Blogs
But What About the Sunburn on My Ear?
November 13, 2007 8:50 am | CommentsProductive Product: Not everyone can live in a solar-powered European city or build a solar-powered cubist house, but Iqua Ltd.'s solar Bluetooth headset will soon be available to all, the Register reports. Will it work when the skies are cloudy or dark? Will it have comparable sound quality and between-charges life to standard headsets? Will it cause any sunburn on your ear?
PV Start-up Shines in NREL's Eyes
November 12, 2007 7:14 am | CommentsEnergy News: More from the NREL: they announced that a photovoltaics start-up, Wakonda Technologies, is the winner of the Clean Energy Entrepreneur of the Year award. Wakona's name derives from a native American word regarding spirit and nature; they're working on thin films of gallium arsenide for solar cell substrates. Typically thin-film
An Efficient Hodgepodge of News
November 7, 2007 9:06 am | CommentsOp-Ed: Plenty of energy-efficiency news piled up while I was on vacation last week. Much of the time I was at the Mountain View, Calif. Computer History Museum, where they happen to be hosting a few Smart cars. That made me wonder what I was missing back home, so here are
US Energy Lab Gets High-Tech Home
October 29, 2007 11:32 am | CommentsEnergy News: Colorado didn't get a World Series victory, but here's something they can be charged up about: tomorrow the National Renewable Energy Lab will break ground on its new home there. From the press release, Secretary [Samuel] Bodman also is expected to announce two renewable power projects at NREL and
Germans Win Solar Decathlon
October 24, 2007 6:55 am | CommentsEnergy News: Congratulations to the students of Technishe Universität Darmstadt for winning the 2007 Solar Decathlon's top prize of US $100,000. The event involved students from 20 schools who all brought solar-powered homes to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. There are beautiful pictures and videos but here are some of mine from
Ann Arbor Trades Maize and Blue for Green
October 17, 2007 12:44 pm | CommentsEnergy News: City officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan announced a two year plan to convert all 1,046 of its 120W incandescent downtown streetlights to efficient 56W LEDs. They say the $630,000 installation project will save the city $100,000 per year and will reduce
Energi To Go or Not To Go?
October 15, 2007 12:08 pm | CommentsProductive Product: No, that's not a misspelling: Energizer markets its lithium (not li-ion) backup system for portable gadgets with the "Energi To Go" moniker. Basically this is a battery holder fitting one or two AA cells, a power charging and management chip from Techtium, and your connector
That's Teleconferencing: Chuck Peddle Video
October 10, 2007 6:14 am | CommentsVIDEO | Op-Ed: Here's an example of energy savings at a technology conference. MOS 6502 and Commodore legend Chuck Peddle planned to fly to New Jersey to give a 90-minute computer history lecture. But he was stuck in Sri Lanka for his job, so he videoconferenced instead. The twist: instead of using an expensive, professional videoconferencing "solution", Chuck used ordinary Skype
More new links in our library
October 8, 2007 11:39 am | CommentsOp-Ed: Recently we added some new sites to our link library. The total is up to 49 but the three newest are off the beaten path: the Athena Institute, GreenDrinks, and WattWatt. (We truly hope to refer you to sites that are useful, not just a million and one blogs and such.
Clean Demand v. Clean Supply
October 4, 2007 7:35 am | CommentsEnergy News: America's demand for clean energy will beat supply by 37 percent in 2010, the National Renewable Energy Lab will report next week -- that's according to USA Today. They also explain how half of the states require certain percentages of their providers' power to come from clean energy
The Controversial Viability of Solar
October 1, 2007 12:21 pm | CommentsEnergy News: CNN posted a very solid overview story about the state of solar power. The technology, if we lived in a proverbial vacuum, can already provide all the world's energy needs by installing panels in a small corner of the Sahara. But in the real world, cost and security are
Big Blue: CIOs Lousy at Energy Monitoring
September 28, 2007 12:52 pm | CommentsEnergy News: More than a third of enterprise CIOs don't monitor their corporate energy use, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit report, commissioned by IBM. "Although concerns about energy efficiency and global warming are now high on the political agenda, the spotlight
Salmon Sperm Lox in Brightness
September 20, 2007 11:36 am | CommentsEnergy News: DNA from salmon -- specifically, from the fish's sperm -- makes an excellent choice for building extra-bright, biodegradeable light-emitting diodes, researchers at the University of California / Riverside found. It sounds fishy but it's true. “DNA has certain optical
Evolving the BioSnake
September 19, 2007 6:04 am | CommentsOp-Ed: There's a blog post over at CNET about an E85 Dodge Viper which is breaking speed records. They wrote, "More than doubling the horsepower probably had a big effect on the performance of the car, but the extra octane can't hurt. Ethanol also cuts down on the greenhouse gases from the tailpipe."
Metrics Good, Volume Servers Bad
September 18, 2007 12:44 pm | CommentsEnergy News: Two interesting stories today from eWeek: first, the Green Grid member companies signed a Department of Energy agreement for data center metrics; second, coverage of Energy Star director Andrew Fanara's declaration that volume servers are so obviously bad for the green agenda.
