erac3rX (who is working on a killer gaming setup -- site coming soon at http://www.modsbox.com)
writes with measurements of the older revision of the playstation 3 to compare to the new revision in the 40GB PS3 posted here
Note the interesting difference between cold start and hot start on booting. Are there really 15 watts or more of fans running? Wow!
PS3 (60GB, one of the latest manufactured)
Off: 1
Booting (cold): 140-145, max 156
Booting (hot): 158-160
Menu (XMB) (cold): 156 at login screen, 163 after logged in and ticker tape running.
Menu (XMB) (hot): 167-169 waiting to login, 175 after logged in w ticker tape running.
Resistance Fall of Man: Cut Scenes: 163-164
Playing first level of RFOM: 180-185, peak 190
RFOM paused: 158-159
Loading Bluray/Menu: 169
play Bluray (House of Flying Daggers ch 14): 169-172
30x Fast Forward: 167-169
Paused bluray: 166-167
Running Folding @ Home: 191 w/ active visualization, 175 screensaved
Web page loading sony store page: 167-169
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Time Lapse energy video
Check out this time lapse video It's not very quantitative, but it's quite cool. Even if you don't appreciate the message (it's similar to inconvenient truth in it's message) there is very cool imagery in there. The photographer made the video using still photos taken at intervals to make time lapse sequences in black and white.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
EnergyConsumption.org
Great minds think alike :)
Check out this great site that also is posting power measurement data
http://www.energyconsumption.org
The data is here http://ec-users.pbwiki.com/Data
Check out this great site that also is posting power measurement data
http://www.energyconsumption.org
The data is here http://ec-users.pbwiki.com/Data
CFL light bulb with motion sensor built in
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/09/cfl-motion-detector-motionbulb/
Engadget reports on a compact fluorescent lightbulb with a motion sensor built in to detect motion up to 25 feet away
Engadget reports on a compact fluorescent lightbulb with a motion sensor built in to detect motion up to 25 feet away
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Going Green: Cyber-Rain XCI Waters Your Lawn When The Internet Commands It
Going Green: Cyber-Rain XCI Waters Your Lawn When The Internet Commands It
This is something I've been wanting, a sprinkler controller that turns off when it's going to rain based on forecast. Of course, you can provide do a lot more benefit to help fresh water resoruces by putting your $349 to wetlands recovery, though with the droughts in california and the southeast you might save some of your power bill if you don't turn off your sprinklers manually.
This is something I've been wanting, a sprinkler controller that turns off when it's going to rain based on forecast. Of course, you can provide do a lot more benefit to help fresh water resoruces by putting your $349 to wetlands recovery, though with the droughts in california and the southeast you might save some of your power bill if you don't turn off your sprinklers manually.
Monday, November 12, 2007
New revisions of Playstation 3 and XBOX 360
Both the xbox 360 and the PS3 have received minor updates recently which have reduced their power usage. Both the XBox's PowerPC CPU and the Playstation 3's cell CPU have gotten revisions to their manfacturing process (they were 90nm and are now 65nm).
Jump to the end for the power savings. The tale:
XBox360
Microsoft has been introducing them in to their maufacturing lines slowly along without any fanfare (why the heck not one has to ask) and not labelling them. People have resorted to internet forums to be able to identify the lot #s and manufacturing lines of the new ones. http://forums.xbox.com/15804553/ShowPost.aspx The basic gist is if you get Lot #736 and up from Team FDOU (on the label with upc on outside of box) you'll likely have a 65nm version. All the variations seems to be getting the new chip though the halo3 version seems to be easiest.
PS3
The new 40GB cost reduced version of the PS3 has new 65nm version of the cell processor. There was a fairly well confirmed rumor that this new sku was all 65nm which was later denied by sony even though it was confirmed that it uses less power, and then later undenied. So between the removal of the ps2 hardware chip and the new cpu a lot of power was saved. So not only is this new SKU $100 cheaper you could also save $$$ in electricity (though you get a bluray movie instead of a game, a smaller hard drive, less PS2 compatibility and no media card readers)
Both the xbox and the ps3 still have 90nm versions of their graphics chips. The GPUs won't transition to smaller processes until next year (and xbox will probably go to 55nm since it's an ati chip if I recall correctly) the PS3 GPU is called the RSX but I don't know when it will get a new process technology revision.
