By Ben Randalls
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ford announced the launch of MyEnergi Lifestyle. The auto manufacturer partnered with Whirlpool, SunPower, Eaton and Nest Labs to create a product that connects plug-in vehicles to energy-smart appliances to the same database, instead of going to and from separate places. Once consumers are connected in the MyEnergi Lifestyle database, they can team-up their products with the grid to produce overall household energy efficiency.
On February 26th, about 100 people gathered in San Francisco to discuss the world’s greenest buildings and the future of green building. They discussed strategies that spawned a revolution in net-zero building as well as the frontier of new techniques and innovations.
Net-Zero, for those not familiar, is a term used to describe the net energy consumption and energy footprint of a building. Whether a one-story garage or a skyscraper, a net zero building theoretically produces as much or more energy than it consumes. Additionally, a net zero building does not produce carbon emissions. This is often achieved through a combination of highly efficient design, carbon sequestration and offsets.
The February 26th convening came to an interesting conclusion: the future of green building is in the occupants, not the construction. This doesn’t put the entire responsibility on the occupants. Rather, it integrates behavior into the energy saving strategy.
The area of building efficiency affords tremendous opportunities for both economic growth and reduced environmental impacts. Buildings are the single largest emitters of greenhouse gases. According to a UNEP study titled “Towards a Green Economy,” homes and businesses are responsible for 40 percent of the climate change causing carbon pollution. There is significant room for improvement in new construction and retrofits in homes, businesses, schools and other organization.
In addition to environmental benefits, there are powerful economic incentives driving efficiency. There are a wide range of new innovations from analytics to smarter sensor technologies that offer cost effective opportunities for improvement. Read More→
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating impact on the East Coast, there has been contentious debate regarding whether or not we can attribute climate change to such a powerful storm. In fact, Bloomberg Businessweek didn’t pull any punches when it pummeled readers with its brash cover story.
But regardless of your stance on the issue, we can all agree that climate affects how we experience the world whether we’re at play, work, or leisure.
Although Sandy is an extreme and unfortunate example, it does serve to remind us that we are all susceptible to climate. Even in the simplest, most unexpected ways, weather has an impact on our daily lives. Take, for example, your home energy costs. This summer was one of the hottest in history; June alone broke 170 U.S. heat records nationwide, records that were established in the traditionally hotter months of July and August. How did your home cooling efforts go during the summer? More importantly, how were your home cooling costs? As we move into winter, your pocket book may see some relief, but keeping the house warm during the cold months presents another set of problems altogether.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new process to test the performance of solar panels. It involves 32 different LEDs, each one generating their part of the spectrum of sunlight, and other equipment that measures the wavelength-dependent quantum efficiency.
The new testing system will be used in two ways. The first is to run every LED by itself for one minute, testing the solar module`s efficiency of the different parts of the spectrum one by one. This test will run for 32 minutes. The other test involves activating all the LEDs at once, to measure the entire blended spectrum, which only will take four seconds.
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