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Technology for Good – episode thirty two with SAP’s Sameer Patel

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Welcome to episode thirty two of the Technology for Good hangout. In this week’s episode we had SAP‘s Sameer Patel as the guest on our show. Sameer and I are members of the Enterprise Irregulars group – a loose group of analysts and vendors with an interest in enterprise software. Previous Enterprise Irregulars who have guested on the show include David Terrar, Craig Cmehil, and Jon Reed.

There was a problem which wasn’t apparent to us during the show and that was that the video from my side never showed up in the recording. I suspect that’s because I was using a beta version of Chrome, but anyway, the audio, and Sameer’s video feed was recorded, so all’s well.

This week we didn’t get through all the stories we had lined up, ‘cos we had such a good discussion around the ones we did manage to fit in!

Some of the more fascinating stories we looked at on the show, included the growing number of technology companies who are abandoning ALEC, IBM’s new concentrating solar array which can create clean water, as well as solar power, and a new smartphone app which will help visually challenged users to read.

Here is the full list of stories that we covered in this week’s show:

 

Climate

Renewables

Lighting

Transportation

Data Centres

Connectivity

Drones

Hardware

Apps

Education

 

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Internet of Things connected Philips Hue bulbs review

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After we wrote a post about the Lifx, Internet of Things connected LED lights a few weeks back, we reached out to Philips to see if we could get a Philips Hue kit to try out for comparison. Philips obliged and sent us a kit which contains 3 LED lights, and a Hue bridge.

Philips Hue bridge

Philips Hue bridge

As a bit of background, the way the Philips Hue system works is that you receive a device called a bridge with your bulbs which you need connect into your internet router. This device talks to the Philips Hue bulbs over the ZigBee protocol, and also is capable of connecting to the Internet via your router. Thus your Philips Hue bulbs are capable of being controlled not just from inside your home, but also from outside the home using the free Philips Hue smartphone app (available for both Android and iOS).

The smartphone app has a lot of extra functionality built-in. The app enables users:

  • to change the colour of the light coming from the bulbs (across the full spectrum of visible light), as well as the intensity
  • to use pre-built recipes which come with the app for different light intensities and colours. These recipes are editable, and owners can create their own recipes and share them with the Hue community
  • set-up Geofencing, so it’s possible to have the lights automatically go off when you leave home, and come on when you approach home
  • create alarms such that the lights simulate a sunrise early in the morning, or a sunset late at night. The sunrise functionality can be especially useful if you find it hard to awake on dark winter mornings
  • to control lights remotely – this is useful if you don’t use the geofencing functionality and you want to check if you turned the lights off after you go out, or if you don’t want to enter a dark home
Philips Hue Bridge Power consumption

Philips Hue Bridge Power consumption

The bulbs, as can be seen in the video give out good light (600 Lumen at full intensity) over a large range of colours, and using very little electricity. Typical consumption, at full intensity, and a colour temperature of around 3000K, is 5W. However, the bulbs also draw a constant 0.4W when they are turned off by the app (as opposed to being turned off at the physical switch). This is so they can maintain their Zigbee connection to the bridge, in order to be able to come respond to the smartphone app (alarms, remote on/off requests, geofencing, etc.). And the bridge itself consumes a constant 1.6W, so the three bulbs, plus the bridge, have a baseline consumption of 2.8W.

When you compare the 2.8W to 60W from a conventional incandescent bulb, it doesn’t appear to be a huge draw, but over 24 hours it does add up (it is the equivalent of leaving a 60W bulb on for a little over an hour and seven minutes per day).

To avoid burning the constant 2.8W you can of course turn the bulbs off at the wall (or the switch). Then they are no longer in ‘listening mode’ and consume 0W, instead of the constant 0.4W. In this scenario, the electricity draw is reduced to just the 1.6W from the bridge. Over 24 hours this is equivalent to leaving a 60W bulb on for just over 38 minutes. The advantage of this approach is lower electricity consumption, the disadvantage is that the Hue bulbs are no longer connected to the Internet of Things.

