Green Tech

The hybrid premium: How much more does a hybrid car cost?

Ever since hybrids became popular, with the second generation of the Toyota Prius, the question arose of whether the fuel savings justified a hybrid car's higher price. The extra expense for a hybrid car has been called the hybrid premium.

The extra cost for a hybrid car comes from the additional equipment in the driveline. Along with the gas engine, hybrid cars have an electric propulsion motor, a high-voltage battery pack, and a power control module, this latter component determining how to feed electric power into the drive system.

Now, with many automakers offering some type of hybrid car, more

Apple data center helps fuel Bloom Energy move to East Coast

On the day Bloom Energy officially opened shop on the East Coast, the company's CEO confirmed Bloom will supply fuel cells to Apple's North Carolina data center.

Bloom Energy today is breaking ground on a factory in Newark, Del., to build its Bloom Energy Servers, or Bloom Boxes, which produce electricity from natural gas or biogas.

The facility, which was a former Chrysler plant, will have the capacity to turn out 1,000 Bloom Boxes a year, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar said in an interview with CNET. Each fuel cell, which is the size of few more

A/C on demand: Smart outlet provides remote control

Con Edison is betting that a modest smart outlet can help prevent the grid from crashing during a heat wave. The same gadget will also let people remotely control their air conditioners.

The New York utility said last week it intends to distribute 10,000 smart outlets from startup ThinkEco to residents in large apartment buildings as part of its peak power reduction program called CoolNYC. A regular air conditioner plugs into the smart outlets and allows for remote control of thermostat settings from a smart phone or Web browser.

People can choose to participate in Con Edison's CoolNYC more

Cargo ship with metal sails would save 30 percent fuel

Can wind energy really power modern cargo ships? We've seen the idea of hybrid freighters before, but this concept from the University of Tokyo has a remarkable sail system.

A model of the UT Wind Challenger was recently shown off at the Sea Japan trade show in Tokyo. It would have giant telescoping sails that rise above the deck when wind conditions are good.

As seen in the vid below, University of Tokyo professor Kiyoshi Uzawa and collaborators believe this hybrid system could cut fuel consumption by cargo ships by about 30 percent.

Microsoft on scent of landfill-fueled data center

In a new twist on using waste for energy, Microsoft is designing a data center powered by biogas, the gas given off from landfills and other sources.

The company last week further detailed its Data Plant experiment, an idea to bring more reliability to its data centers and lower pollution from them.

Fuel cells would supply power to the data center and make it independent from the grid, said Christian Belady, general manager of Data Center Services in a blog post last week. In theory, having on-site power allows a data center operator to use the electric grid as bac more

The skinny on gadgets' growing energy appetite

Here's something you can thank Steve Jobs for: a fatter electricity bill.

A dive into the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) spells out what many of us intuitively know: the explosion in the number of computer gadgets and TVs has dramatically shifted the balance of household electricity over the years.

Even the rapid technology change of the Internet revolution can't compare to the always plugged-in lifestyle that's crept up on us through iPods, e-books, smartphones, DVRs, and the like. Electronics represented about 7.2 percent of household electricity use in 2001 and are more

Wind-power blimp takes to the air (video)

A video from Altaeros Energies shows a novel vision for powering remote locations.

The wind energy startup released a video this week of its prototype airborne wind turbine during its first test run in Maine earlier this year. The donut-shaped blimp has a spinning fan at its center, and it's tethered to a base station by cables that carry electricity from the blimp to the local grid.

The turbine is designed for remote villages or industrial sites where there isn't grid power and for places such as military outposts that need to rely on diesel generators.

With the more

IBM speeds push for 500-mile EV battery

Ten years from now, range anxiety for electric cars could be a thing of the past.

IBM today announced two partners for a project aimed at building a lithium air battery able to propel an electric car 500 miles. Scientists from Asahi Kasei and Central Glass with expertise in membranes and electrolyte chemistries will join IBM researchers on the initiative.

Called the Battery 500 Project, the goal is to design an "air-breathing" battery that will use oxygen from the air to drive a new type of battery chemical reaction and, in the process, deliver a big jump in EV range more

Greenpeace's clean cloud push: Hey, they've got a point

Commentary In its trademark smashmouth style, Greenpeace this week took cloud computing companies to task for using dirty energy -- and then came under fire itself over its methods and assertions.

Whatever Greenpeace's shortcomings, though, its activists have a point.

In the latest event of its "Clean our Cloud" campaign, Greenpeace activists yesterday rappelled off a building near Amazon and Microsoft offices and attached a banner which reads "Amazon, Microsoft: How Clean is Your Cloud?"

Earlier, it released three videos that poke fun at Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft by showing workers shoveling coal into a smoky fire behind scenes more

Philips' pricey LED bulb has impressive specs

Philips on Sunday will start selling an LED bulb that sets a new bar for performance -- and price.

The company will release the Philips L Prize LED on Earth Day for $50, which includes an "automatic incentive" from the company. The general-lighting bulb came out of the Department of Energy's L Prize competition to develop long-lasting, efficient, and less expensive LED lamps.

Philips claims its L Prize LED is the most efficient 60-watt LED equivalent and improves on features from Philips own existing LEDs.

It gives off 940 lumens, consumes 9.7 watts, and has a color rendering more