Archive for the ‘Electricity’ Category

MA Supreme Court OK’s Cape Wind

Small wind turbineIn an August 31st ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts voted 4-2 in favor of developing a wind farm in the Nantucket Sound. Despite the positive ruling, many obstacles remain in the establishment of 130 wind turbines off the coast of Cape Cod; the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound strongly opposes Cape Wind and vows to continue its court battle against the wind energy project.…

Green Sells: Energy Upgrades Raise Home Value

Row of purple Monopoloy houses with a green house in the middle.The housing market, like the U.S. economy, is a mess. GDP growth dropped from 3.7% to 2.4% in the second quarter. In the housing market shrinking incomes and greater lender restrictions mean fewer qualified buyers are looking, which is driving down prices.…

Volunteers Take Energy Efficiency to Cambridge’s Main Streets

CEA canvassing interns: Stephanie, Mira, Danit, Trevor, Federico, Laurence

On July 7th CEA’s six volunteers took to the streets for the first time, canvassing businesses in Inman Square, and eastward on Cambridge Street.…

Google and Green Energy

This week, a blog post by Google announced that the company plans to enact a power purchase agreement to get enough energy to power several of its facilities. The deal will include a purchase of 114 megawatts of power from the NextEra Energy Resources wind farm in Iowa.…

$18.5 Million for New England Energy Projects

[Men working on telephone lines, probably near a TVA dam hydroelectric plant] (LOC) by The Library of Congress On Monday, the DOE announced a $18.5 million grant will be dispersed via the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) amongst various energy research labs and companies throughout New England.  The funds are part of the larger $349 million Recovery Act funding pool and will be used primarily for energy efficiency projects; specifically in this case, solid state lighting using gallium nitride, air conditioning efficiency, chemical flow batteries, and overall energy storage capacity research.…

Did Cash for Appliances Work?

Graph of the how long each state's rebate program ran before allotted funds were spentIt’s a huge success. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Actually, it’s a little of both.

Fifty states and six territories have launched “Cash for Appliances” programs since late last year. Each one had the same amount of money – about a dollar per resident – but the results have been wildly different.…

Increasing Solar Efficiency (and why its important)

Natural Palette by Argonne National Laboratory If there’s one clear cut hope for the future of energy, its that a completely clean and renewable source of energy, like the sun, could one day come to completely replace our current addiction to fossil fuels.…

Replacing our Desktop Computer with a NAS

Home NAS device replaces a desktop computer for storage When we tested all our electronics with the Kill-a-Watt, we found out that the ten-year-old desktop was using a lot of energy, even when it wasn’t powered on. Since we were mostly just using the desktop for storing our music and pictures—we’re primarily laptop users now—we thought it would be a good idea to replace the poor old thing with network-attached storage (NAS for short).…

Peabody Terrace Competition Results

On March 6th, 84 residents at Peabody Terrace participated in an incandescent light bulb swap for compact fluorescent bulbs. Residents received one free CFL for every incandescent bulb they turned in—over 200 efficient CFLs found homes.…

Green Communities Eligible for Grants

Hopkington "Green Communities" Announcement by Office of Governor PatrickThe newest beneficiaries from the “green” energy policies of Massachusetts will be comprised of cities which have already taken steps in limiting their carbon emissions through alternative energy solutions. Yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick visited the city of Hopkinton, which has taken major advancements towards solar energy development with a cutting-edge 325 kilowatt solar panel system, unveiled last year.…