Energy

A day after being criticized by Greenpeace for its energy practices, Apple said Greenpeace's estimates for power use at the company's latest data center are much too high.

Apple said that its data center now under construction in North Carolina will use about 20 megawatts at full capacity. Greenpeace put the estimate at 100 megawatts.

Greenpeace gave Apple, Amazon, and other companies low marks for locating their data centers in areas that rely heavily on coal and "dangerous nuclear." Those companies also scored lower than competitors, including Google and Yahoo, because they disclose less information on … Read more

A study has found that cars with very high gas mileage are less polluting than electric vehicles charged up in coal-heavy regions.

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report today called "State of Charge" that finds that on average plug-in cars are less polluting than gasoline-powered vehicles in the U.S. But the greenhouse gases emitted from electric vehicles depends on the sources of electricity.

The study centers on a heated discussion in auto circles. Automakers have sometimes referred to electric vehicles as "zero emissions," which is misleading because most plug-in drivers charge their cars … Read more

Nest Labs today fired back at Honeywell over its patent infringement case against Nest, claiming the thermostat giant is using its patent portfolio to stifle innovation.

The company also hired Apple's former chief patent counsel, Richard Lutton Jr., as it plans for a legal fight with Honeywell in the years ahead.

Founded by former successful Apple engineers, Nest Labs started selling its $250 Learning Thermostat last year and quickly sold out amid rave reviews over its design and ability to automatically set schedules.

Honeywell in February filed a suit claiming that Nest infringed on several of its seemingly broad … Read more

To a computer company like IBM, plug-in electric vehicles just look like more nodes on the network.

IBM tomorrow is expected to announce a demonstration project with Honda and California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to charge a fleet of Honda Fit EVs without disrupting the grid.

The smart-charging project will also test smartphone and Web-based apps for consumers, giving them an estimate of charge time and location of charging stations.

The power grid as a whole has the capacity to accommodate millions of plug-in vehicles, say experts. But if there's a concentration of electric cars charging at once, … Read more

As the Cleveland Indians play their home games, an experiment in industrial design will be spinning just overhead.

The ball park is hosting a wind turbine that uses a helix-shape tower to squeeze more power out of conventional wind turbines. The structure increases the wind speed, a technique companies have long pursued to lower the cost of wind energy.

The Progressive Field installation is a prototype designed by Majid Rashidi, a professor at Cleveland State University. The 40-foot-high, 18-foot-wide helix turbine will be installed for a year for testing and is expected to generate 40,000 kilowatt-hours a year, or … Read more

Rather than try to reinvent the solar cell, startup Thermata has engineered a high-tech mirror to cut the cost of solar power.

The company, incubated at Idealabs, has completed initial testing on a system executives say can cut the cost of sun-tracking mirrors, or heliostats, in half using cameras and other digital technologies. Thermata plans to start beta testing the heliostats this year with potential customers, which are concentrating solar power technology companies, and with Sandia National Laboratories.

Thermata typifies a new breed of green-technology startup which is targeting a specific niche in energy using technologies from other fields. Its … Read more

The gadgets in your smart home now come with software updates.

Nest Labs today released the equivalent of version 2.0 software for its smart thermostat on the Web, iOS or Android. The software tweaks for the $249 Learning Thermostat are designed to help people better understand how thermostat changes affect energy usage.

The update presents energy history data over 10 days, a longer period than before and indicates when heating and cooling systems turned on. It can also show what caused setting changes -- the weather, a manual adjustment, or an auto-away setting.

A new air conditioning feature, called … Read more

Cree is leaning on high design to get LED lighting onto lamp posts.

The company today introduced new lines of streetlights that use long-lasting and energy-efficient LEDs, including AeroBlades lamps which are an array of LED light sources in blade-like strips.

Cree also updated its traditional LED streetlights for overhead lighting and developed a lamp with traditional bulb designed to fit into historic districts.

The products are the first since Cree, which makes LED light sources, purchased Ruud Lighting to expand its lighting fixture business. LEDs are a good fit for street lights in that they last longer than other … Read more

Social media has officially come to energy efficiency.

Opower today announced the availability of a Facebook application that lets people track electricity use and communicate with friends around home energy. People can set up different groups of friends and compare themselves to similar homes or the most efficient homes.

Sixteen utilities in the U.S. (see list here) are participating in a program which feeds utility bill information directly into Facebook, allowing a person to see total kilowatt-hour usage. Others will need to manually input monthly energy data to compare to regional average and participating friends.

The information sharing is … Read more