PS3 (40GB bought 11/2/07)
Off: 0
Booting: 135-136 (max 144)
Menu (XMB): 139-140
Resistance Fall of Man: Cut scenes: 137-138
Playing first level of RFOM: 144-150 (mostly 147-149, peaked at 155)
RFOM paused: 134
Loading Bluray/Menu: 134-135
play Bluray (SWAT ch 16) 134
30x Fast forward 134
Paused bluray 133
Running Folding @ home* 157
Web page loading sony store page 135-138
Xbox360 (lot 737 team FDOU, 2 inductors)
Off - 2 watts
Xbox live active download 95
booting 102-109
media center paused 100
Playing media center 100-105
UPDATED
loading halo 3 104-106 (max 111)
halo 3 menu 121
halo 3 campaign 126-132 (tsavo highway legendary rally point alpha)
paused 129-131
multiplayer matchmaking 115-116
multiplayer 116-124 (most commonly in range of 116-118)
xbox360 hddvd player
off 0-1 flips back and forth
idle 1
opening 3
booting 4-6
spinning up max 10
idle with disc in 6
playing hd dvd 6
UPDATE 2007-11-13
Old XBox 360 (90nm original motherboard)
Off 1-2
peak measured 162
playing project gotham intro 145
All measurements made with a kill-a-watt
So the 90nm version of PS3 used about 200 watts I'm told, now down to 135ish. So 65 watts saved for a gamer playing 10 hours per week, would be 2762 Watt hours per week and , which isn't much at current electrical rates, but if you factor in air conditioning for have the year (let's say doubling elec. usage) and elec rates for clean energy / building carbon sinks might save 5 bucks a week worth of elec. in the summer if you are a really hard core gamer.
* it uses more power but it helps science and might lead to new advances in protein science which could lead to better ways to make ethanol, or anti cancer drugs, alzheimers research, or technology to reduce power usage (proteins can be catalysts which for you engineers, are like having a special purpose processor that can do a calculation in 1 watt that it would take the CPU all 100 watts to do), if you already leave your PS3 or your computer on, or want to donate 150 watts to science please consider running it! more info at http://folding.stanford.edu
Jump to the end for the power savings. The tale:
XBox360
Microsoft has been introducing them in to their maufacturing lines slowly along without any fanfare (why the heck not one has to ask) and not labelling them. People have resorted to internet forums to be able to identify the lot #s and manufacturing lines of the new ones. http://forums.xbox.com/15804553/ShowPost.aspx The basic gist is if you get Lot #736 and up from Team FDOU (on the label with upc on outside of box) you'll likely have a 65nm version. All the variations seems to be getting the new chip though the halo3 version seems to be easiest.
PS3
The new 40GB cost reduced version of the PS3 has new 65nm version of the cell processor. There was a fairly well confirmed rumor that this new sku was all 65nm which was later denied by sony even though it was confirmed that it uses less power, and then later undenied. So between the removal of the ps2 hardware chip and the new cpu a lot of power was saved. So not only is this new SKU $100 cheaper you could also save $$$ in electricity (though you get a bluray movie instead of a game, a smaller hard drive, less PS2 compatibility and no media card readers)
Both the xbox and the ps3 still have 90nm versions of their graphics chips. The GPUs won't transition to smaller processes until next year (and xbox will probably go to 55nm since it's an ati chip if I recall correctly) the PS3 GPU is called the RSX but I don't know when it will get a new process technology revision.
