energy

Nest Labs says it has sold out of its thermostats.

In response to the demand, Nest Labs has temporarily shut down the online store on Nest.com and plans to reopen it in early 2012, Erik Charlton, vice president of sales and marketing at Nest Labs, announced yesterday via the company's blog.

Those who've preordered a thermostat via Nest Labs have nothing to worry about--the company says it will still be able to honor all original shipping dates on confirmation e-mails. Those who've only received a reservation number for a Nest Labs thermostat will now have to … Read more

Energy monitoring company Powerhouse Dynamics said it raised funding to expand into the commercial market, an area considered far easier to crack than residential customers.

The Boston-based company today said it raised a $3 million series A from SosVentures to build a sales network for its recently introduced C-series eMonitor. The company had raised about $2.5 million in angel funding, the CEO said earlier this year.

Powerhouse Dynamics said that its relatively light-weight energy monitoring system will give small retailers, restaurants, and the like a way to cut about 20 percent of their electricity use with a centralized monitoring … Read more

Harnessing energy from the oceans involves a lot more than putting a generator in the water.

IBM Research today announced a project to monitor the impact of noise on marine ecosystems from a wave energy generator in Ireland. Done in conjunction with the Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland, its part of an ongoing SmartBay project to monitor the environment of Galway Bay with sensors and telemetry to advance ocean energy.

To monitor the acoustic impact of wave power, a generator from OceanEnergy in Ireland is equipped with audio sensors. Data from the sensors is fed continuously to IBM's data centers … Read more

By sifting through oil and natural gas drilling data, a Google-funded study found that geothermal power in the U.S. could produce ten times the capacity of coal plants today.

The Geothermal Laboratory at Southern Methodist University yesterday revised estimates for the country's potential to use underground heat to make electricity. Drawing on geological data from some 35,000 sites as deep as 31,000 feet, the study concludes that geothermal could supply a large portion of U.S. electricity needs in the future.

Most geothermal power plants are located in western states where underground temperatures are higher. But … Read more

It's hard to imagine making thermostats sexy, but if anyone could do it, it would be the "father of the iPod."

In 2008, amid renewed concerns about Steve Jobs' health, Fortune ranked the probable candidates to someday replace the famed Apple CEO. The first choice? Then COO and eventual successor Tim Cook. The second? Tony Fadell, chief of the iPod division and the man credited with the ideas that resulted in the creation of the iPod and its marriage with the iTunes Music Store.

Around that time, Fadell left Apple, his next move unknown, and since then, … Read more

HAVERHILL, Mass.--There's a good amount of energy tied up in people's trash cans. But does it make sense to burn it?

I took a tour of Covanta Energy's waste-to-energy site here yesterday to delve a little deeper into that question. I learned that modern plants like this one are far less polluting than they used to be and that "reduce, reuse, recycle" is clearly the preferred route. For what's left over after recyling, though, waste-to-energy plants can fill a role as an alternative to landfills, assuming air quality standards remain in force.

This … Read more

As scientists unveil artificial organs and prosthetics to improve the function of our hearts, kidneys, hands, and even eyes, it's easy to gloss over these devices' Achilles' heel: power.

Even building devices that run on very low power, such as pacemakers, tend to require additional invasive surgeries just to replace their batteries. Meanwhile, artificial limbs can be huge energy hogs, with the power source needing to be swapped out as frequently as every few weeks. Impractical is an understatement.

Biofuel cells could very well solve this problem. Researchers around the world are investigating how to use a body's own energy to power various devices, and one team out of France last year successfully implanted in a rat a biofuel cell that uses glucose and oxygen to generate electricity.… Read more

BrightSource Energy today disclosed plans to build a 750-megawatt solar power plant in California, which would be its third and largest utility-scale project.

The company said that the Rio Mesa Solar Electric Generating Facility will use its solar tower technology, where a field of mirrors reflects light onto a tower to create steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity. The project would generate enough electricity to power more than 300,000 homes, BrightSource said.

The plan calls for installing three towers able to generate 250 megawatts each (before accounting for the energy consumed by their operation).

BrightSource earlier this … Read more

Columbia University researchers assert that tech breakthroughs in recent years now make sending trash to landfills a waste of energy.

While recycling and energy recovery from plastics is on the rise, about 86 percent of used plastics are still sent to landfills. It's a big waste considering its energy potential, according to the 33-page report, "Energy and Economic Value of Non-recycled Plastics and Municipal Solid Wastes that are Currently Landfilled in Fifty States" (PDF).

About 28.8 million tons of non-recycled plastics were sent to landfills in 2008, the energy potential equivalent of 36.7 million tons … Read more