power

Today at CEDIA, Sharp announced two new lines of flat-panel LCD HDTVs, one with a special energy-saver function and another with the company's first iteration of true 120Hz processing. Full details are available after the jump.… Read more

There is an ungreen revolution taking place in enthusiast game PC circles.

The eye-opening graphics possible on today's game PCs come at a cost: light-dimming power consumption. The trend, rooted in the perennial quest for more speed, bucks the overall greening of the PC industry.

Green PC designs have become more than just practical; they're cool. Power-sipping Netbooks are in, as are small desktops like the Dell Studio Hybrid and Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Slimline.

This is not the case for high-end gaming PCs, where bigger is better. How far this trend can go isn't clear, but a seminal … Read more

Q: I am very interested in a TV's power performance, and would like to double check something I found on the site. I saw that on the specs page for the Panasonic TH-50PZ800U plasma, you guys had that the power consumption is 692 watts. Whereas on your 104 HDTVs' power consumption compared chart, the same television is listed as using only 191.22 watts, and is said to be a "good performer." Can you help me out and let me know which one is the correct one or why they are 400 watts different? -- Joe, via email

A:The short answer is pretty simple, Joe: the 692-watt spec cited on CNET, according to that TV's user manual, corresponds to the maximum power consumption, whereas the 191-watt result of our testing reflects a real-world usage scenario. The long answer is a bit more complex, especially for Panasonic plasmas.… Read more

Need some ideas on how to have a more eco-friendly lifestyle? Take a look at CNET's Living with Technology feature, which is focused on green tech this month.

The top story and photo gallery are about cars. With all the talk about electric cars like the Tesla Roadster and plug-in hybrids, you would think that the dealer lots are full of them. They're not.

But automakers, eager to appeal to consumers looking for more fuel-efficient cars, are pushing to make production plug-in hybrids available within two or three years. The dates are shifting as results from battery tests … Read more

Thomas Friedman visited a wind farm near the East Asian gambling capital, Macao. But his rhetoric outsizes his quantitative skills in setting up another "dichotomy" in a "flat" world.

The column is a dizzying and logically disjointed ramble through some well-worn tropes on China's economy that have developed during the media's concurrent green awakening and Olympic China craze in recent months.

This is not so surprising from a columnist specialists love to lambaste, but this opening left me more confused than usual:

[T]he Chinese engineers showed me their control room, which has a … Read more

A New Jersey company said on Tuesday it will invest $20 million over three years to develop an underground compressed-air storage system for wind turbines and other power sources, a sign of growing confidence in the technology.

Energy Storage and Power is a joint ventured formed by energy developer PSEG Global and Michael Nakhamkin, who designed the only compressed air-storage facility in the U.S.

With Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), air is pumped into underground formations, such as depleted natural gas wells or salt caverns, using a natural gas-powered machine. The pressured air is released later to drive a … Read more

M2E Power, a company formed last year to charge electronic gadgets with human motion, has reported back that its system actually works.

Next year it expects to release a charger that can harvest enough motion from walking to replenish cell phones or other small gadgets, like GPS devices.

It says that six hours of cumulative motion can add 30 to 60 minutes of talk time to a cell phone.

The idea is to place the charger inside a purse or backpack and let it charge in the background, said Regan Rowe, director of business development at the company. When fully … Read more

Disposable lithium batteries--a market seemingly cornered by Energizer's Ultimate Lithium batteries--are great if you need enduring power. They're not great for the environment and they're too slow to use in a camera flash, but they last much longer than alkalines and significantly longer than rechargeables. At $3 apiece (based on the street price of a 4 pack), they're also someone sticker shocking. So we shouldn't be surprised that Energizer has decided to sell the Energizer Advanced Lithium version with a kindler, gentler price of about $2 each.

The company only cites the performance of the … Read more

Frustrated with political deadlock, solar energy companies fear a big setback if Congress fails to renew a key federal tax credit set to expire at the end of the year.

The provision would extend a 30 percent break of up to $2,000 to homeowners. Businesses would qualify for the same percentage, without a cap.

While the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to extend the tax credit, the effort so far has failed eight times in the Senate--the latest defeat occurring on July 30.

"The delay in the ITC (investment tax credit) renewal has meant … Read more