PS3 (40GB bought 11/2/07)
Off: 0
Booting: 135-136 (max 144)
Menu (XMB): 139-140
Resistance Fall of Man: Cut scenes: 137-138
Playing first level of RFOM: 144-150 (mostly 147-149, peaked at 155)
RFOM paused: 134
Loading Bluray/Menu: 134-135
play Bluray (SWAT ch 16) 134
30x Fast forward 134
Paused bluray 133
Running Folding @ home* 157
Web page loading sony store page 135-138
Xbox360 (lot 737 team FDOU, 2 inductors)
Off - 2 watts
Xbox live active download 95
booting 102-109
media center paused 100
Playing media center 100-105
UPDATED
loading halo 3 104-106 (max 111)
halo 3 menu 121
halo 3 campaign 126-132 (tsavo highway legendary rally point alpha)
paused 129-131
multiplayer matchmaking 115-116
multiplayer 116-124 (most commonly in range of 116-118)
xbox360 hddvd player
off 0-1 flips back and forth
idle 1
opening 3
booting 4-6
spinning up max 10
idle with disc in 6
playing hd dvd 6
UPDATE 2007-11-13
Old XBox 360 (90nm original motherboard)
Off 1-2
peak measured 162
playing project gotham intro 145
All measurements made with a kill-a-watt
So the 90nm version of PS3 used about 200 watts I'm told, now down to 135ish. So 65 watts saved for a gamer playing 10 hours per week, would be 2762 Watt hours per week and , which isn't much at current electrical rates, but if you factor in air conditioning for have the year (let's say doubling elec. usage) and elec rates for clean energy / building carbon sinks might save 5 bucks a week worth of elec. in the summer if you are a really hard core gamer.
* it uses more power but it helps science and might lead to new advances in protein science which could lead to better ways to make ethanol, or anti cancer drugs, alzheimers research, or technology to reduce power usage (proteins can be catalysts which for you engineers, are like having a special purpose processor that can do a calculation in 1 watt that it would take the CPU all 100 watts to do), if you already leave your PS3 or your computer on, or want to donate 150 watts to science please consider running it! more info at http://folding.stanford.edu
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
"
Monday, November 5, 2007
PG&E purchases 177 megawatts of solar energy from plant to be built in San Luis Obispo - CNET
CNET is reporting that PG&E has entered in to a contract to purchase 177 megawatts of solar thermal power from Ausra who is building a 1 square mile plant in San Luis Obispo CA.
They already buy 533 megawatts from a plant in the mojave. This is the first I've heard of a major power company purchasing a solar contract though clearly it's happening already. PG&E plans to expand this 1 gigawatt in the next 5 years.
If anybody has any data on what PG&E will be paying per kilowatt hour for this I'd love to hear it, because they we can get a more true cost of electricity (taking in to account the extra costs for low co2 emission energy and/or renewable resources)
In North Carolina, the NCGreenpower program enables consumers to add extra money to their power bill to have Duke Energy buy their power from renewable resources. Though adding $20/month to your bill (you choose how much you want to add) probably only shifts a fraction of a homes power usage to renewable, it's a start.
So electrimetricers when you are measuring how much power things use and calculating how much this costs you annually, or you calculating off your current bill, future bills, or future bills that use renewable resources?
Inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: the linked article in the cnet article says solar thermal currently costs about 13 cents per kilowatt hour. But how much will PG&E be charging consumers?
---------------------
PG&E links with Ausra for 177 megawatts of solar thermal power | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com: "The utility is shooting to get 20 percent or more of its electricity from renewable sources, not including traditional hydroelectric power, by 2010. It currently gets 12 percent of its electricity now from renewables and has contracts that push it up to 18 percent. Most of its renewable energy so far comes from wind and biomass: PG&E right now gets only a little of its power from solar."
They already buy 533 megawatts from a plant in the mojave. This is the first I've heard of a major power company purchasing a solar contract though clearly it's happening already. PG&E plans to expand this 1 gigawatt in the next 5 years.
If anybody has any data on what PG&E will be paying per kilowatt hour for this I'd love to hear it, because they we can get a more true cost of electricity (taking in to account the extra costs for low co2 emission energy and/or renewable resources)
In North Carolina, the NCGreenpower program enables consumers to add extra money to their power bill to have Duke Energy buy their power from renewable resources. Though adding $20/month to your bill (you choose how much you want to add) probably only shifts a fraction of a homes power usage to renewable, it's a start.
So electrimetricers when you are measuring how much power things use and calculating how much this costs you annually, or you calculating off your current bill, future bills, or future bills that use renewable resources?
Inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: the linked article in the cnet article says solar thermal currently costs about 13 cents per kilowatt hour. But how much will PG&E be charging consumers?