This constant nibbling of power by the Hue devices is by no means unique to Philips. By definition any devices constantly connected to the Internet are also constantly consuming power – which raises interesting questions around the costs and benefits of Internet of Things connected devices.

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9 things you need to know about Lifx’s Internet of Things connected LED light

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Philips 12W CFL bulb

Back in September 2012 I saw a Kickstarter campaign entitled LIFX: The Light Bulb Reinvented. The campaign promised to deliver

a WiFi enabled, multi-color, energy efficient LED light bulb that you control with your iPhone or Android

This sounded great. Energy efficient, LED bulbs which could change colour to match/create moods, and which you could control from your Smartphone? Where do I sign up? Well, I signed up on the Kickstarter page, obviously.

This morning, the Lifx bulbs I bought were delivered, so I decided to put them to the test.

The photo at the top of this post is of a lamp in my home powered by a 12W Philips CFL bulb. I swapped out the CFL for the Lifx LED bulb and I was immediately impressed with how quickly it lit up and how bright it is.

Here’s a comparison of the same lamp with first the CFL bulb, and then the Lifx LED bulb:

Both lamps side by side

The photos were taken with identical camera settings* but look different due to the different brightness of the lights, and the different colour of their light. The lamp on the left is being lit by the Philips 12W CFL bulb, while the lamp on the right is being lit by the Lifx 17W LED wifi connected bulb.

A few comments in favour of the LED light –

  1. While it may look like the CFL bulb is brighter, in fact, that’s because most of its light is aimed downwards, while the LED bulb’s light is beamed upwards away from the table. In fact, the LED bulb is considerably brighter
  2. While not obvious from these photos, the LED bulb lights up instantaneously, whereas the CFL takes a good minute to come to full brightness
  3. The CFL is one colour, but the LED is whatever colour you set it to and
  4. The LED can be controlled from its Smartphone app over wifi

    5.   
    On the other hand –

    Side by side comparison of CFL and Lifx LED bulbs

  5. The LED bulb is much bigger and heavier than the CFL bulb (this may, or may not be an issue for you)
  6. The LED bulb generates a LOT of heat
  7. The LED bulb, when turned off by the app, still consumes 2.7W of electricity (maintaining wifi so it can be turned on again presumably). To avoid this, it needs to be physically turned off at the switch.
  8. The LED bulb is expensive ($89 in the Lifx store) and
  9. Unfortunately the Lifx bulb is not remotely accessible – you need to be connected to wifi to turn it on or off, so if you’re out and realise you’ve forgotten to turn your lights off, there’s no way to turn them off from your smartphone (unless the very cool Revolv app starts to support Lifx bulbs).

    10.   
    And one more bonus thing you need to know (added after I was alerted to this by Andy Piper and I confirmed it as an issue with my Lifx bulbs)

  10. If you switch the Lifx bulb off at the wall, the bulb forgets its previous setting i.e. if you like a warm yellow light, and set it to that colour, as soon as you turn it off at the wall, it reverts to its default bright white on turning on again.

Bottom line – the Lifx bulb is a nice little bulb and a great job by its developers for a v1.0 of their first product. Having said that, its main competitor seems to be the Philips Hue series of wifi connectable, colour variable, smartphone controllable bulbs, and they’re for sale on Amazon.com for $59.97 which is far cheaper than the Lifx at $89. Also, Revolv support the Hue series of bulbs, so it is likely they are remotely controllable. Given that, unless Lifx addresses particularly the cost issue, I’d have to advise anyone interested in Internet of Things connected lighting to look at the Philips solution instead. If I get my hands on the Philips bulbs, I’ll review them here subsequently.

One final note, the Philips CFL bulb rated at 12W was actually drawing 13.5W, while the Lifx bulb rated at 17W was drawing between 17W and 18W.

*Both photos were taken with the camera on full manual mode with shutter speed at 50, ISO at 200, aperture at 4.5, and white balance set for fluorescent light (4000k approx).

