We finally got that Kill-A-Watt we’ve been thinking about, and we spent a good part of last weekend running around the house measuring the energy use of every single piece of electronic equipment we own. It was surprisingly fun. It was also a lot of numbers. (See below.) But we could draw a few conclusions from all of them:
The U.S. electric grid–the wires that connect power-plants to homes and businesses–could use a major facelift. In general, control over the flow of electricity on the grid has not kept pace with burgeoning communication improvements made in other areas of the economy, and the National Academies of Science and Engineering have characterized the U.S. grid as an “amalgamation of outdated technologies“ (America’s Energy Future: Technology and Transformation).…
Cape Wind is still embroiled in politics, and CommonWealth Solar may soon be. The state’s grant program to promote solar energy is effectively bankrupt. On the plus side, if you already have a photovoltaic installation or other renewable energy system, you can now sell much more electricity back to NSTAR.
Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about appliance maker Whirlpool, who was the recipient of a $20 million grant from the Federal Government to fund product development in the rapidly developing field of smart appliances.…
A recent study conducted by IBM in Great Britain uncovered some non-intuitive trends. Although millenials seem to be the most aware of environmental issues in general, they still remain grossly ill-informed about the specifics, and waste more resources than their elders.…
This past Sunday, August 9th, 24 Community members traveled door to door in the Riverside neighborhood of Cambridge distributing free energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and efficiency resources to hundreds of homes.…
Gapminder is an organization dedicated to helping understand the world, and particularly environmental issues, by providing interesting tools for statistical analysis. They’re well-known for their Wonderbread-like bubble charts, and brief presentations by director Hans Rosling like the one at right on CO2 emissions from their “myth demolishing series.”
See also Worldmapper.
This week, the highly anticipated documentary “Coal Country” hits theaters. And, surprise, big coal is not thrilled with its release. From mountaintop removal footage to interviews with those most impacted—local residents of Appalachia—Coal Country exposes and breaks down the business of coal mining into its dirty parts. For one, an American Lung Association study shows that 24,000 Americans die each year from from coal-fired plant pollution (grist).…
If you’ve got time and bandwidth to kill, you might want to check out TechTV. In the spirit of OpenCourseWare, MIT hosts videos of various guest lectures and conferences. For instance, Energy forecast for the rest of the century.…
An article from yesterday’s Guardian in the UK provides a thorough, yet somewhat disappointing, analysis of recent electricity usage from their National Grid. Consumption is provided in half-hour increments and reveals the largest drops in demand occurred when industry and business would be expected to use a large majority of power from the grid.…