---------------------
PG&E links with Ausra for 177 megawatts of solar thermal power | Green Tech blog - CNET News.com: "The utility is shooting to get 20 percent or more of its electricity from renewable sources, not including traditional hydroelectric power, by 2010. It currently gets 12 percent of its electricity now from renewables and has contracts that push it up to 18 percent. Most of its renewable energy so far comes from wind and biomass: PG&E right now gets only a little of its power from solar."
Monday, October 29, 2007
is saving a penny worth it?
As a blogger blogging about ways to save a few cents here and there, one has to consider whether it's "worth it" to focus energy on saving small amounts when the resource consumptions issues are so large. I try to at least only focus on areas where the savings are "easy" so that the cost of learning about and implementing the savings are not out weighed by the opportunity cost (I could be outside planting a tree or for really low payback savings things I could instead be riding a bike to generate electricity )
One definitely has to acknowledge that saving a few dollars on electricity is not going to solve global warming, but it's easy to look at the big problems and feel discourage about your ability to impact on a big scale, and we certainly don't want people to learn helplessness (c.f. Martin Seligman who does research that shows if you learn that your actions have no affect it can lead to unhappiness or depression like symptoms and you no longer take action to change the situation even if it's easy Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control
)
So, while we are still looking for big ways to help, is it worth it to tackle the little things?
Turning off the lights when you aren't in the room saves a few cents a day (or week if you are using fluorescent or LEDs)
Turning off the water while brushing your teeth
etc.?
To the average well-to-do american (and by that I mean almost all of us are well-to-do by international standards) the financial reward and or vague hard to quantify environmental reward may not be enough to make it worth our while or hit us in the pocketbooks (which is americanese for "make it worth our while")
However, for all those of you who have ever said "If I had a nickel for every..." think about all those electrons saved in aggregate!
I'm reminded of a book I read once about the history of American Airlines and how their chairman pushed for cost savings, and they saved multi tens of thousands of dollars a year in GAS by going from two olives in their salads to one.
When you are the size of walmart, taking the light out of employee coke machines saves $1 million / year in electricity according to this article:
How Wal-Mart is saving millions with clean tech | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
So if everybody could reduce the amount of lighting electricty they used by a little bit, and turn off the water while brushing their teeth, maybe it'd add up to a number that may not solve anything relative to our GDP but would sound like a big number for most of our wallets, and that'd help motivate us to do the easy and small things to help save resources.
------------------
Coming soon power measurement comparisons of the 65nm "falcon" revision of the xbox360 that is silently appearing on shelves now, with the old version.
One definitely has to acknowledge that saving a few dollars on electricity is not going to solve global warming, but it's easy to look at the big problems and feel discourage about your ability to impact on a big scale, and we certainly don't want people to learn helplessness (c.f. Martin Seligman who does research that shows if you learn that your actions have no affect it can lead to unhappiness or depression like symptoms and you no longer take action to change the situation even if it's easy Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control
)So, while we are still looking for big ways to help, is it worth it to tackle the little things?
Turning off the lights when you aren't in the room saves a few cents a day (or week if you are using fluorescent or LEDs)
Turning off the water while brushing your teeth
etc.?
To the average well-to-do american (and by that I mean almost all of us are well-to-do by international standards) the financial reward and or vague hard to quantify environmental reward may not be enough to make it worth our while or hit us in the pocketbooks (which is americanese for "make it worth our while")
However, for all those of you who have ever said "If I had a nickel for every..." think about all those electrons saved in aggregate!
I'm reminded of a book I read once about the history of American Airlines and how their chairman pushed for cost savings, and they saved multi tens of thousands of dollars a year in GAS by going from two olives in their salads to one.
When you are the size of walmart, taking the light out of employee coke machines saves $1 million / year in electricity according to this article:
How Wal-Mart is saving millions with clean tech | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
So if everybody could reduce the amount of lighting electricty they used by a little bit, and turn off the water while brushing their teeth, maybe it'd add up to a number that may not solve anything relative to our GDP but would sound like a big number for most of our wallets, and that'd help motivate us to do the easy and small things to help save resources.
