IT

nPower PEG Crowdsources Energy For Developing Nations

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Solar and wind-powered chargers are cool, but they require resources beyond our control in order to work. Find yourself without power on a cloudy or breeze-less day, and you’ve got a dead gadget on your hands. Kinetic energy, power generated from movement, is a promising renewable energy source, especially for those of us constantly on the move.

A while ago we reported on the nPower PEG, a portable charging that harvests the passive energy generated by your body during almost any type of exercise. After a long wait, the nPower PEG finally hit the commercial market this summer. Now its developers have teamed up with CrisisMappers.net to help bring much-needed off-grid energy to people in developing countries. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 3, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Ride-Sharing Software Cuts Energy Use, Carbon Emissions: Profile

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One of London’s growing number of clean-tech startup companies has created an online market place to cut energy use and carbon emissions by linking buyers and sellers of personal and freight transportation.

Carbon Voyage offers travelers a way of sharing rides to save money and fuel, and brokers trucking services to allow companies to ship their goods via reliable carriers who can make fewer trips with empty vehicles. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Cleantech IT Revolution Sweeps Number 10 Downing Street

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Luke Nicholson takes a late and frugal lunch of soup and bread in the fourth-floor conference room of a former fabric warehouse in London’s East End. The walls are thinly-painted brick, the floors are bare wooden planks, and there’s a visible gap by a nearby window frame, letting air and light in through a place they shouldn’t go.

It’s an unlikely setting for Nicholson’s company Carbon Culture, a cutting-edge clean-tech startup that writes software to monitor energy consumption, expenditure and carbon emissions in eight U.K. government departments, and is about to roll its product out to the private sector. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Breakthrough Cooling Technology Rolled Out for Data Centers

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Data-center consumption of energy and water for server-cooling has reached astonishing volumes, but a pair of innovative companies is applying the brakes to this runaway train.

The ambitious partnership and its technologies were presented during a July 25 “analysts day” at the Danbury, CT headquarters of Inertech, which designs, engineers and manufactures modular data pods and energy-efficient cooling systems for a wide range of industries. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 31, 2012 at 8:30 AM

London’s Silicon Roundabout Nurtures Clean-Tech Startups

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The traffic circle at the intersection of Old Street and City Road in East London’s Shoreditch neighborhood would be just another ugly piece of urban infrastructure if it hadn’t become identified with the city’s booming technology industry.

The circle – or roundabout, as the Brits call the familiar road features – is at the heart of a cluster of high-tech firms ranging from Google and Intel to hundreds of startups that have opened their doors in the last four years, generating a creative cluster that has invited comparisons with California’s Silicon Valley. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 30, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Energy Points Explains the Joined Up Approach to Energy Management

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Companies are finding revolutionary ways to convey their unique advantages, selling points and business models. Publications like Breaking Energy and the Huffington Post are accustomed to receiving – and running – featured or contributed articles from company executives discussing their take on the news of the day, or on broader trends.

Breaking Energy joined the online video energy community the day we launched, but we rarely receive direct video commentary, reactions or feedback about the content in the way we traditionally have in written form. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 26, 2012 at 1:00 PM

The Cyber Threat Facing American Utilities

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Across the country, and increasingly around the globe, information technology is playing a key role in the operations and organizational management of utility service providers. From customer-facing smart-metering technologies to administrative software tools that enhance automation and network monitoring, the revolution in interconnectivity has brought increased productivity and efficiencies, but also new areas of risk and vulnerability.

As a result, utility service providers must take a broad-spectrum approach to hardening their facilities, especially to cyber-criminals and hostile nation states that have the capability to cause harm and catastrophic impact to a system without ever approaching its physical structure. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 25, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Lab Breakthrough Series: Energy Innovation

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National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Eric Kozubal co-invented an air conditioning system that’s energy efficient while incredibly effective at both cooling a building and managing its humidity levels – the first time both of these processes have been fit into a single machine. Kozubal recently talked to us about his invisible technology, its road to commercialization, and the effects it will have on industry. Question: This is a perfect example of ‘invisible technology.’ How would someone walking into a building know the DEVAP was being used?

 /  Published July 24, 2012 at 8:00 AM

Building Energy Efficiency: Options in a Dynamic Environment

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It is estimated that 40% of US power consumption is attributed to buildings, and companies large and small are focusing on ways to reduce wasted energy in the places we live and work. With technological advances come new options for streamlining energy efficiency programs.

“You have to look at a building as an organism that needs to be monitored consistently because conditions change – like weather or occupancy. A building is a dynamic entity, you can’t just build it and walk away,” Dave Bartlett, Vice President of IBM Smart Buildings recently told Breaking Energy. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 23, 2012 at 1:30 PM

Cybersecurity and the Power Grid

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The US Senate’s energy panel did a status check Tuesday on actions taken to ensure the electric grid is protected from cyber-attacks. The hearing came as lawmakers are poised to consider yet another round of cybersecurity legislation.

Testimony we heard about cumbersome processes and the inability to react quickly didn’t sound too promising, but you can read the excerpts below or scan the full testimony here and decide for yourself. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 20, 2012 at 2:30 PM
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