles could be charged at a different time to reduce strain on the grid.”
The study focused on each county of the Lower 48 U.S. states. The researchers modeled the grid impacts of fully electrifying homes and vehicles using public surveys of home electricity usage and electric vehicle travel where available for each county, specifications from equipment manufacturers, building code guidelines, and weather data. The team also calibrated the home data against a fully electrified test house in West Lafayette called the DC Nanogrid House.
After analyzing the impact of full electrification on the distribution grid, the researchers adjusted the parameters of their model to include the home weatherization and equipment efficiency strategies they were proposing to cut grid upgrade costs. For their strategy to coordinate electric device operation, they used an optimization algorithm to take into consideration heating, electricity demand and electric vehicle usage and devise an optimal solution for when to charge the vehicles and how hard to run the heat pumps.
Other studies have investigated the future of increased home and vehicle electrification in the U.S. but not on the scale of residential areas by county nationwide.
“On the one hand, it’s kind of scary—if we electrify everything, we might have a crazy expensive future. But on the other hand, if we electrify in a smart way, then we don’t have nearly as many of those problems,” Kircher said.
More information:
Priyadarshan et al, Distribution Grids May Be a Barrier to Residential Electrification, Cell Reports Sustainability (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.crsus.2025.100518. www.cell.com/cell-reports-sust … 2949-7906(25)00214-9
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Tech
Mold Is the Enemy. A Good Dehumidifier Is the Solution
The first thing to think about is how you’re going to drain the water from the dehumidifier. In the basement, the best thing you can do is to use the dehumidifier’s continuous water drain tube to either the sump pump or a drain. If those options are not available, you might be emptying the tank multiple times a day. The first time I put a dehumidifier in the basement, the tank was filled in three hours’ time. It’s all about the drainage. Also, knowing how to read a label. If you have a 50-pint humdidifier that means the appliance can remove 50 pints of moisture from the air in a 24-hour period; it’s not the internal tank capacity. Also, look for the maximum area coverage. For example, the Honeywell Smart 50 pint can remove 50 pints of water from 4,000 sq ft—the size of a whole house—in 24 hours.
If you, like me, also need a dehumidifier in your city apartment, then consider buying one that’s easy to move around with wheels and a handle. Some of these machines are heavy. Also, a small dehumidifier in the bathroom is a good idea to keep the dampness at bay, especially if you have mold growing on your grout.
Lastly, do not drink the water collected in your dehumidifier tank. That water is not potable. Pour it down the drain. A dehumidifier is not creating distilled water; that’s a different process and appliance.
Tech
The Justice Department Released More Epstein Files—but Not the Ones Survivors Want
Over the weekend, the Justice Department released three new data sets comprising files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The DOJ had previously released nearly 4,000 documents prior to the Friday midnight deadline required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
As with Friday’s release, the new tranche appears to contain hundreds of photographs, along with various court records pertaining to Epstein and his associates. The first of the additional datasets, Data Set 5, is photos of hard drives and physical folders, as well as chain-of-custody forms. Data Set 6 appears to mostly be grand jury materials from cases out of the Southern District of New York against Epstein and his coconspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Data Set 7 includes more grand jury materials from those cases, as well as materials from a separate 2007 Florida grand jury.
Data Set 7 also includes an out-of-order transcript between R. Alexander Acosta and the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility from 2019. According to the transcript, the OPR was investigating whether attorneys in the Southern District of Florida US Attorney’s Office committed professional misconduct by entering into a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, who was being investigated by state law enforcement on sexual battery charges. Acosta was the head of the office when the agreement was signed.
Leading up to the deadline to release materials, the DOJ made three separate requests to unseal grand jury materials. Those requests were granted earlier this month.
The initial release of the Epstein files was met with protest, particularly by Epstein victims and Democratic lawmakers. “The public received a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation,” wrote a group of 19 women who had survived abuse from Epstein and Maxwell in a statement posted on social media. Senator Chuck Schumer said Monday that he would force a vote that would allow the Senate to sue the Trump administration for a full release of the Epstein files.
Along with the release of the new batch of files over the weekend, the Justice Department also removed at least 16 files from its initial offering, including a photograph that depicted Donald Trump. The DOJ later restored that photograph, saying in a statement on X that it had initially been flagged “for potential further action to protect victims.” The post went on to say that “after the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”
The Justice Department acknowledged in a fact sheet on Sunday that it has “hundreds of thousands of pages of material to release,” claiming that it has more than 200 lawyers reviewing files prior to release.
Tech
OpenAI’s Child Exploitation Reports Increased Sharply This Year
OpenAI sent 80 times as many child exploitation incident reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first half of 2025 as it did during a similar time period in 2024, according to a recent update from the company. The NCMEC’s CyberTipline is a Congressionally authorized clearinghouse for reporting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other forms of child exploitation.
Companies are required by law to report apparent child exploitation to the CyberTipline. When a company sends a report, NCMEC reviews it and then forwards it to the appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation.
Statistics related to NCMEC reports can be nuanced. Increased reports can sometimes indicate changes in a platform’s automated moderation, or the criteria it uses to decide whether a report is necessary, rather than necessarily indicating an increase in nefarious activity.
Additionally, the same piece of content can be the subject of multiple reports, and a single report can be about multiple pieces of content. Some platforms, including OpenAI, disclose the number of both the reports and the total pieces of content they were about for a more complete picture.
OpenAI spokesperson Gaby Raila said in a statement that the company made investments toward the end of 2024 “to increase [its] capacity to review and action reports in order to keep pace with current and future user growth.” Raila also said that the time frame corresponds to “the introduction of more product surfaces that allowed image uploads and the growing popularity of our products, which contributed to the increase in reports.” In August, Nick Turley, vice president and head of ChatGPT, announced that the app had four times the amount of weekly active users than it did the year before.
During the first half of 2025, the number of CyberTipline reports OpenAI sent was roughly the same as the amount of content OpenAI sent the reports about—75,027 compared to 74,559. In the first half of 2024, it sent 947 CyberTipline reports about 3,252 pieces of content. Both the number of reports and pieces of content the reports saw a marked increase between the two time periods.
Content, in this context, could mean multiple things. OpenAI has said that it reports all instances of CSAM, including uploads and requests, to NCMEC. Besides its ChatGPT app, which allows users to upload files—including images—and can generate text and images in response, OpenAI also offers access to its models via API access. The most recent NCMEC count wouldn’t include any reports related to video-generation app Sora, as its September release was after the time frame covered by the update.
The spike in reports follows a similar pattern to what NCMEC has observed at the CyberTipline more broadly with the rise of generative AI. The center’s analysis of all CyberTipline data found that reports involving generative AI saw a 1,325 percent increase between 2023 and 2024. NCMEC has not yet released 2025 data, and while other large AI labs like Google publish statistics about the NCMEC reports they’ve made, they don’t specify what percentage of those reports are AI-related.
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