energy

Intel, Whole Foods lead in green-power purchasing

Chip giant Intel procured over 1,493 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy in 2010.

That's according to a survey of over 1,000 companies that was conducted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance in conjunction with wind turbine giant Vestas Wind Systems.

The index developed from this new survey is called the Corporate Renewable Energy Index (CREX). (For a PDF of the white paper on the survey, click here.) For its inaugural release the CREX released rankings of companies based on the amount of renewable energy they procured both in 2009 and 2010.

For 2010, the top five companies with the largest renewable electricity procurement were: Intel, clothing retailer Kohl's, Hong Kong electric company CLP Holdings, supermarket chain Whole Foods Market, and the Dutch telecom Koninklijke KPN.

For 2009, the ranking was Deutsche Telekom, Intel, PepsiCo, BT Group, and clothing retailer Kohl's.

Keep in mind that no one is suggesting these companies are gleaning electricity directly from local solar or wind farms. While some companies do directly support renewable-energy projects, over 80 percent of the renewable electricity procured by the companies surveyed was purchased in the form of renewable electricity credits (RECs).

And while Intel procured the most renewable electricity in 2010 at over 1,493 gigawatt-hours, on a percentage basis it's actually Kohl's that wins. In 2010 the retailer purchased so many RECs, it statistically can say it garnered 100.4 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

In conjunction with the CREX, Vestas also had TNS/Gallup conduct a survey on wind energy procurement in particular.

When it comes to wind, Whole Foods tops the list. The supermarket chain gets 100 percent of its electricity from wind energy, followed by North American bank Toronto-Dominion Bank at 78 percent, and software giant Adobe Systems at 65 percent, according to the Global Consumer Wind Study 2011.

More statistics and rankings of companies by industry can be found in Appendix D (page 30) of the CREX white paper (PDF) released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Vestas.… Read more

DOE: 2010 wind market saw decreased demand

The U.S. wind energy market took a hit in 2010 with a decrease in investment compared with 2008 and 2009.

That's according to the Department of Energy's "2010 Wind Technologies Market Report" (PDF) released yesterday.

The report measures investment in terms of how much wind energy capacity was built and connected to the national electric grid. About 5 gigawatts' worth of wind energy farms were installed in the U.S. in 2010, representing an $11 billion investment, according to the Department of Energy report. That represents a decrease in wind energy installations overall when compared … Read more

AT&T signs up for 11 fuel cell Bloom boxes

Bloom Energy and telecom giant AT&T said today that the clean-tech start-up would install its fuel cell-powered Energy Servers--known colloquially as "Bloom boxes"--at 11 facilities in California.

The AT&T facilities include sites in Corona, Fontana, Hayward, Pasadena, Redwood City, Rialto, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Jose, and San Ramon.

The units are expected to provide 7.5 megawatts of energy for AT&T, reducing its carbon emissions footprint for the facilities involved by half, or about 250 million pounds of CO2 per year.

For AT&T, it's a chance to use a buzzworthy clean-tech company in its overall corporate sustainability initiative to use more renewable energy as part of its portfolio. (The company also has 19 solar deployments slated for 2011.)

For Bloom, it's the latest in a series of high-profile partners, including software maker Adobe.

The key to Bloom's success lies in its business model, in which it pays for installation and hardware upfront in exchange for profits from a fixed rate on power produced.

(If you're interested, our sister site SmartPlanet did a deeper dive last year into the tech that's inside the Bloom box; our corporate siblings at 60 Minutes also profiled the company in February 2010.)

For the AT&T deal, the Bloom boxes are expected to produce more than 62 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, enough to power some 5,600 homes.

Installation of the boxes is scheduled to begin later this year; the plan is to have them fully operational by mid-2012.

Previous stories Parsing fact from fiction with the Bloom Energy box The nitty-gritty details of the Bloom Energy box FAQ: Bloom's power plant in a box? Bloom box challenges: Reliability, cost

This story originally appeared on SmartPlanet.com… Read more

PowerCost Monitor fills out with People Power app

The maker of the PowerCost Monitor, seeking alternatives to discontinued energy-monitoring applications from Microsoft and Google, today said that its home electricity monitor will work with People Power's software.

People Power's Android and iPhone app, which is available this month, brings a few more features to the PowerCost Monitor's real-time electricity reading, including the ability to set up a monthly energy budget, get energy efficiency recommendations, and compare electricity use to others. It can also get electricity rate data from utilities which have variable prices based on the time of day.

Over the past few weeks, Microsoft and Google attracted interest to home energy technology by announcing plans to retire their respective applications, Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm. Both companies said they didn't get the customer uptake they were hoping for.

Utilities are one channel for bringing energy monitoring to market but a handful of companies are selling directly to consumers with products that use home broadband connections, rather than a two-way smart meter, to get data online.

