Tuesday, August 14, 2007

220V measurements?

Anybody out there in blog world know where in france to buy an equivalent to the kill-a-watt?


Also, I want to introduce a new poster, "Macgyver" as we call him, who will be posting a few things on how more energy could be saved by more efficient designs.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Bright Ideas: Lunar-Resonant Streetlights Only Shine When the Moon Doesn't - Gizmodo

Bright Ideas: Lunar-Resonant Streetlights Only Shine When the Moon Doesn't - Gizmodo


It's just a concept but these streetlights use LEDs to save energy and dim when there's a full moon to save even more energy. Why not take it a step further and keep them almost entirely dimmed unless there's motion?!?

Street lights are a real obvious waste of energy when flying over cities at night or early in the morning. They are put in place to stop crime, right? Well make the criminals walk really really slowly if they don't want light. Plus streetlights ruin viewing of stars!

Monday, August 6, 2007

Go Greener: EVERLED, LED "Fluorescent" Tubes - Gizmodo

Go Greener: EVERLED, LED "Fluorescent" Tubes - Gizmodo: "These EVERLEDs are rated at a 10-year lifespan, compared to the 5-7 year lifespan of their fluorescent counterparts. Plus, the lights require 20% less power, which would be an energy savings of incredible magnitude from a global perspective."

$150 is a lot of cost that's going somewhere (are there big energy consuming semiconductor plants involved that use lots of sulfuric acid and other things? probably)

I suspect the price will come down dramatically in the future, so it's nice to see that there will be drop in replacements so all the existing fixutres can be used.

However, LEDs don't typically need the high voltage that fluorescents do, so all the fixutres that increase the voltage are probably wasting a bit of energy relative to just native LED fixtures.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Toyota to sell a cheaper Prius | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Toyota to sell a cheaper Prius | Tech news blog - CNET News.com:

Toyota is dropping the price on the 2008 price by 5.5% to $20,950 and they are working on a plug in version.

Of course the plug in version is going to massively increase your power bill (more than erase all the savings we've worked on here so far). The plug in hybrid is just shifting the power generation to the power plant which in my case means it'd be a mostly coal powered car :(

Though to be fair if you are in state that is using clean energy this is a nice advantage to have a plug in. Additionally you can make the argument that nuclear and hydroelectric power is available at night and would otherwise be "wasted".

In the end a 5% price drop on a hybrid is a very good thing!
Saving on gas in your car, is like saving a lot of electricity in your house, from a budgetary and environmental perspective.