Pecan Street Project. More than smart grid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC5a3Wv2OsQ&feature=player_embedded

The Pecan Street Project [in Austin TX] is a community-wide collaboration to fully reinvent the energy delivery system. It’s more than a smart grid project. Pecan Street is an ambitious effort to empower customers and innovators to use the energy system in new ways while making energy cleaner, water usage more efficient and the [...]

Ice energy storage trial starts in California

Ice makers will be installed on roofs of 1,500 buildings in southern California. They will make ice using cheap wind power at night, then use coolant chilled by the ice during the day to power the air conditioning. This will save the buildings substantial money as well as decrease load on the grid during [...]

Efficiency First rallies US small businesses to support Home Star jobs bill in DC

Every now and again, an idea or concept or product comes along, spreads out all over the place and sets a new standard. Take, for example, ATM machines or UPC Barcode or even the internet; looking back, it’s hard to imagine those innovations not being ubiquitous and ever-present. We just accept them today as being [...]

MIT unveils plane that uses 70 percent less fuel

Their D-series plane, nicknamed the “double bubble”, is a possible replacement for the 737. They designed it for NASA, who wants much higher efficiency airplanes by 2035.

Conventional airplanes utilize a single fuselage design, while the D-series uses two partial tubular shapes placed beside each other — which accounts for the bubble nickname. [...]

Philips’ new 12 watt LED directly replaces 60 watt incandescents

The Philips 12 watt LED screws into ordinary light bulb sockets, is a mere 12 watts, glows in soft white (unlike CFLs), and has a lifetime of 25,000 hours.

The future of lighting is LEDs, CFLs are a transitional product.

We went green for money, not altruism, Wal-Mart ex-CEO

“What Wal-Mart has done is approach this from a business stand point and not from a point of altruism. If we as a company focus on waste, we can make Wal-Mart a better company and at the same time, become a better citizen.”

Because of their huge volume, Wal-Mart has forced suppliers to cut packaging [...]

Flywheel power storage connected to California wind farm

The primary goal of the project is to demonstrate that advanced control technology with energy storage can help expand the delivery of wind energy by effectively increasing the capacity of constrained transmission facilities in the area.

Power generated by the turbines will be stored for future use in the flywheels. IN addition, they flywheels [...]

AT&T New ZERO Charger stops vampire power drain

This is a seriously big deal. It’s A USB compatible universal charger that shuts off the power when the device is charged, saving huge amounts of energy.

It’s the eco-friendly charging solution for your mobile phone. Conventional chargers left plugged in – even when not actively charging – can draw as much as 5 [...]

Cleantech and renewable energy links

First Solar joins Desertec Initiative, a gigantic solar and wind power project in the Sahara to power Africa and Europe.

Comprehensive article on LEDs.

Overview of geothermal energy.

Solar water heaters.

Microbes that eat pollution.

Energy-generating self-heating roadway.

Surplus heat from underground server farms will soon warm Helsinki

The data centre will be cooled using seawater from the Baltic, which falls below 8C from November to May, with the excess heat pumped back into the city’s heating system.

Helsinki already has the infrastructure to handle this. Hot water is heated at central locations then pumped along a 850 mile network to users. [...]