LED Lighting — one step further

LED lighting is the future. This is going to reduce our electric consumption in a big way. We’re using LEDs in bike lights, flash lights and stop lights, but because of various challenges, we haven’t reached the point where we can use them everywhere in our houses. This article in the NYTimes shows and interesting concept to solve one of the challenges — heat.

Because LED light sources generate all their heat through the rear, manufacturers are adding heat sinks to dramatically increase the surface area and let the heat dissipate rapidly. Without them, the LED fixture would lose its color accuracy and have a dramatically shortened life.

I love the track lighting concept — it looks good.

Philippe Starck Wind Turbine

Designer Philippe Starck created a fancy looking wind turbine that will sell for as little as $750 this fall. You can be the talk of your neighborhood with this thing on your roof, as it actually provides energy to your home and saves up to 80% of your electric bill every month. Sniffs Starck: Read more

Reducing Energy Bill to $0 a Month

Here’s a guy who is totally off the power grid, with all the modern day amenities, but living in a solar-hydrogen and geo-thermally powered home. Read more

Standby Power - leaky electricity

All those devices on stand-by, like your microwave, DVD player and TV, are idol using power even when they’re not in use. The typical microwave uses more power in stand-by then when in use. Sure, when it’s cooking something it uses 100 times the amount of energy that it takes to power the digital clock. However, you’re cooking only 1% of the time and the digital clock always running.

According to the Ecomomist

…(A) study which estimated that standby power accounted for approximately 5% of total residential electricity consumption in America, “adding up to more than $3 billion in annual energy costs”. According to America’s Department of Energy, national residential electricity consumption in 2004 was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh)—5% of which is 64m MWh. The wasted energy, in other words, is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations.

It turns out that the 5% was an estimation. When they actually went into homes and tested the amount of power being used by devices in standby mode — the numbers ranged from 7% to 13% for a typical western household! Imagine that, up to 13% of the electricity in America is being used while nobody is using the devices.

Wind Farm Potential in America

Here’s a guy who believes wind can reduce our dependency on gasoline by 38% in the next ten years. The video on the front page of his web site outlines his plan. Basically, he’s pushing wind power to relieve the electric grid from using all our natural gas, and then using the (domestic) natural gas to power vehicles like cars, trucks and buses. Read more

The price of gas & oil

These prices make alternate fuels seem reasonable. Some people hope that gas will climb to $10 a gallon or more, so that people will be really ready to adopt new technologies which let us do more for less. Electric vehicles, smart grids, nuclear power, high speed rail from NY to FL, from CA to WA and from PA to CA, etc.

Solar Powered Hybred Cars

The 2010 Toyota Prius is going to have solar panels on the roof! They are supposed to power the air conditioner on hot days. Others think it’s a sort of PR stunt. You’re not going to get much power from a few panels on the roof of a car, however, it’s somthing. Mazda had solar panels on the roof of a car in the past, which was intended to power fans on hot days when the car was parked. These were discontinued because nobody bought them.

L.E.D - the future of lighting

These light emitting diodes bulbs fit right into a regular light bulb socket but they only use 1 watt of power! Not only that, they only last 100,000 + hours (that’s 11 1/2 years) before you need to change them. Of course, they only use 1/100th the power of a regular bulb and they can run on 6v or 12v DC batteries (perfect for a solar solution). I’m pretty sure they’re expensive, however, the prices of these LEDs are coming down, and when they do, you can say good-bye to the compact florecent lights. But that’s not all, check out this nano LED breakthrough where they claim to improve the efficency by 7.5 times

Low MPG Cars, Truck and Automobile Reviews

Here is an analysis of some low mile per gallon cars. The page contains reviews and specifications on the most fuel efficient vehicles currently available in the US today. Some of them get over 50 miles per gallon. In the coming years, more and more options like these will be available. If everybody went from driving a 21 MPG car to a 42 MPG car, well, we’d only need 1/2 the amount of oil. I’m sure that’s the last thing that Exxon and the Saudi Arabian Princes want us to realize.

Recycling Paper

They used to say that it couldn’t be done. However, 56 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. during 2007 was recovered for recycling — this was an all-time high. That’s nearly 360 pounds of paper for each man, woman, and child in America. (EPA, 2008) That’s 63 million tons of recycled paper. Read more

Next Page »