energy at home
-
Ask Umbra: Is banning clotheslines legal?
A reader wonders if neighborhoods can legally hang clothesline users out to dry. Umbra pins down the answer.
-
Meet clean energy's smart guy
MacArthur "genius award"-winner Shwetak Patel talks about a future where your house tracks your energy consumption -- and your every move.
-
Energy genius wins MacArthur grant
Shwetak Patel is revolutionizing home energy use, and people are noticing. Patel was just awarded a MacArthur Fellowship -- affectionately known as a "genius award" -- for his work creating user-friendly ways for people to monitor and control their utilities consumption. In other words, this is what certified energy genius looks like.
-
Critical List: Earthquake shook nuclear plant too hard; new Energy Star labels for more efficiency
Last week's earthquake may have shaken a Virginia nuclear plant more than the plant was designed to withstand. There wasn’t much damage, but, uh, maybe it’s time to retrofit these older East Coast plants, just in case.
Since Energy Star labels have come to mean next to nothing, there are new ones. Look for "most efficient" Energy Star labels to find appliances that meet the highest standards for energy saving.
Japan passed a bill promising incentives for renewable energy, but companies are waiting for the government to hash out the details before they jump in. -
Paper antennas pull electricity from the air
The air is full of energy -- not in a woo-woo crystal-gazing way, but in a scientific electromagnetic-radiation-from-TV-stations-and-phone-networks kind of way. That ambient energy is just being wasted. But a team from Georgia Tech is developing inkjet-printed paper antennas that could generate enough energy to power a small gadget, right out of thin air.
-
TV vs. Computer: The energy use showdown
Given a choice between spending an hour watching TV or surfing the Internet, which should you choose, assuming, of course, that your goal is not entertainment but consuming the least energy possible? This handy graphic provides the answer: It's surfing the Internet: At .09 kilowatt-hours per hour, your computer consumes the least energy of any […]
-
Now you’re cooking with gas: Ask Umbra on energy-efficient stoves
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, My wife would like to remodel the kitchen. This frightens me, personally, but I look it as an opportunity to buy some more energy-efficient appliances. Right now we have an ancient electric stove. Would replacing it with a natural gas stove be more efficient, or should we […]
-
How Americans defeated efficiency with consumerism
The Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey, released yesterday, shows that average household energy usage has remained remarkably stable over the last 30 years — even as appliances have gotten way more efficient. Why? Well, we just have a pantload more appliances. (Seriously, look in your pants RIGHT NOW. Do you have a gadget […]
-
Knowing what you spend on energy can cut usage by more than half
Feedback: It works for robot monkey arms and Scientology auditing, so shouldn’t it work to help you save electricity? Networking company Silver Spring Networks and Oklahoma Gas & Electric think so (and so do we). They’ve teamed up for a year-long experiment in Norman, Okla., to test smart grid solutions, allowing users to get feedback […]