electricity

Lower Your Energy Consumption in Easy Ways

- Adam Clare

With more technology around the home more energy is required to power the devices, and this adds up when millions of people plug things in. There are enough energy consumers out there that needlessly leave things running leads to a ton of wasted energy being produced. Fortunately there are many easy things you can do to help save energy and money.

U.S. households spend about $100 per year to power devices in low-power mode, around 8 percent of home electricity expenses, according to the government’s Energy Star program. Your water heater, lighting, air conditioner, and heater are the biggest energy hogs. The good news is that you can cut your energy bills without spending a fortune to do it.

Read more here.

Formula E is the All-Electric Alternative to Formula 1

- Adam Clare

Car racing is a popular sport around the world and it used to be a great testing bed for new, more efficient, technology used in internal combustion engines. Today, the technological improvements seem to be more on material science rather than fuel efficiency (most racing leagues still allow leaded gasoline).

Formula E will have it’s first season in 2014 and the new FIA-sanctioned championship wants car companies to focus their efforts on electric cars.

Formula E’s intent is to show how exciting electric vehicles can be as they race around inner city street courses. Ten cities are being lined up for the stage races in 2014 – with nine announced so far: London, Rome, Los Angeles, Miami, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janerio, Bangkok and Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Formula E has the backing of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) – motor racing’s global governing body, which also oversees Formula One.

Landing Renault is significant. Renault is the engine supplier and a big sponsor of Red Bull Racing and a former F1 champion itself. Renault has also invested more in all-electric cars than any other manufacturer and believes Formula E will give it a global marketing opportunity to show off the performance and safety of electric cars.

Read more here.
Check out the Formula E Reddit here.

Wirelessly Charging Electric Buses to be Tested

- Adam Clare

The city of Mannheim will be testing a new kind of electric bus which can be charged wirelessly. Bombardier, who makes the buses, is hoping to prove that using electric buses can be cheaper and more efficient than current models. Every time the bus stops to pickup or drop off passengers a device beneath the street will use wireless power to recharge batteries on the bus.

Two buses outfitted with special batteries will get charged by underground induction energy transfer stations each time they stop along the route.

Bombardier spokesman Marc Laforge said the technology could be attractive for governments looking to electrifying transit systems without installing overhead wires.

Read more here.

LED Street Lights Save Los Angeles Millions

- Adam Clare

Four years ago Los Angeles decided to change its street lighting to LEDs and the results have come in and the savings are phenomenal. They have converted a little over half of all their street lights and are already saving $5,325,793 annually in lighting costs. It’s worth noting that LEDs use 80% less electricity than traditional lighting solutions while also providing better lighting for users of the street.

Hopefully the success that LA has seen will encourage other cities to make the switch to cheaper and more efficient lighting.

Maintenance savings are real, too: In 2008, pre-LED roll-out, Los Angeles logged 70,000 street light repair and maintenance events; in FY 2012, maintenance and repair events fell to 46,300. LEDs are longer lived than the incumbent units they replace (10-15 years versus 4-6 years), which means that maintenance should steadily decline as LED units are fully deployed. A remote monitoring system, installed with the LED fixtures, indentifies problems in real time.

LED fixtures also fail at a lesser rate than incumbent technologies. After 36 months of initial operation, for instance, high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures in Los Angeles recorded an average failure rate of 10%; the average failure rate for LED fixtures, according to the latest figures, is 0.2% (189 of 98,000 installed). At full LED deployment, Los Angeles expects to save $2.5 million annually on maintenance costs.

Read more at Forbes.

Tidal Power in UK is Promising

- Adam Clare

The UK is looking into ways to make their power grid more environmentally sustainable and being an island nation they have looked into using tides. Tidal flows are predictable and reliable which means that power companies can predict energy generated from tide-powered turbines, unlike with unpredictable wind. A new study reveals that the latent energy in tides can be used to supply a lot of the nations electric needs.

“From tidal barrages you can reasonably expect you can get 15% of UK electricity needs, that’s a very solid number,” co-author Dr Nicholas Yates from the National Oceanography Centre told BBC News.

“On top of that there is a 5% tidal stream figure, and with future technological development that is likely to be an underestimate in my view,” he said.

Read more at the BBC.

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