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Green Bits and Bytes for January 20th 2011

January 20, 2011 by Tom Raftery

Here are a few of the Green announcements which crossed my desk this week:

A new scheme called SunShare launched in the UK this week. The scheme allows home-owners to invest in solar panels for their home for only a part of the upfront installation costs. This means that qualifying UK homes can now get a fully installed solar PV system for as little as ?3,999, they will benefit from free electricity and they will also be able to earn more than ?1000 a year from the government backed Feed-in Tariff scheme.
The UK Feed-In Tariff scheme is one of the most generous in Europe, paying 41.3p per kWh of electricity produced, regardless of whether it is used by the home-owner or not. The tariff is guaranteed for 25 years and it is index linked for Solar PV Systems.

?The government will review the scheme in 2012, which is likely to see The Feed-in Tariff rates changed from April 2013 for any new homes applying for it. There is therefore a window of opportunity now for consumers to take advantage of the current rates on offer? according to Mark Wynn, Managing Director Avoline PLC, the company which launched SunShare.
Semitech Semiconductor, a Power Line Communications (PLC) chip maker with chips designed to enable communications for the Smart Grid announced yesterday that they had completed its Series A financing raising AU$3.4 million.
The Institute for Transport and Development Policy released a report on Wednesday entitled Europe?s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation [PDF]. The report examines European parking policies over the last fifty years and found that European cities are reaping the rewards of innovative parking policies, including revitalized town centres; reductions in car use; drops in air pollution and rising quality of urban life.
SAP’s rollout of e-mobility infrastructure which I wrote up just before Christmas has now been extended to their German HQ in Walldorf. SAP, in conjunction with local utility MVV Energie, have taken delivery of 30 electric cars and will be testing use of them by their employees as part of their Future Fleet project.
The cars will be powered exclusively with electricity from renewable sources and this will be important given that over 80% of SAP’s direct CO2 emissions in EMEA come from company cars.
On-demand environmental software maker Locus Technologies, announced this week that they have been certified as compliant with SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70). Given that Locus are a SaaS company (i.e. they host their clients environmental information) this is a vrucial certification to have achieved – it gives confidence to Locus customers and potential customers that their data is safe with Locus.

Photo credit .faramarz

JouleX Energy Manager – I’m impressed!

January 19, 2011 by Tom Raftery

After I mentioned in this post that JouleX had recently updated their Energy Manager product to version 2.5 and all the extra functionality that brought, I was curious to find out a little more about them.

I talked to Tim McCormick, JouleX’ VP Marketing and Sales and Mark Davidson, their Sustainability Officer.

I was intrigued to discover that the company was founded in 2009 by former execs from Internet Security Systems, a security company which had been bought by IBM.

Having moved on from ISS, instead of building another app to scan networks looking for threats and vulnerabilities, they created software to go out over the network and sniff out the power consumption information of all devices on the network! They call their solution JouleX Energy Manager (JEM).

What exactly does JEM do? Well, this is where it gets interesting.

JEM pulls in energy information from all kinds of devices. In the office environment, it grabs energy data from computers, printers, VoIP phones, hubs, switches, access points, you name it – anything with an IP address. Similarly in a data centre environment. However, where it really starts to stand out on its own is when it hooks into facilities’ machinery. JEM can grab energy utilisation figures from access control systems, PDU’s, video cameras, CRAC’s, lighting, even HVAC systems.

Even more interestingly, JEM can harvest all this energy utilisation data without needing to install any software agents, or to deploy any smart IP devices/PDU’s or wireless sensors. Nor does it require any changes to be made to the network, or the security of the network. Quite an achievement.

So what does JEM do with all this information?

Joulex Mobile settings screen

Well, as you’d imagine, JEM has quite a comprehensive analytics engine which slices and dices that info by energy cost, energy usage, CO2e, device, manufacturer, date, time, location, business unit, any way you want to look at it. Also what-if analyses allow you to check out the savings from policies before rolling them out, and JEM can even calculate the energy ROI for new buy equipment versus legacy allowing you to validate purchase decisions before buying.