------------------
Coming soon power measurement comparisons of the 65nm "falcon" revision of the xbox360 that is silently appearing on shelves now, with the old version.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Inhabitat » GET A TAX CUT FOR GOING GREEN - by Dec 2007!
Inhabitat » GET A TAX CUT FOR GOING GREEN - by Dec 2007!
One could argue that the government is realizing they are going to be the ones to pay for cleaning up from our energy consuming ways and so they are buying your action now at a discount rather than paying for clean up later.
In any case if you're reading this you're probably already interested in "greening" your home so you might as well take advantage of this tax credit before it goes away!
One could argue that the government is realizing they are going to be the ones to pay for cleaning up from our energy consuming ways and so they are buying your action now at a discount rather than paying for clean up later.
In any case if you're reading this you're probably already interested in "greening" your home so you might as well take advantage of this tax credit before it goes away!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Ann Arbor street lights to be replaced with LEDs - Engadget
Ann Arbor street lights to be replaced with LEDs - Engadget: "
"
Flying over the country deffinitely makes you realize how much light is used to light the outdoors(and thus money and future money to reduce carbon emissions and save the enviroment)
Despite my fervent wish for motion sensors the trend seems to be in switching to LEDs (Though motion sensors would be cheaper and still solve the safety issue -- though I question the $ effectiveness of streetlights everywhere vs. $ spent on police or other safety)
"
Flying over the country deffinitely makes you realize how much light is used to light the outdoors(and thus money and future money to reduce carbon emissions and save the enviroment)
Despite my fervent wish for motion sensors the trend seems to be in switching to LEDs (Though motion sensors would be cheaper and still solve the safety issue -- though I question the $ effectiveness of streetlights everywhere vs. $ spent on police or other safety)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Bwahahaha: Halloween CFLs Keep You Spooky AND Eco-Friendly
Bwahahaha: Halloween CFLs Keep You Spooky AND Eco-Friendly
Reduce your halloween electric bill with orange compact fluorescents! :)
Reduce your halloween electric bill with orange compact fluorescents! :)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
WD Caviar GP: The "Green" 1 TB Drive | Tom's Hardware
WD Caviar GP: The "Green" 1 TB Drive | Tom's Hardware
Another instance of tech company branding themselves as green. In this case it's not greenwashing, they have added technology to spin the hard drive more slowly when it's not in heavy use. Granted most energy efficient desktops spin down the drive to 0rpm when not in use, but this doesn't always work because windows or some other piece of software might access the drive once a minute. This will also be especially useful for servers that over night still get requests but aren't heavily hit. It won't be huge savings but a little bit on every one of google's rumored 450,000 servers would add up to a lot!
Another instance of tech company branding themselves as green. In this case it's not greenwashing, they have added technology to spin the hard drive more slowly when it's not in heavy use. Granted most energy efficient desktops spin down the drive to 0rpm when not in use, but this doesn't always work because windows or some other piece of software might access the drive once a minute. This will also be especially useful for servers that over night still get requests but aren't heavily hit. It won't be huge savings but a little bit on every one of google's rumored 450,000 servers would add up to a lot!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
VMware tool tries new twist on power savings | Underexposed - CNET News.com
VMware tool tries new twist on power savings | Underexposed - CNET News.com
VMWare has virtualization software that lets you move the functions a server is performing to another server. Typically this is done to save money on server hardware (put two lightly used functions on one server) or recently they have been getting in to dynamically moving server instances to spare servers when extra load is needed. However they have taken that to the next step (for the opposite scenario) to save power and shut down unneeded servers by moving their functions to a single server.
Not exactly implementable for the average us consumer, but interesting (to me anyway) nonetheless.
The drawback usually is that the cost of the vmware software to do this, is high enough to make it much easier to just pay for a lot of extra server hardware and a lot of extra power. And really if the cost is that high for the softwrae, that means they are paying lots of programmers to work on this, and those programmers could be working on building solar cells or something like that. Or at least that's how I just ify being cheap and just buying another $500 dell server instead of a $3000 vmware license.