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Green bits and bytes for April 28th 2011

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Green bits & bytes

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I haven’t done a Green bits and bytes posting in a while so here are some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this last few weeks:

  1. Siemens has started a Smart Grid Innovation Contest, basically you submit new ideas that could be implemented in the near future, add supporting material (images, business plan, etc.), tag it and submit. You can submit more than one idea and all ideas can be viewed, commented on and rated. And there are lots of prizes to be won too.
  2. Switch Lighting have announced a new LED technology “that produces the brightest warm light LED replacement bulb available. The switch bulbs are dimmable and were designed with Cradle-to-Cradle principles in mind, according to Switch. ?The unique design of Switch bulbs signals the company?s intention to offer brilliant lighting as a service for humanity,? says William McDonough, who developed the Cradle to Cradle protocol with German chemist Michael Braungart. What’d be great is if they had a way to buy the bulbs on the site!
  3. Sandbag issued a report [PDF] outlining how the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is building up a mountain of surplus pollution permits, instead of reducing the growth of emissions. These banked permits will allow pollution to grow unchecked for years.

You should follow me on Twitter here

Photo credit .faramarz

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Green bits and bytes for Feb 24th 2011

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Green bits & bytes

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

  1. Digital Lumens, maker of Intelligent LED Lighting Systems, today announced that its Midbay fixture is the only ?Recognized Winner? in the Industrial Category of the Next Generation Luminaires competition. The competition is jointly organized by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as part of a broad initiative to advance solid-state lighting technology and adoption.
  2. Symphony Environmental Technologies, a maker of degradeable plastics has announced [PDF] the signing of a 25 year distribution agreement for its products throughout the US. According to their announcement, “The core of Symphony?s business is a suite of chemical formulations called d2w, which turn plastic at the end of its service-life into a material with a completely different molecular structure. At that stage it is no longer a plastic and can be safely bioassimilated in the open environment in the same way as a leaf”
  3. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a new report detailing the full range of subsidies that have benefited the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States over the last 50 years. The report found that subsidies for the entire nuclear fuel cycle — from uranium mining to long-term waste storage — have often exceeded the average market price of the power produced. In other words, if the government had purchased power on the open market and given it away for free, it would have been less costly than subsidizing nuclear power plant construction and operation.
  4. The International Aluminium Institute has launched a new Website, Aluminium for Future Generations to highlight the recycling advantages of aluminium products. The site provides data on recycling rates and energy and emissions savings; measures that are central to the aluminium industry’s sustainability strategy of reducing the environmental impact of its facilities, increasing the use of aluminium in energy saving applications and maximising the recycling of products at the end of their useful life.
  5. Environmental Business Journal, a business research publication that provides strategic business intelligence for the environmental industry, announced the winners of its 2010 Business Achievement awards. One of those awarded was Locus Technologies, who were awarded an IT Companies Business Achievement award for ” for growth in revenue, client base, and product introductions”

You should follow me on Twitter here

Photo credit .faramarz

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SAP’s Palo Alto energy efficiency and CO2 reductions

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Cisco Telepresence

As mentioned previously, I was in Santa Clara and Palo Alto last week for a couple of SAP events.

At these events SAP shared some of its carbon reduction policies and strategies.

According to SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Peter Graf, the greatest bang for buck SAP is achieving comes from the deployment of telepresence suites. With video conferencing technologies SAP is saving ?655 per ton of CO2 saved. This is hardly surprising given Cisco themselves claim to have saved $790m in travel expenditure from their telepresence deployments!

Other initiatives SAP mentioned were the installation of 650 solar panels on the roof of building 2 which provides for around 5-6% of SAP’s Palo Alto energy needs. This means that on sunny days, the SAP Palo Alto data centre can go completely off-grid. The power from the solar panels is not converted to AC at any point – instead it is fed directly into the data centre as DC – thereby avoiding the normal losses incurred in the conversion from DC->AC->DC for computer equipment. Partnerships with OSISoft and Sentilla ensure that their data centre runs at optimum efficiency.

SAP also rolled out 337 LED lighting systems. These replaced fluorescent lighting tubes and because the replacement LED lights are extremely long-life, as well as low energy, there are savings on maintenance as well as electricity consumption.

