Yes coal has slightly gone up in 2025, but it's dropped so much from the peak usage in 2007 that current usage is comparable to the early 1970s.

From the chart U.S. electricity generation by major energy source, 1950-2025 on Electricity generation, capacity, and sales in the United States:

1971 = 713 Billion kWh
1972 = 771 Billion kWh
...
2007 = 2016 Billion kWh - peak usage
...
2024 = 652 Billion kWh
2025 = 737 Billion kWh - lower than 1972

Note: use Click to enlarge below the chart to get a larger view, then mouse over the chart to see detailed numbers for each year.

So the plans may not be worth it if you cannot shift usage. I was on a free-nights plan in 2018 and was able to drop my bill by 20% vs the regular rate plan by having my Model 3 charge in the middle of the night and by using the delayed start feature on my washer and dishwasher.

I moved off the free-nights plan in 2019 after installing solar and switched to a net-metering plan, which was awesome.

The net metering plan's now gone. My current plan has time-of-use rates of $0.127/kWh from 6pm-9pm, $0.09/kWh all other times, and I get paid market rates for excess solar. Market rates aren't worth as much as net-metering, so I charge up a Powerwall during the day and run the house with it from 6pm-9pm. I also have my Model 3 configured to charge only on excess solar, which works well for me because I work from home.

In Texas Wind Power peaks at night, resulting in us having numerous free-nights electric plans to chose from. These work great with for EV owners.

Texas Solar Power has grown enough that we're now getting free-days electric plans such as from Chariot Energy and Direct Energy

How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

Commodore BBS Sysop here, I wrote and ran The Dragon's Lair in Corpus Christi, and later Houston when I moved here for college. It originally ran on my VIC-20. I migrated my software to the C= 64 and C= 128 when I acquired those computers. We had PETSCII movies such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I also wrote MusicTerm, a custom terminal program that added features like 3-voice music, font control, sprite control, ability to play online games using your joystick, etc. If you're interested to learn more I blogged about it here, which includes a video of what a caller might experience.

A friend ran a BBS on his Atari so I added ATASCII support to my terminal program so I could call his BBS. The Atari BBS had ATASCII movies, such as Bruce Lee, which were similar to PETSCII movies just without color.

Tesla's done test drives for years, even here in Texas where they're not allowed to do direct sales. Due to state law they call the storefronts "galleries" where you can check out (and sit in) the different models and take them for test drives, though they're not allowed to discuss price or help you order the car.

In 2020 I tweeted about my folks' test drive of the Model Y as they were deciding between getting a Model 3 like mine or the larger Model Y. They ended up buying a Y.

You can schedule test drives ahead of time, or do so while you're checking out the cars at their storefront. In 2023 we checked out the Cybertruck and ended up taking a test drive of a Model X that we hadn't originally planned to do.

Long story short, have you tried the VLC app on your Apple TV for media on your local network?

I bought a Vizio PX75-G1 back in 2019 and originally used a Mac mini to drive it. I have HDHomeRun tuners and used the mini for OTA content - live TV and DVR functionality. The mini was also my media server with my content stored on a Drobo 8D and organized in iTunes.

After Drobo went under I ended up getting a Synology NAS that replaces both 8D as well as the Drobo 5D I used on my Mac Pro. I then learned the Synology could run the DVR software, as well as serve up media, so use the Synology for that now instead of the mini. I migrated the DVR software and setup Plex (I have a Lifetime Plex Pass from before they started to make all the changes). I was still using the mini for playback.

My physical media includes a lot of content from Europe - there's a major benefit of importing older European shows as PAL content is 576i whereas NTSC content is 480i, so a 20% increase in picture resolution which is quite noticeable on modern TVs.

I picked up an Apple TV 4K after learning it could play back 50 Hz content at 50 Hz provided the TV supported it, which the Vizio does. This eliminates the normal judder seen when watching 50 Hz content played back at 60 Hz - this judder is quite noticeable during scenes that pan the camera.

While I don't use it often, I have used the aforementioned VLC app on my Apple TV to play back content that wasn't in Plex. While not as nice as the Plex interface, VLC can drill down thru the Synology's filesystem to find and play content.

as the backlash if they don't respect the setting would be huge.

The backlash from me would be to use the Go Off-Grid option during the emergency, after which I'd switch to a different electricity provider.

I participate in Tesla Electric's Virtual Power Plant in Texas. It's similar to this pilot program in Massachusetts, it just uses my Powerwall instead of my Model 3's battery to help out the grid in periods of high demand.

In Tesla app there is a slider for the Powerwall called Backup Reserve. It controls how much of the Powerwall is reserved for home backup, the remainder can be used for the Virtual Power Plant. It defaults to 20%, I bumped mine up to 30%.

I would expect to see a similar option for EV to Grid.

They're trying to make DRM part of the transition to ATSC 3.0. I've been using SiliconDust HDHomeRun network tuners since 2013 and now have a couple of their 4K units that support ATSC 3.0 Here in Houston the 3.0 broadcasts for KHOU (CBS) and KTMD (Telemundo) now have DRM. This is what I see if I attempt to watch those broadcasts.

This has also been causing problems with TVs with build in 3.0 tuners, so it's not just a problem with networked tuners like the HDHomeRun - ATSC 3.0 TV Sets Won’t Decode DRM Encrypted Channels

When introduced:

Betamax - 250 lines of horizontal resolution, 1 hour per tape

VHS - 240 lines of horizontal resolution, 2 hours per tape

For most the significantly longer recording time of VHS, over the slightly better picture quality of Betamax, was the deciding feature. Later updates to both formats increased recording time at the expensive of picture quality, though it wasn't soon enough for Betamax.

Maybe, but based on the responses seen here on Slashdot, ABC's coverage is fanning a political conflict despite the US fairing significantly better than our immediate neighbors during the current global outbreak of measles.

From Ten countries in the Americas report measles outbreaks in 2025 we can see that Mexico and Canada already had more cases back in August than the US does now at the end of the year despite them having much smaller populations than the US.

Countries with the highest case numbers include Canada (4,548 cases), Mexico (3,911 cases), and the United States (1,356 cases).

I find it interesting that ABC chose not to mention this pertinent information, makes me wonder what other news they're suppressing.

When I got my first Model 3 in 2018 charging at Hotels was free. That's changed over the past few years. I don't mind as long as it's reasonable, such as I've charged at this Fairfield Inn in Corpus Christi for $0.25/kWh. Superchargers are about 30% more expensive.

I noticed a couple years ago that Apartments.com added a filter for EV Charging. Right now for Houston there are 54,474 units available of which 8,407 have EV charging.

So 15.4% of them have EV charging, which exceeds the 6% market share that EVs have in Texas.