Finally, JEM also has an events-based policy engine which looks at data feeds and implements policies based on events or thresholds. With their JouleX Mobile phone app – the event could be turn off all the devices in Tom’s office (printer, scanner, VoIP phone, computer, lights, wireless access point, etc.) when Tom is more than 500m from the building (using the phone’s inbuilt GPS), and turn them all back on when Tom returns.

In data centres, under utilised servers can have the power reduced to their CPU’s, cutting their energy consumption (JouleX call this Load Adaptive Computing) and organisations can even take advantage of JouleX’ ability to interface with ADR and OpenADR to reduce energy use and sell the unused electricity back to their utility.

In the next version of JEM JouleX will roll out Load Adaptive Networking – this will scale back the power utilisation of routers, switches and other networking equipment when they are not in use – an area which, to-date, has been very poorly addressed.

JouleX have a very comprehensive application here. They have stellar customers and partners. I have a feeling this is a company we’ll be hearing a lot more about.

Photo credit Tom Raftery

Viridity’s new President and CEO Arun Oberoi speaks to GreenMonk

January 18, 2011 by Tom Raftery

We all know data centre’s are massive consumers of energy but just how much? The European data centre consumption was 50 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2008, according to a recent article in the Guardian. This will rise to 100TWh by 2020, roughly the same as the electricity consumption of Portugal.

I mentioned on here just before Christmas that data center energy management company Viridity had named Arun Oberoi as their new President and CEO. Arun has an impressive CV which is outlined in Viridity’s press release about the appointment.

I had the opportunity to chat with Arun recently and he talked to me about Viridity’s solutions.

As Arun put it, the world has done a great job of mapping dependencies to IT Services in the Enterprise Management world but very little has been done so far on bridging the physical world (think power, space and cooling) to the logical world. These are resources which are becoming very expensive but whose ability to be measured and managed has been hampered by the traditional separation of roles between facilities and IT, for example.

Three areas Viridity can help company’s with, according to Arun are

Power and cost savings
Sustainability – emissions reduction and
Mapping physical to logical to ensure optimisation of resources and managing data centre physical constraints (which, unlike IT, can’t be virtualised!)

Viridity’s software takes the data from many, often disparate sources and provides analysis and trending information to allow managers decide how best to reduce their electricity and space costs. The next version will have automation built-in to enable even greater savings!

In an ideal world this would mean that European data centre consumption might only rise to 60 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2020, instead of the projected 100TWh. However, Parkinson’s Law teaches us that data centre’s expand to fill the power available to run them!

Photo credit Tom Raftery

Friday Green Numbers round-up for Jan 14th 2011

January 14, 2011 by Tom Raftery

And here are this week’s Green numbers…

2010 ties 2005 for warmest year on record

Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record for global surface temperature, US government scientists said in a report on Wednesday that offered the latest data on climate change.

The Earth in 2010 experienced temperatures higher than the 20th century average for the 34th year in a row, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Overall, 2010 and 2005 were 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 Celsius) above the 20th century average when taking a combination of land and water surface temperatures across the world, it said.

Those two years were also the highest in temperature since record-keeping began in 1880.

Last year was the wettest on record, NOAA said citing Global Historical Climatology Network which made the calculation based on global average precipitation, even though regional patterns varied widely.

When it came to hurricanes and storms, the Pacific Ocean saw the fewest number of hurricanes and named storms, three and seven respectively, since the 1960s.

But the Atlantic Ocean told a different story, with 12 hurricanes and 19 named storms, which include tropical storms and depressions, marking the second highest number of hurricanes on record and third highest for storms.
IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years

IBM formally unveiled the fifth annual “Next Five in Five” ? a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years:
? You’ll beam up your friends in 3-D
? Batteries will breathe air to power our devices
? You won?t need to be a scientist to save the planet
? Your commute will be personalized
? Computers will help energize your city
Chris Tuppen’s 20 year CRS reflection

Chris left BT after a long and influential career in the company to pursue new pastures in sustainability. He kindly agreed to provide some personal reflections after a 20 year career in the field.