Coulomb electric vehicle charging station at SAP HQ in Palo Alto

SAP has placed 16 Coulomb level two electric vehicle charging stations around the car parks in its facility. These will allow employees who purchase electric vehicles to charge their cars free of charge (no pun!) while they are at work. SAP has committed to going guarantor on leases for any employees who plan to purchase electric vehicles. We were told to watch out for a big announcement from SAP in January in the electric vehicle space!

In its entirety, SAP has invested $2.3m in energy efficiency projects at their Palo Alto campus. This will lead to $665,000 savings per annum with a payback in under four years and an annual CO2 emissions reduction of over 807 tons.

This may sound like small potatoes but SAP intends to be both an exemplar and an enabler – so they want to be able to ‘walk the walk, as well as talking the talk’.

One of the points that SAP constantly mention in briefings is that while their CO2 emissions amounted to 425,000 tons for 2009, the CO2 emissions of their customer base, associated with their running SAP software is 100 times that and the total CO2 emissions of their customer base is 100 times that again! Consequently SAP sees itself as potentially having sway over a large portion of the world’s carbon emissions. SAP hopes to be able to use this influence to help its client companies to significantly reduce their emissions – and to use its software to report on those same reductions!

Two questions I forgot to ask SAP on the day were:

  1. if they were getting any rebates from their utility (PG&E) for energy reductions? and
  2. if the car charging stations were being run from the solar panels (and if so, were they also running DC-DC directly)?
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Digital Lumens intelligent LEDs cut Maines energy for lighting by 87%

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Digital Lumens and Maines Before and after
Photo of before and after installation of Digital Lumens lighting system in Maines Paper & Food Service courtesy of Digital Lumens.


Digital Lumens reduced the cost of lighting for their first customer by 87%.

Digital Lumens specialise in high-bay lighting for warehouses, cold storage facilities, and manufacturing plants. This is a mostly invisible but very large segment. It is estimated that in the US alone, $5bn worth of lighting is sold into the supply chain sector every year.

Mike Feinstein, Digital Lumens’ VP of Sales and Marketing, told me on a recent call that they are very much a start-up company and that they have had their first revenues in this calendar year.

In a recent press release Digital Lumens reported that their first large-scale customer, Maines Paper & Food Service has reduced their energy requirements for lighting by 87% since installing the Digital Lumens lighting system. Up until now, Maines 500,000 sq ft (46,450 sq meters) warehouse was lit using sodium lights 24 x 7 and lighting costs made up around 20% of Maines total energy spend.

With the new system Maines expects to save 1,726,108kWh per year which, at a cost of US$0.0958 per kWh for industrial customers in New York, amounts to a $ saving of just over $165,000 per annum. This saving, combined with an incentive provided by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), means that Maines will recoup the cost of this project in less than a year!

I was fascinated with this story so I spoke to Pat DeOrdio, the VP of Operations for Maines.

Pat told me that Maines were doing a full analysis of their lighting to see how “we could reduce our kW off the grid and help with our Green initiatives” when they came across the Digital Lumens solution.

For Pat, what was particularly compelling about the intelligent lighting system was the management software which came with it

“With Digital Lumen’s lights, every one of them is like a little computer. It has its own IP address so we are able to control that lighting level – if we want to have the light turn off in 30 seconds, 60 seconds or when nobody’s in the aisle, you know, why do you want it lit? It gives us the ability to control the light level from a computer and it reduces our energy cost”

Of course another big advantage of the LED lights is the fact that they give out so much less heat. This is particularly important in large cold rooms and freezers because it reduces the workload on the chillers cooling the rooms

Three other big advantages Pat cited to the Digital Lumens’ solution were that:

  1. They allowed lights to be turned down to a ‘nightlight mode’ – 10% light. This was important in the large warehouse setting for worker safety.
  2. The total flexibility of the system means that, in Pat’s words “as we get used to it, maybe we’ll only turn the light up to 80%, cos that’s all the light level we’ll need” – allowing for further savings and
  3. The colour of the light is much brighter now so the produce they are stocking even looks better!

