energy

INGOCAR is a developmental concept for a 5 passenger car with a hydraulic drive system in place of a conventional powertrian. With the weight reduction this offers and other efficiencies in the systems, the designers say their vehicle could get 170 mpg.

AT&T has just announced a USB-based telephone charger that does not pull electricity from the wall when it's not charging a phone. I don't know about you, but my charger is plugged in 100% of the time. That charger pulls a tiny amount of energy from the wall 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Multipy that by 100 million chargers in America and there's probably at least one coal-fired power plant in America dedicated entirely to that wasted power.

Federal regulators have unveiled an ambitious plan to bring high-speed Internet service to millions of Americans who can't get it today, while boosting delivery speeds and lowering prices for 200 million current subscribers.

The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan also aims to leverage broadband to transform nearly every aspect of U.S. society and industry, including health care, education and energy. The FCC will deliver the sweeping blueprint to Congress today.

Booting up PCs will be faster with Intel's new 40GB solid-state drive (SSD), the company said Monday. Intel has begun shipping the Intel X25-V Value SATA SSD.

Used in dual-drive notebook configurations or added to a desktop with an existing hard drive, the X25-V can contain the operating system and the user's favorite applications to make startup faster.

Considered a game-changing technology to replace hard drives, SSDs have been replacing traditional magnetic hard drives after they proved to be faster, more reliable, and more energy efficient.

Conventional gasoline engines are terribly inefficient things. Only 13% of the energy of the fuel actually moves the car. 62% is lost in the engine as waste heat, and driveline losses, accessories, and idling also reduce the efficiency.

Energy savings of 99% over previous methods probably sound like snake oil. But some math geeks have been able to find a way so that computers can use only 1% of the energy (and the time) necessary for some tasks.

Sweden's energy minister, Maud Olofsson, announced yesterday that the country would install 2,000 wind turbines over the next decade that would add to 10 terawatt hours of clean energy per year.
The country is also aiming to have 50 percent of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.  To reach that goal, Sweden will be adding another 15 TWh of renewable energy from sources like solar power and biofuels in addition to the wind power.

Following a prelaunch buildup that could be the called the energy world's equivalent of the Apple iPad rollout, Bloom Energy launched its cleaner-energy-in-a-box product Wednesday. The Bloom Energy Server, which uses a patented solid oxide fuel-cell technology, has already achieved a customer base that includes Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, eBay, FedEx, Google, Staples and Wal-Mart.

The launch was attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, board member Gen. Colin Powell, venture capitalist John Doerr, and executives from some of the initial customers.

Following a prelaunch buildup that could be called the energy world's equivalent of the Apple iPad rollout, Bloom Energy launched its cleaner-energy-in-a-box product Wednesday. The Bloom Energy Server, which uses a patented solid oxide fuel-cell technology, has already achieved a customer base that includes Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, eBay, FedEx, Google, Staples and Wal-Mart.

The launch was attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, board member Gen. Colin Powell, venture capitalist John Doerr, and executives from some of the initial customers.

For those in the wind power business, or those considering jumping in, last week brought some big news.  A new study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that the U.S. could theoretically generate 37 million gigawatt-hours of wind power per year, triple the amount previously thought.