Reflecting back over twenty years of corporate sustainability and then attempting to summarise that into a 500 word blog is an almost impossible task.

Much has changed. Twenty years ago…
GE buys 3rd energy co. in 3 months – Lineage Power for $520m

General Electric has made its first move into the fast-growing business of cutting electricity consumption by the telecoms and computer industries, buying Lineage Power for $520m from The Gores Group, a private equity firm.

The deal is GE?s third acquisition of an energy business in the past three months, as the group implements its plan to focus on infrastructure markets and reduce its reliance on financial services.
Top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010

Corporate greenhouse gas emissions reporting continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As we celebrate the New Year, it’s instructional to take the opportunity to reflect on the highlights of 2010 and their impact on this market. Many of the changes are healthy as sustainability and emissions reporting moves away from “feel good” disclosures towards risk identification and competitive advantage.

Here is my list of the top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010…
Siemens constructing 65km 2GW HVDC line between France and Spain

Siemens Energy is currently erecting the power converter stations for a high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission link between Baixas, to the west of Perpignan in France, and Santa Llogaia, south-west of Figueras in Spain, as important components of the Trans-European Network for electrical power. The installation can transmit a rated power of 2000 megawatts (MW) ? enough to transport large amounts of electric power with a minimum of transmission losses.
Why Greentech Money Is Sliding From Supply to Demand

With 2010 finally behind us, and a full year of data to play with, it appears that green technology investments are firmly shifting from the supply side of the equation to the demand side. In other words, solar and wind power were on the outs last year, and energy efficiency was the up-and-comer.

That?s the conclusion I draw in my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), and while it may not come as a surprise to industry watchers, it?s nice to have some numbers to back it up. Although solar startups continued to draw the most money in venture capital investment last year, energy efficiency startups garnered…

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Green bits and bytes for Jan 13th 2011

January 13, 2011 by Tom Raftery

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

Invensys IMServ, a UK-based carbon and energy solution provider has launched a new programme to help UK schools increase their energy efficiency, reduce their carbon footprint and save money on their energy bills.
SAP Americas was named 2010 Smart Grid Integrator of the Year 2010, North America by The New Economy.
Enterprise energy management company JouleX has upgraded its network-based agentless product JEM to version 2.5. The new version supports a broader set of IT infrastructure devices, improves energy measurement and accuracy, JouleX Mobile allows employees to become more engaged in company’s sustainability initiatives, “load adaptive computing” allocates computing resources based upon system and application utilisation and has significantly upgraded its reporting capabilities.
Tropos Networks, a company which sells wireless broadband network infrastructure, announced the other day that they were selected by more utilities as the company of choice for their smart grid communications infrastructure than any other vendor. Tropos’ CEO Tom Ayers, whom I video interviewed previously here, said

I expect that 2011 will be a banner year of growth for our company and smart grid deployments globally.

Good for them!
UK based Greenstone Carbon Management made me aware recently that Asian-based investment bank Nomura have selected Greenstone’s Acco₂unt carbon accounting software to help measure, manage and report its carbon emissions across the Bank?s operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
After a successful pilot, ARRA recipient Burbank Water and Power (BWP) has selected energy management company Trilliant to implement its smart metering communications infrastructure. Trilliant is partnering with GE for meters, eMeter for Meter Data Management, and Siemens for integration. BWP will utilise Trilliant?s solution to help manage service requests, customer inquiries, meter reading and service interruptions.

Photo credit lissalou66

Lockheed Martin Going Green!

January 12, 2011 by Tom Raftery

When you hear the name Lockheed Martin – you don’t immediately think “Ah, now there’s a Green company” – they are after all, among the very largest defence contractors in the world. In 2008 70% of Lockheed Martin’s revenues came from military sales.

However, after a recent discussion with Dr David Constable, Lockheed Martin’s VP for Energy, Environment, Safety and Health, my impression of the company’s Green credentials has definitely gone up a couple of notches.