LED lighting is making huge strides now in commercial settings. When the Sentry Equipment Corporation in Oconomowoc, Wis., was considering how to light its new factory, it decided to go with LED’s. From the New York Times report on the building:

By lighting all of the building?s exterior and most of its interior with L.E.D.?s, Sentry spent $12,000 more than the $6,000 needed to light the facility with a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. But using L.E.D.?s, the company is saving $7,000 a year in energy costs, will not need to change a bulb for 20 years and will recoup its additional investment in less than two years.

Kaj den Daas, chairman and chief executive of Philips Lighting, one of the largest manufacturers of lighting globally, in an interview two years ago said ?We are not spending one dollar on research and development for compact fluorescents.? Instead, the bulk of its R.& D. budget, which is 5.2 percent of the company?s global lighting revenue, is for L.E.D. research. Philips is betting the store on the L.E.D. bulbs, which it expects to represent 20 percent of its professional lighting revenue in two years.

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How many countries does it take to change a light bulb?

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Light bulb

Photo credit _Beat_???

Well, the EU thinks it takes 27 countries to change the light bulb. And they may well be right.

Today the EU brings into force a ban on frosted and incandescant lightbulbs of 100W and over. This is the first part of a program to completely phase out incandescent light bulbs in the EU by 2012. According to the EU announcement, as a result of this

EU citizens will save close to 40 TWh (roughly the electrictity consumption of Romania, or of 11 million European households, or the equivalent of the yearly output of 10 power stations of 500 megawatts) and will lead to a reduction of about 15 million tons of CO2 emission per year.

However, this message doesn’t appear to be getting through to many of the EU citizens with many reports of people hoarding 100W lightbulbs across Europe.

Recycling CFL Lightbulbs

Recycling CFL Lightbulbs

Reasons for the hoarding are understandable. The light quality from CFL’s is not comparable to incandescents. CFLs lights are not dimmable. They are more expensive (at least as an initial outlay) and they need to be disposed of carefully as they contain small amounts of mercury. Fortunately our local Hipercor store has a special collection point for safe disposition and recycling of CFL’s. If your shop doesn’t, ask them why not!

However, on the positive side, what this ban does is it creates a large market of consumers (EU population is approx 500m people) hungry for good lighting solutions. This should act as a serious spur for innovation in the lighting space. The current alternatives to incandescent lights are CFL’s, Halogen lights and LEDs.

Of these, the CFLs have the limitations outlined above. Halogen bulbs have light quality equivalent to incandescents but they are not very energy efficient, saving at best 25-50% over incandescents (as compared to CFLs saving typically 75%) while still being expensive and LEDs are still quite an immature technology.

The LED light though holds the most promise. LEDs are mercury free, they are fully dimmable, their lifetime can be 50,000 to 60,000 hours (or about 10 times longer than an average CFL), there is no bulb or filament to break and they are extremely energy efficient. There are some barriers to their widespread adoption currently (they are expensive to produce and LEDs are quite directional) but the sudden appearance of a marketplace of 500m people will definitely act as an incentive to invest in overcoming these difficulties.

Thanks in no small part to today’s ban, in a few short years I expect we will all be using LEDs to light our homes and reducing our carbon footprint considerably in the process.

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GreenMonk Energy & Sustainability show – 30th March 09

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This is an archive copy of this week’s GreenMonk Energy & Sustainability show and the chat stream is below:

