Electric cars sit charging in a parking garage at the University of California, Irvine January 26, 2015. “The Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration”, a $79 million project funded half by federal stimulus money and half by Edison and partners like UC Irvine, was launched in 2010. The $12 billion utility's research team Southern California Edison is testing everything from charging electronic vehicles via cell phone to devices that smooth out the power created by rooftop solar panels. Those are some of the roughly 60 projects in the works at Edison's Advanced Technology division. It has a small $19 million annual budget, but its influence far exceeds that. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Pedestrians are falling after a gust of wind in Munich southern Germany, Tuesday, March 31, 2015. One of the strongest storm fronts in years hit Germany on Tuesday, as Storm “Niklas” uncovered roofs, toppled scaffolding and caused severe disruption to rail services. (Photo by Sven Hoppe/AP Photo/DPA)

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge speaks to soldiers as she arrives at Calgary Airport on July 7, 2011 in Calgary, Canada. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

A woman looks at La Paz city from the Jacha Qhatu cable car station in El Alto, July 23, 2015. Bolivia already has the largest urban cable car system in the world. Now the booming country is tripling the size of the network and will soon have nine lines whizzing above the administrative capital of La Paz. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

People take photographs of waves crashing against the harbour wall on January 3, 2012 in Porthcawl, Wales. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)