Lockheed Martin started their Go Green program in 2008 partially out of a desire to ‘do the right thing’ according to Dr Constable but also in response to increasing concern on their customer’s part to sustainability.

Submarine launch of a Lockheed Trident missile

The US military, for example – America’s largest energy consumer, invested $2.7 billion last year to improve energy efficiency according to President Obama. The US Army’s Environmental Command (the US Army has an Environmental Command? Who knew?) has a comprehensive page of Sustainability Links to How-To Guides, Tools and relevant Green departments, facilities and organisations.

Similarly, the UK’s Ministry of Defence, and Royal Mail, two other large Lockheed Martin customers, both asked Lockheed Martin to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project. According to Dr Constable, in their first year of disclosure, Lockheed Martin were amongst the top performers in their sector and, he said, this next year they aim to improve on that.

With it’s Go Green initiative, Lockheed Martin set itself a goal of reducing its carbon footprint, water footprint and waste-to-landfill footprint by 25% in absolute terms (i.e. not tied to sales revenue) compared to its 2007 baseline, by 2012. For a company with 136,000 employees, 572 facilities in 500 cities and 46 states throughout the U.S. and business locations in 75 nations and territories – this is an ambitious undertaking.

According to Dr Constable though, Lockheed Martin have already met their aim to reduce their water footprint by 25%, they are at 24% waste-to-landfill reduction and 15% carbon emissions reduction. “By definition, being sustainable is a lower cost option”, said Dr Constable, “and the biggest opportunity is in carbon reduction.”

Lockheed have taken a very comprehensive approach to energy efficiency and conservation. Part of it comes from strategic purchasing decisions – buying servers, routers, etc. which are more energy efficient and also purchasing renewable energy – Lockheed Martin are in the top 50 purchasers of renewable power in the US. Lockheed are also using video conferencing technologies more to reduce emissions associated with travel.

With a large portfolio of buildings on its books, LEED certification also plays a large part of Lockheed’s efforts. In fact, Lockheed have a corporate functional procedure (a written policy) in place which mandates that all new construction and renovation above $5 million has to achieve LEED Silver status. Lockheed currently have 19 LEED certified buildings and ‘a lot more in the works’.

Lockheed’s biggest challenges in its Go Green program, according to Dr Constable are getting to grips with the global supply chain – he is currently working with his Global Supply Chain Operations team to address that and they are looking at tools to help them understand the impacts of supply chains.

It remains to be seen if Lockheed Martin will achieve their aim of a 25% reduction in their carbon emissions by 2012 – but to-date they have made a very good start and we have a saying in Irish Tosach maith, leath no hoibre – (a good start is half the work).

And if defence contractors are starting to go Green – that’s reason to be optimistic, right there.

F-22A Photo credit Ronnie Macdonald

SAP talks e-mobility!

December 20, 2010 by Tom Raftery

I visited SAP’s facilities recently on their energy efficiency day and talked to them about their e-mobility initiatives and the rollout of their 16 Coulomb Technologies electric vehicle level 2 charging stations for their employees.

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone! Welcome to the GreenMonk TV. With me, today, I have Geoff Ryder from SAP and Henry Bailey also from SAP. Guys, we are at the SAP headquarters, here, in California, Palo Alto, because Geoff ?

Geoff Ryder: So, we started earlier this year taking a survey of all of our employees and are they interested in electric vehicles. It turned out they are. About 200 said they are in the market for one. So, how can we deal with that as a company? We can take advantage of that to show sustainability, thought leadership, we can also make this appealing to our employees, appealing place to work. So, you?re seeing today the culmination of our planning process. We are deploying 16 Coulomb Technologies charging sessions. These are level 2 charging stations, they?ll be across campus. And we?ll also —

Coulomb Technologies Level 2 electric vehicle charging station

Tom Raftery: Level 2 charging stations, means what?

Geoff Ryder: It?ll be 240 volts, that?s the voltage that you run your dryer off of. So, that?s very capable. It can charge the battery in a faster time than if you trickle charge with 120 volts. So, we think that?s probably the way it?s going to go. People will want to see that in their public charging option. Even at home, I think we?ll see you know Level 2 charging stations coming.

