Here's one that many CNET readers can enjoy: snap a photo of that dusty rat's nest of wires under your desk. Best-case scenario, you win lunch in Beverly Hills and maybe influence green-tech policy.
Green Plug's mission is to create a universal hub to power consumer electronics.
(Credit: Green Plug)The contest is called "What's Under your Desk" and it's put on by Green Plug, a company that launched at Demo last year. Here's a video review from Michelle Thatcher at CNET and write-up from News.com's Erica Ogg on Webware.
The idea is to send in photos of those tangled messes caused by consumer electronics to make the point that something seriously wrong with our cable and plug system. There's also a link to sign a petition for the U.S. to set a green plug standard.
Green Plug's mission is to sign up electronics manufacturers to use its chip that would go into power supplies. With the chip, consumers would be able to plug any device into a hub to power multiple devices. Software, which the company intends to make available for free, will be able to read exactly how much power a device needs.
Sure, the contest is self-serving. But you have to admit that the Green Plug people are onto something.
A universal, or at the very least more energy-efficient, plug system could clean up your electronic lives at home and make traveling a heck of a lot lighter, since you wouldn't need a separate charger for every device you carry.
Environmentally, those power packs are inefficient and wasteful. Most of them draw energy from the wall socket even when they are done charging your laptop or cell phone. Notice how hot they feel when you touch them?
There are already some beauties on the Green Plug contest page; take a look. Winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22.
Hat tip to Earth2Tech.
Demo is trying to green itself and is even considering a green-only event for start-ups in the future. This time, though, there are two companies that hope to use tech to evoke environmental change.
Green Plug's CEO shows his motivation for a universal adapter: a mess of cords and plugs.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/Webware.com)Green Plug makes universal plugs for consumer electronics. Taking a duffel bag full of tangled cords and power adapters and dumping them on the Demo presentation stage, founder and Chief Executive Frank Paniagua declared, "The power model is broken, and we have to fix it." (See CNET's First Look video.)
His solution is Green Plug, a three-port DC hub that will recognize any device and charge it. Green Plug makes a chip that goes into a power supply, and the company gives away free software to any company that wants to put it on consumer devices. The chip, using technology they call Green Talk, will recognize exactly the amount of power each device needs, gives exactly that much, and then shuts off, eliminating wasted power.
The other start-up with world-saving ambitions at Demo is Celsias Projects. It's essentially a social network for groups trying to gather volunteers for climate change projects. Each project has its own profile page where volunteers can sign up or discuss the projects.
Thus far there are 80 projects from the U.S., U.K., New Zealand, and more already uploaded.
EnerDel says it will come out with a lithium-ion battery for plug-in hybrids that will cost $1,500, a development that could go a long way to making these cars palatable in terms of price.
The Indianapolis-based company, which recently received a $6.5 million grant from the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), hopes to deliver the battery to car manufacturers for their 2010 lineups, according to Charles Gassenheimer, vice chairman of the company. The 2010 model cars will start coming out in September 2009, he said.
By then, there will probably be 65 hybrid cars on the market, he estimated. Right now, there are 15, he said. No major manufacturers currently make plug-in hybrids. Plug-ins have larger batteries than conventional hybrids, can be charged through a socket and get better gas mileage. However, they cost a lot at the moment. Converting a hybrid to a plug-in costs about $15,000, money that even plug-in hybrid proponents admit is nearly impossible to make up for with better fuel economy.
"You're not going to spend thousands of dollars to save $600 to $700 at the pump a year," Gassenheimer said. "Until you make this a positive return on investment, you won't see these (plug-ins) at 50 to 80 percent penetration."
EnerDel will mostly aim at selling batteries to manufacturers to incorporate into cars coming off the line and not aftermarket modifiers.
How much cheaper will an EnerDel-energized plug-in hybrid be compared to a regular one? It's hard to say. Gassenheimer, though, asserts that the company's batteries will cost half as much or less as nickel-metal hydride batteries, which are used in some plug-in retrofits these days. The price the company is quoting is fairly cheap. The National Renewable Energy Lab has put out reports estimating that the battery price should be able to come down to $2,500 or more. So if EnerDel could hit its goal--and it's an if--it could help. The grant will be used to drive costs down further.
The company's basic technology was coined by Peter Novak, a scientist and former member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The batteries also rely on technology from Japan and packaging know-how from Delphi.
The battery is a lithium titanate battery. Competitor Altair Nanotechnologies uses a similar chemistry. Meanwhile, A123 Systems, which has received millions in venture funds, builds a lithium potassium battery. Gassenheimer stated that his company's lithium titanate batteries run at lower temperatures than potassium ones and thus are more safe. Lower operating temperatures also mean that car manufacturers won't have to include additional cooling systems for the battery alone. (Notebooks use lithium cobalt batteries, which run hotter.)
The technical and marketing issues for EnerDel, and the plug-in industry in general, still need to be fine-tuned. But customers are receptive to the idea, according to Gassenheimer.
"This is a major supply problem, not a demand problem," he said.
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