VMWare has virtualization software that lets you move the functions a server is performing to another server. Typically this is done to save money on server hardware (put two lightly used functions on one server) or recently they have been getting in to dynamically moving server instances to spare servers when extra load is needed. However they have taken that to the next step (for the opposite scenario) to save power and shut down unneeded servers by moving their functions to a single server.
Not exactly implementable for the average us consumer, but interesting (to me anyway) nonetheless.
The drawback usually is that the cost of the vmware software to do this, is high enough to make it much easier to just pay for a lot of extra server hardware and a lot of extra power. And really if the cost is that high for the softwrae, that means they are paying lots of programmers to work on this, and those programmers could be working on building solar cells or something like that. Or at least that's how I just ify being cheap and just buying another $500 dell server instead of a $3000 vmware license.
G'Day: Australia to Ban All Plasmas & Some LCDs by 2011? - Gizmodo
G'Day: Australia to Ban All Plasmas & Some LCDs by 2011? - Gizmodo
The government in australia is getting in to the energy reduction game. First england takes on wall warts and other things drawing standby power, then california takes on incandescent bulbs and now asutralia is going after power hungry plasmas and some LCDs.
I'm sure the libertarians think people should be making these decisions, but I think given that the full costs of power doesn't include future environmental clean up costs it's probably a good idea for governements to force consumers hands. Disagree with me in the comments!
The government in australia is getting in to the energy reduction game. First england takes on wall warts and other things drawing standby power, then california takes on incandescent bulbs and now asutralia is going after power hungry plasmas and some LCDs.
I'm sure the libertarians think people should be making these decisions, but I think given that the full costs of power doesn't include future environmental clean up costs it's probably a good idea for governements to force consumers hands. Disagree with me in the comments!
Friday, October 5, 2007
Mishmash TV show created to judge power consumption - Engadget
Mishmash TV show created to judge power consumption - Engadget
A consortium is getting together to have a standard set of material to play while measuring TV power usage.
A lot of my measurements are just instantaneous measurements. How much was the tv using at the moment I looked at the kill-a-watt. I sometimes will watch for a range that the nubmer is bouncing over and list that range. But really we should be measuring how much power is used to do something. Ie how much power is consumed in toasting a piece of bread or watching a movie. The problem is that we like different movies and different toastiness of bread (to you all you half burned crunchy people out there --> you're weird ;) ) Hence these people's efforts to have a standard measureement set of viedoes. Hopefully it will be reasonably priced and available on DVD/HDDVD/Bluray and not get embroiled in copyright debate. That would expend a lot of unnecessary energy.
A consortium is getting together to have a standard set of material to play while measuring TV power usage.
A lot of my measurements are just instantaneous measurements. How much was the tv using at the moment I looked at the kill-a-watt. I sometimes will watch for a range that the nubmer is bouncing over and list that range. But really we should be measuring how much power is used to do something. Ie how much power is consumed in toasting a piece of bread or watching a movie. The problem is that we like different movies and different toastiness of bread (to you all you half burned crunchy people out there --> you're weird ;) ) Hence these people's efforts to have a standard measureement set of viedoes. Hopefully it will be reasonably priced and available on DVD/HDDVD/Bluray and not get embroiled in copyright debate. That would expend a lot of unnecessary energy.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Ecodrive data-logging software - Autoblog
Frankfurt 2007: Fiat/Microsoft announce Ecodrive data-logging software - Autoblog
While it isn't electricity it is in the spirit of quantitating resource consumption to motivate us to reduce our ecological footprint. This takes the toyota announcement of including the "eco" light whenever you are driving with low gas usage, to a new level of data. This system will enable you to log how you are driving and emissions and gas usage to a much higher level. Of course this may only appeal to people that are prone to read electrimetric, and the toyota eco button will probably have a much broader appeal.
While it isn't electricity it is in the spirit of quantitating resource consumption to motivate us to reduce our ecological footprint. This takes the toyota announcement of including the "eco" light whenever you are driving with low gas usage, to a new level of data. This system will enable you to log how you are driving and emissions and gas usage to a much higher level. Of course this may only appeal to people that are prone to read electrimetric, and the toyota eco button will probably have a much broader appeal.
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.
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!
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.
$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.
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