So, today, we?ve actually turned our first charging stations on and as you can see we have a small fleet of electric cars here.

We have our partners from Nissan with LEAF. We have a plug-in Hybrid Prius, we have a Chevy Volt, and further down, it?s hard to see, here but we have a CODA Automotive, a demonstration car.

Tom Raftery: Okay.

Geoff Ryder: Yeah.

Tom Raftery: Henry you?re involved with the e-mobility solutions, so ?

Henry Bailey: Correct.

Tom Raftery: What?s that exactly?

Henry Bailey: So, what we have done is we have looked at — as Geoff mentioned, we?ve got our employees interested in electric vehicles.

We also have a lot of our customers interested in the how to deploy electric vehicles primarily utilities looking at how do they manage the infrastructure when these vehicles start showing up in their service territories.

So, as people buy electric vehicles, they drive them home, now suddenly they?re plugging them into the Grid, which in some cases using the Level 2 charging station that Geoff described could look like another small home being plugged into the Grid.

So, the Utilities have a couple of opportunities, they need to look at how do they manage this new load coming on to the Grid and then also with the purchasing of energy by the home owner and maybe by third parties who are offering these charging stations at retail outlets, parking garages of businesses how do they, basically, settle those charges back to the consumer so that they can, basically, charge anywhere they want roaming freely around the country if you will.

Tom Raftery: The example being, if I go to the local supermarket and plug-in there, how does that charge appear on my electricity bill?

Henry Bailey: Exactly, but there may be different types of settlement options that the consumer wants. They may want it come back to their home energy bill as a separate line item, so they can see exactly what their energy usage is both when they plug it into their home as well as when they are roaming around to different shopping malls, grocery stores, as you are talking about.

They may also want to settle it to the credit cards, they may want to settle it to cell phones and have it as a part of that infrastructure. So, we?re looking at all different options and we also see businesses taking advantage because – take the mall, for example. If you can attract people with electric vehicles to come and stay maybe an extra hour or two giving them some sort of incentive to stay that hour or two by either the convenience and/or electricity at maybe low or no cost to them directly, then that entices them to stay longer, shop more.

So, they?re looking at it as a way to incent the customers to come and visit their place of business.

Tom Raftery: Excellent. Guys, thanks very much.

Geoff Ryder: Thank you.

CODA Automotive’s all-electric car

December 20, 2010 by Tom Raftery

I attended an energy efficiency day at SAP’s Palo Alto facilities and there I met Brian Patnoe of CODA Automotive. He was there showing CODA’s new all electric car so I asked him to tell me about it to camera. Here’s a transcript of the conversation and above the video.

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone! Welcome to GreenMonk TV. I?m at SAP headquarters today and I?m talking to Bryan Patnoe of CODA Automotive. Bryan, you?ve got half a car and a full prototype.

Brian Patnoe: Yeah.

Tom Raftery: Tell me a little bit about CODA Automotive and your half car.

Brian Patnoe: Great, I?d love to. Well, CODA is an all-American all-electric car company. We?re based in Santa Monica, California and we?re very excited to be here to be showing this car.

This car was just shown at the LA Auto Show and we will have this at the Consumer Electronic Show. We?ll be in the GE booth and we?ll also be showing this soon at NASA at the Kennedy Space Center. So, we have a lot of movement, a lot of high-level of interest. What makes our car unique and different – it?s all about the battery.

We have a 34 Kw battery, lithium ion, which is 40% larger than our competition, for instance the LEAF and we also charge twice as fast. We have a 6.6 Kw on board charger. So, it?s very fast. You can charge this car from zero to 100% state of charge in less than six hours, just under 6 hours.

What also makes us very unique is that we have an Active Thermal Management System and the reason why that?s important is because batteries are like people. We like to be kept at a certain temperature, and so if a battery gets too cold or gets too hot, it looses some of its performance and so this car will run at a top speed of 81 miles an hour, but the range of this car is 90 to 120 miles all-weather all-season, which we think is very important.

