Start-up Tendril announced today that it's opening up its smart-grid communications platform to more developers.
The Tendril Connect Platform Application Developer Program will allow developers to build on Tendril's platform for energy management and services for both utilities and consumers. The platform has the ability to reach 70 million households connected to the smart grid, according to Tendril.
Launched two years ago, Tendril's platform already includes a range of companies from ThinkEco to Siemens that use the platform. The company also offers compatible hardware in the form of smart thermostats and communication tools to go with its … Read more
More efficient data centers and a slowing economy have put the brakes on the rapid growth of electricity use in data centers, according to a study released today.
In an analysis of data center energy consumption, researcher and Stanford University consulting professor Jonathan Koomey found electricity use grew about 36 percent in the U.S. from 2005 to 2010 and 56 percent globally. That pace is lower than the doubling of data center electricity use that happened from 2000 to 2005, he found.
With the growth of cloud computing and data center-connected mobile devices, giant data centers are being built, … Read more
Interbrand released a report today ranking the world's most green brands in terms of both perception and performance.
The companies on their list are not just using green initiatives as a way of creating a positive image with consumers. They are also making money from them.
Toyota ranked first, not only due to the financial success of its hybrid-electric Prius and its partnership on the all-electric Tesla. But since 1992 the auto manufacturer has also made large strides reducing energy use, water consumption, waste, and toxic emissions, according to Interbrand.
The U.S. government is aiming to pull the plug on hundreds of unneeded data centers over the next few years in an attempt to save taxpayers some hard-earned cash.
In a blog published yesterday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget admitted that instead of consolidating data centers as many businesses have done in recent years, the government went in the opposite direction. Between 1998 and 2010, federal agencies actually quadrupled their number of data centers despite increases in the efficiency of data storage.
And, of course, taxpayers have been stuck paying the bills for those data … Read more
Illinois-based start-up PrintEco Software is now offering a version of its paper-saving software for Firefox.
The company, started by Arpan Shah, Tom Patterson, and Purvik Bhesania, has received kudos in the media over the last couple of months for developing plug-ins for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer that format print jobs to remove wasted space and reduce them to as few pages as possible.
Shah and Patterson developed the software while students at the University of Illinois after they noticed all the waste paper that was generated from school and work computer print jobs. Illinois Ventures is now … Read more
Europe's biodiesel industry could be wiped out by EU plans to tackle the unwanted side effects of biofuel production, after studies showed few climate benefits, four papers obtained by Reuters show.
Europe's world-leading $13 billion biodiesel industry, which has boomed in the wake of a decision by Brussels policymakers in 2003 to promote it, is now on the verge of being legislated out of existence after the studies revealed biodiesel's indirect impact cancels out most of its benefits.
"This study would pave the way for the demise of the European biodiesel sector," Philippe Tillous-Borde, chief of French oilseed giant Sofiproteol, which owns Europe's largest biodiesel producer, told Reuters.
The EU has been arguing for two years over the extent of indirect damage to the environment caused by it setting a target of increasing biofuel use to 10 percent of all road fuels by 2020, from less than three percent today.
Its own analysis shows the target may lead to an indirect one-off release of around 1,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide--more than twice the annual emissions of Germany.
The emerging picture that the EU has got its policy wrong has proved unpalatable, and the European Commission has refused a Reuters freedom of information request for the latest studies, arguing the public interest of disclosure is insufficient.
However, those documents have now been leaked.… Read more
Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced today.
The company has developed a software platform, and the monitoring and analytic services to go with it, that take advantage of a building's thermal mass and thermal-energy storage (TES) to make it run more efficiently and save on energy costs.
Clean Urban Energy says its software analytics platform can reduce the expense of a building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy use by 15 percent to 30 percent.
"By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks … Read more
Say goodbye to those impromptu panic attacks when faced with blackouts or power surges affecting your servers at work.
Such interruptions in power will become obsolete as more commercial buildings, looking to actively manage energy consumption, invest in uninterruptible power supplies to protect computers and servers.
The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) industry includes any intermediary device used between the public grid and electronic devices being protected from interruptions like power failures, small surges, or brownouts.
Better Place held a demonstration at the first of 20 Better Place battery-switching stations planned for Denmark over the next year, the company announced today.
The station was installed in Gladsaxe, a town outside of Copenhagen. Its inaugural battery swap was conducted on a Renault Fluence Z.E.
Better Place offers a subscription service in which drivers of electric cars have their depleted car batteries swapped for a fully recharged one at any member station, in lieu of waiting 15-30 minutes for a partial charge, or hours to fully recharge at a charging station.
"Solar PV will be a game changer. No other alternative source has the same potential. As the cost of electricity from solar continues to decrease compared to traditional energy sources, we will see tremendous market adoption, and I suspect it will be a growth limited only by supply,&… Read more
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