Home/Posts Tagged ‘battery’
Posts Tagged ‘battery’
Green living, Politics, Jan 17th, 2012,
Wasteful battery chargers for smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, etc., will be subject to new, stricter rules in the US state of California. ‘Vampire’ battery chargers can waste up to 60% of the energy they take from electrical outlets. California is the first US state to confront this problem, with the California Energy Commission voting unanimously to improve efficiency standards, which will cover some 170 million chargers. The manufacturers of consumer appliances of course strongly objected to the new regulations, despite projections that the improved energy standards would save $306 million per year on commercial and residential electricity bills. From the…
Tags: battery, California, chargers, electricity, energy, smartphones, vampire
Green living, Science & Technology, Jul 2nd, 2010,
The air travel industry wants more efficient – and thereby greener – airplanes in order to boost profits and improve its image in an increasingly environmentally conscious world. According to a piece in the Economist on new, more efficient designs for jet engines, jets are now roughly twice as fuel efficient as they were in the 1960s and 80% quieter. The new designs discussed in the piece – made by small Israeli firm R-Jet – have not yet been picked up by any major player in the airline industry, though R-Jet claims their engines could cut fuel use by a…
Tags: air travel, airplanes, battery, Economist, efficient, electric, fuel, Green, jet, planes, R-Jet
Green living, Science & Technology, Apr 6th, 2010,
On April 26th the city of Tokyo, Japan will experiment with a new public system for charging electric vehicles. The ‘battery swap’ method robotically changes empty batteries for fully charged ones at specially equipped charging stations. This innovative system, developed by the American company Better Place, provides a much quicker way of charging electric cars than the traditional ‘plug in and wait’ option. The battery swap system will be tested for a three-month trial period by a major taxi firm located in Tokyo’s central Roppongi district. From an article in the Guardian: All of our components will be tested together…
Tags: battery, better place, cars, charging, electric, EV, Fluence, japan, Renault, stations, swap, system, Tokyo, trial, vehicle
Green living, Science & Technology, Mar 31st, 2010,
What, you mean you haven’t been breathless with anticipation regarding the large-scale storage of renewable energy from wind and solar power? Well get with the program. Presidio, a small town on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico, is also on the frontier of energy storage technology. Life in Presidio, Texas is harsh, isolated, hot and stormy. So why would anyone live there? Well, I don’t have the answer to that, but those who do reside in Presidio endure some of the hottest temperatures in the United States as well as frequent electrical storms, which tend to disrupt the…
Tags: battery, electricity, energy, japan, power, Presidio, renewable, Sodium-sulfur, Solar, storage, technology, Texas, wind