Tom Raftery: Even on the highway driving?

Brian Patnoe: Highway driving, 80 miles an hour, air conditioning on, you can get that kind of range, sure. The reason why this is important is because most commuters live within — there?s all kinds of statistics out there, but more than half live and drive within 40 miles of work and so what we envision is that people will charge at home and then they?ll drive to the office and they?ll have a Level 2 charger there and they can charge as well.

CODA Automotive's all-electric car

You can also charge as well with an opportunity charger, you can plug it into the wall, a standard wall socket and that?s it. The car will be available for delivery to consumers in the early part of the second half of next year. So, I think in the June, July time frame?ish and we are excited to be bringing this car to market.

Right now its about 40% US content, which is very exciting All Tier-1 suppliers, BorgWarner, Delphi, Lear, UQM, very, very top Tier-1 companies that are supplying components for us and like in today?s market all cars are globally sourced and all cars are part of global collaboration where they?re sourced from all over the world.

The other thing I like to tell you is that we?ve applied for a DoE grant and we?re very excited and we?re waiting by the phone. If we get permission to move forward we?ll be putting a battery facility in Columbus, Ohio.

So, actually we?ll be building this battery in Columbus. If that happens then this car will be 85-90% US content.

Tom Raftery: Okay and how much?

Brian Patnoe: This car has an MSRP of $44,085. After rebates in California you?ve got your federal tax incentive, you?ve got your $5,000 California State Incentive. So, you can take $12,500 off the pricing fuel of the car, and the operating cost of this car is it?s about $0.02 a mile.

Tom Raftery: That?s because it?s running on electricity and I assume also things like you don?t have oil changes.

Brian Patnoe: That?s correct. It has about one seventh of the moving parts of a normal internal combustion engine. So, you?ve got a big motor, you?ve got a inverter, you?ve got some components, but you don?t have the normal types of components on it – the normal ICE. Think of fan belts, alternators, compressors that type of thing.

Tom Raftery: Yeah, okay superb. Bryan thanks a million for showing us about CODA.

Brian Patnoe: Great. Thank you.

Friday Green Numbers round-up 12/17/2010

December 17, 2010 by Tom Raftery

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And here is this week’s Green Numbers round-up with a special shoutout to SAP’s Evan Welsh, who told me recently he loves the Green Numbers posts – thanks Evan!

UK names nine electric cars eligible for subsidy

The government on Tuesday revealed the first nine electric vehicles that will be eligible for their purchasers to receive subsidies of up to 5,000 pounds under a plan to promote low-carbon transport.

Under the scheme, the government has pledged 43 million pounds until the end of March 2012 to help British motorists shift to low-carbon vehicles.

They will receive up to 5,000 pounds towards the purchase of a low-carbon car from January 2011 to the end of March 2012.
Smart Grid Software, Data Mgmt Market To Hit $2.9 Billion in 2015 ? Environmental Management & Energy News ? Environmental Leader

The current world market for Smart Grid software and data management applications is $1.4 billion in 2010, and it will grow to $2.9 billion in 2015 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%, according to The Smart Grid Utility Data Market by market research publisher SBI Energy.

A significant portion of this growth is going to occur in 2011 and 2012, as more American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funded projects in the U.S. are finally given approval.
US set for wave of coal plant closures, report says

… emerging EPA regulations on air quality and water for coal-fired power plants could result in over 50,000 MW of coal plant retirements and require an investment of up to $180 billion for remaining plants to comply with the likely mandates.

Both those numbers go up substantially — retirements by 11-12 GW and needed investment by $30-50 billion — if EPA requires cooling towers in addition to smokestack scrubbers. (This is consistent with the FBR Capital Markets report, which finds a total of up to 70,000 MW of coal on the line.)