05:31 TomRaftery : Anyone seeing video? Hearing audio?
05:31 paulsavage : I see it
05:31 ustreamer-9468 : not yet tom
05:31 paulsavage : and I hear
05:31 paulsavage : Doing good
05:31 mikeTheBee : Hi tom
05:31 ustreamer-1659 : You’re on for me Tom – john P, Cork
05:31 mikeTheBee : Yep
05:31 ustreamer-9468 : ok starting
05:31 ustreamer-9468 : got ya now
05:31 TomRaftery : ustreamer 9468 not seeing me anyone else having problems?
05:31 ustreamer-9468 : dublin is good!
05:32 TomRaftery : Good, good,
05:32 mikeTheBee : May need to reload
05:33 paulsavage : 8:30 in LA
05:34 TomRaftery : http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/24/woodchips-with-everything
05:34 mikeTheBee : Like Charcoal
05:38 mikeTheBee : 14 viewers
05:38 ustreamer-9468 : down to african levels …
05:39 mikeTheBee : 15 viewers
05:39 TomRaftery : http://www.whitehouse.gov/openforquestions/
05:40 TomRaftery : http://greenmonk.net/what-will-it-take-for-america-to-wake-up-to-the-threat-of-climate-change/
05:42 paulsavage : Did you submit any questions ?
05:44 ustreamer-9468 : scary bigtime
05:45 mikeTheBee : There are plenty of deniers in the media
05:46 TomRaftery : http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/03/23/the-ecodrain-cuts-water-heater-use-by-40/
05:48 mikeTheBee : neat if 40% is the figure
05:48 paulsavage : Really smart idea. I guess it’s for electric showers ?
05:48 mikeTheBee : Just have a cold shower
05:48 TomRaftery : http://blogs.msdn.com/see/archive/2009/03/25/wwf-studies-find-information-technology-significantly-reduces-climate-impacts-costs-of-doing-business.aspx
05:49 monkchips : wash less, you’ll even smell green 😉
05:49 monkchips : top of the afternoon to ya
05:49 mikeTheBee : 6 Viewers
05:49 mikeTheBee : Correction 16
05:50 TomRaftery : http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10203013-54.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1
05:51 mikeTheBee : km
05:51 mikeTheBee : not mph
05:51 paulsavage : 265 km / h ??
05:51 monkchips : yup
05:51 mikeTheBee : wow
05:51 monkchips : love train travel!
05:51 ustreamer-57460 : Me from BCN. Help me a lot. Save money & time!
05:52 monkchips : tom but what about links? its no good if you want to then fly from madrid
05:53 monkchips : train – there are those that would claim otherwise
05:53 divydovy : and key = CO2 emitted at ground level not up in atmosphere
05:53 ustreamer-57460 : waiting for the new basque “Y” trains
05:54 monkchips : the dutch airline VLM claims their fokkers are greener than train engines http://www.flyvlm.com/emc.asp?pageId=1153
05:54 monkchips : the dirty fokkers
05:54 ustreamer-3567 : In Ottawa-Montreal corridor, even without a high speed train, the math still works. And I was able to work with more space too. In Pacific NW of US, we don’t even have that
05:55 ustreamer-1659 : But surely there will be opportunities for may more people on trains than plane capacity …
05:55 divydovy : must be fokking cramped in there
05:55 ustreamer-1659 : Agree Tom…
05:55 mikeTheBee : 8 Viewers
05:55 mikeTheBee : 8 viewers
05:56 mikeTheBee : 8
05:56 paulsavage : if you travel without any extra weigh (baggage) , or filled up with people who are less than 50kgs 😉
05:56 mikeTheBee : ighteen
05:56 TomRaftery : http://www.physorg.com/news157200916.html
05:56 monkchips : oh yeah- wrong link. here is the trains vs planes argument http://www.flyvlm.com/myDocuments/04/004%2F080915_co2factsheet_uken.pdf
05:56 mikeTheBee : Nineteen
05:57 paulsavage : my screen shows 22 views
05:57 paulsavage : viewers*
05:57 ustreamer-25233 : fish – what about hormones in meet
05:57 monkchips : straight
05:57 monkchips : hormones in meat- indeed. my son eats meat and that one drives me nuts
05:58 paulsavage : ryanair would love to do that. 😉
05:58 ustreamer-1659 : Ryanair’s next strategy 😉
05:58 mikeTheBee : Ryanair does!
05:58 ustreamer-1659 : LOL x 3!
05:58 mikeTheBee : But not your Body, yet
05:59 ustreamer-25233 : flying – most CO2 is created in taxing on run way and circiling over heathrown waiting to land – why cannot they fix that – eg use tow on airstrip to and from gate, and not hang about over London for 30 mins waiting to land