The deal between BlueLine Innovations, which makes the PowerCost Monitor, and People Power hinges on a Wi-Fi gateway that transmits electricity meter information over the Internet to People Power's application. BlueLine Innovations makes an optical sensor that attaches onto a meter to read data. It then sends data to a handheld device that shows near real-time electricity use and the Wi-Fi gateway. The monitor hardware and optical sensor, sold online or at Lowe's, cost about $100 and the Internet gateway costs an additional $159.

Another company that is using a gateway and home broadband to get data online is WattVision, which also makes an optical sensor and Wi-Fi gateway priced at $249. Consumers can view information through a Web application.

The idea behind real-time electricity monitoring is that people will get more insight into how they power their homes and find ways to conserve. In addition to finding ways to save money, people can simply get a better idea of energy usage before a monthly bill arrives.

Meter sensors with a Wi-Fi gateway are attractive to consumers who want more control over energy but don't have smart meters. To get more detailed energy usage, some energy monitors use sensors that clamp onto the individual circuits going into a circuit box. Another promising technology that will provide more detail are sensors that can recognize the electronic "signature" of large power consumers, such as large appliances or air conditioners. … Read more

Clean Urban Energy raises $7 million

Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced today.

The company has developed a software platform, and the monitoring and analytic services to go with it, that take advantage of a building's thermal mass and thermal-energy storage (TES) to make it run more efficiently and save on energy costs.

Clean Urban Energy says its software analytics platform can reduce the expense of a building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy use by 15 percent to 30 percent.

"By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks … Read more

Report: Uninterruptible power supply poised for growth

Say goodbye to those impromptu panic attacks when faced with blackouts or power surges affecting your servers at work.

Such interruptions in power will become obsolete as more commercial buildings, looking to actively manage energy consumption, invest in uninterruptible power supplies to protect computers and servers.

That's according the latest research report from Pike Research titled "Energy Storage in Commercial Buildings."

The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) industry includes any intermediary device used between the public grid and electronic devices being protected from interruptions like power failures, small surges, or brownouts.

UPS is poised to grow from a $… Read more

'Sophisticated' attack targets two Energy Dept. labs

The Web sites of the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Lab and Jefferson National Lab were down today in the aftermath of "sophisticated" attacks, a spokesman at one of the labs told CNET.

The Richland, Wash.-based Pacific Northwest National Lab shut down its public Web site, Internet access, and e-mail service after the attack last Friday, spokesman Greg Koller said, adding that the Jefferson National Lab in Newport News, Va., was hit with a similar attack.

"No classified information has been compromised. About 20 percent we do here is classified," Koller said. "We … Read more

Three awesome-sounding under-$500 home theater speaker systems

How much room-shaking home theater power can you expect five minispeakers and a pipsqueak subwoofer to deliver? Technological advances have certainly changed my thinking on this matter, but my listening tests proved speaker size still matters when I compared the Boston Acoustics SoundWare XS 5.1, Energy Take Classic 5.1, and Pioneer SP-PK21BS subwoofer-satellite packages.

The Boston SoundWare XS cube satellites are incredibly tiny, just 4.43 inches wide, 4.25 inches high, and 4.43 deep. Each one weighs just 1 pound. The speaker's rear is faceted, so instead of being a six-sided cube, the SoundWare XS … Read more

Motion-powered gadget charger back on track

NEW YORK--The idea of harvesting the energy from motion to charge gadgets looks like it's ready to take a step forward.

Tremont Electric plans to start taking new orders for its kinetic energy charger called the nPower PEG (personal energy generator). The cylinder-shaped device, which is about twice as long as a smart phone, costs $159 and will be available for sale online in a month or two, company executives said last week at the CEA Lines Show. It's currently back-ordered.

The company is aiming the portable charger at backpackers or people who are the move but who don't have consistent access to charging, such as college students. While a person is walking, the charger, which weighs 11 ounces, generates as much power as an iPod Nano uses, said CEO Aaron LeMieux. Twenty-six minutes of walking is enough to top off a 3G smartphone for one minute of talking through a USB port, according to the company.

The nPower PEG charges a battery when a magnet, placed between two springs, moves up and down. The device is "tuned" to the frequency of motion of walking, LeMieux explained. It can also charge the internal lithium ion battery by shaking.

This on-the-go charging category has attracted several companies, including portable battery and fuel-cell makers. In fact, the nPower Peg was introduced at least two years ago. But the category of portable charging for consumer electronics has not yet materialized in a significant way.

This Day in Tech: A look at Google+; crowdsourcing questions for Obama

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Thursday, June 30.

A hands-on look at Google+, using Google+ The CNET News staff takes a look at Google's new social-networking site. We like how Circles lets users segment friends, but we think the way the system suggests connections is challenging. Check out the new social service. More

Behind the scenes at TechShop (photos) As maker hub TechShop expands with a new location in San Jose, Calif., CNET's Boonsri Dickinson takes a tour of the San Francisco … Read more