By 2020, the authors say, coal plant closures will reduce coal demand by about 15 percent, increase natural gas demand by about 10 percent, and (assuming the coal is replaced by gas) reduce CO2 emissions by 150 million tons.
Power Play: EPRI Analysis Reveals That Video Game Consoles Differ in Energy Consumption

Buyers of video game hardware who like to compare costs and features may want to consider the various systems? energy consumption after the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) tested three top-selling systems and found that a Nintendo Wii? system uses six times less power than a Sony PlayStation ? 3 or Microsoft ? Xbox 360 in active mode.
?We included only a small sample of the many gaming systems available, but it reveals that the differences in energy use can be significant,? said Mark McGranaghan, vice president of Power Delivery & Utilization for EPRI. ??With the holiday shopping season in full swing, now is a good time to consider this factor.?

EPRI tested each system for one hour of active play using EA Sports? Madden 2011 football game, which is widely played on all three game consoles. EPRI found that the Nintendo Wii system used an average of 13.7 watts, the Sony PlayStation 3 used an average of 84.8 watts, and the Microsoft Xbox 360 used an average of 87.9 watts.
Qnuru 6.4W and 9.2W LED Lightbulbs (Product Review)

LED is Coming of Age – To paraphrase William Gibson, the future of lighting is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Light-emitting diodes (LED) lightbulbs have been coming on the market in the past few years, but their quality varies greatly, from “almost perfect” to “horrible” (kind of like the early compact fluorescents). I had the opportunity to spend a few days with two LED lightbulbs from Qnuru, and I’d like to share my impressions with you. Read on for more photos and my review.
U.S. To Invest $184 Million For Advanced Vehicle Research

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today the Department is accepting applications for up to $184 million over three to five years to accelerate the development and deployment of new efficient vehicle technologies that will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, save drivers money, and limit carbon pollution.

Projects will span the broad spectrum of technology approaches, including advanced materials, combustion research, hybrid electric systems, fleet efficiency, and fuels technology.
California Energy Commission Approves Ninth California Solar Project in Four Months!

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has voted to license the 500-MW Palen project and the 150-MW Rice? project in Southern California, which now brings to nine the number of solar thermal power projects approved in the last four months.

Altogether the solar projects comprise 4,142.5MW of solar thermal power to be added to the California grid and will provide more than 8,000 jobs in initial construction, and then more than 1,000 ongoing jobs in operations.

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

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Green bits and bytes for Dec 16 2010

December 16, 2010 by Tom Raftery

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

We have written previously about the savings made possible by rolling out Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System (ILS) in a high-bay environment – well they have done it again! Their latest sale is to United States Cold Storage Inc., who deployed the ILS in its Hazelton Pa facility.
USCS installed the lighting system in their recently built, 88,000-square-foot addition, and they can now light their facility for 3.5? per square foot per year, compared to 46? per square foot with traditional alternatives. USCS expects a return on investment of 14.6 months.
SAP and PlaNet Finance’s joint project to help improve the incomes and living conditions for rural Ghanian women engaged in the Shea nut harvesting and Shea nut butter business posted a nice piece of good news during the week. Stanford University published a case study [PDF] which uncovered significant improvements in nut and butter quality. It also mentions how the women involved have organised into a network so they have a stronger negotiating position and they are achieving higher prices for their produce.
JouleX is a company which helps organisations to monitor, analyse and manage the energy use and waste of IT systems connected to its internal network. JouleX announced this week that its JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) software has been accepted into the Cisco EnergyWise partner program – this enables Cisco to offer JEM as an energy management solution to its customers.
Viridity, a data centre energy resource management software solution provider announced the appointment of Arun Oberoi to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately.
According to a news release from Tropos Networks, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), the City of Santa Clara?s municipal electric utility, has selected Tropos? GridCom as the distribution area communications network for its smart grid program, SVP Meter Connect. SVP serves over 50,000 customers and it expects the SVP Meter Connect project to increase reliability of the utility?s distribution system and finally
ERP software company Epicor announced [PDF] the release of their on-demand carbon accounting solution, Carbon Connect. Carbon Connect is a SaaS delivered carbon accounting solution which allows companies to identify, analyze, audit, track, manage, benchmark and report on their carbon emissions /environmental impact and energy consumption.

Photo credit .faramarz

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