05:59 TomRaftery : http://www.regeneration.org/2009/03/24/led-there-be-light/
05:59 cgarvey : If it’s cost-based and done fairly, (as an overweight person!), I’d welcome the move
05:59 monkchips : @ustreamer-25233 its one reason i LOVE city airport in london… in and out, no taxi ing or circling
06:00 mikeTheBee : cfl destroy IR remote signals too
06:00 monkchips : tom we don’t need new technology so much as turn the things off when you’re not using them
06:00 monkchips : earth hour we didn’t even make a difference to the grid, but it was a powerful statement
06:01 monkchips : to see the sydney harbour bridge and houses of parliament tower with lights off
06:01 ustreamer-14148 : Have any stats been published on the effect of Earth Hour?
06:01 cgarvey : dimmable, hue/colour/warmth of light, startup time, etc.. all confusing factors of CFL
06:01 ustreamer-25233 : LEDs $120 per bulb according to national geographical march issue. they are potential for future for sure.
06:01 paulsavage : from wiki
06:01 paulsavage : A standard North American 100 watt incandescent light bulb emits 1500–1700 lumens,while a standard European 230 V model emits 1200–1400 lm.
06:01 divydovy : EU project to reduce aircraft emissions (partly through ATC measures): http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air/environment/aire_en.htm
06:02 mikeTheBee : I Agree Totally
06:03 TomRaftery : http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2238989/national-grid-launches-carbon
06:03 monkchips : really? WOW
06:03 monkchips : when did that happen?>
06:03 monkchips : missed that link.
06:04 joegarde : new interconnector between Ireland and UK http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0329/energy.html
06:04 TomRaftery : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318090348.htm
06:04 mikeTheBee : www.eastwestinterconnector.ie
06:04 cgarvey : no noticable dip in EirGrid (Irish electrical grid) generation for Earth Hour (week on week, for best comparison).. http://www.eirgrid.ie/EirgridPortal/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=System+Demand&TreeLinkModID=2314&TreeLinkItemID=57
06:05 cgarvey : Working link .. http://url.ie/1dzf
06:05 paulsavage : Trickle power is the term AFAIK
06:05 divydovy : Tom: interesting new lighting technology: http://www.ceravision.com/
06:05 ustreamer-14148 : Would be nice if they were installed by default in new-build houses.
06:06 ustreamer-3567 : Need to get the electronic manufacturers to take away the need for standby (clocks that don’t retain state when off etc)
06:06 divydovy : Many people are just putting in energy efficient lighting for building regs then replacing it as soon as it’s signed off.
06:06 paulsavage : longer lifetime means less chemicals, or is that just fluff ?
06:07 ustreamer-25233 : ditto with cars – waiting at lights, level crossings etc – cut engine and restart on press of accelerator rather than turning on and off – wish more models would do it
06:08 joegarde : 2012 complete
06:08 cgarvey : Would it not make more sense to expand the existing NI/Scotland one, rather than build the new one to Wales ?
06:10 cgarvey : so NI/Scotland too small to upgrade (financially) (MWs rather than GWs?)
06:10 joegarde : interesting
06:10 mikeTheBee : I believ it needs Eurpean funding approval.
06:10 cgarvey : got it, ta
06:11 ustreamer-25233 : a good tip
06:11 mikeTheBee : No that intelligent obviously
06:12 monkchips : yup
06:12 monkchips : the UK adveristing standars authority
06:12 monkchips : last week ruled
06:12 divydovy : good show Tom, thanks
06:12 joegarde : thanks Tom – great
06:12 cgarvey : Cheers again Tom!
06:12 ustreamer-14148 : Thanks
06:12 monkchips : that greenwashing will get pulled
06:12 ustreamer-25233 : thankS Tom and thanks James for the tip
06:12 ustreamer-1659 : Thanks Tom….
06:12 paulsavage : good show.
06:12 paulsavage : Adios
06:12 TomRaftery : THanks everyone for a great show
06:13 ustreamer-3567 : ciao
06:13 mikeTheBee : Thanks tom, fully packed show today

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