Tag: energy

Proper HVAC

by collecting 500M data points from the sensors in all their buildings every 24h, finding huge energy savings right away:

In 1 building garage, exhaust fans had been mistakenly left on for a year (to the tune of $66K of wasted energy). Within moments of coming online, the smart buildings solution sniffed out this fault and the problem was corrected.

2016-07-21: Cooling AI

by applying DeepMind’s machine learning to Google data centers, we’ve reduced the energy we use for cooling by up to 40%. In any large scale environment, this would be a huge improvement. Given how sophisticated Google’s data centers are already, it’s a phenomenal step forward.

this is why smart grids are one of the highest ROI investments countries could make.

European ignorance kills

Here’s one for all the anti-nuclear nuts in Europe. Your irrational behavior is killing people.

Coal is gaining traction in part due to the actions of Germany, which ditched nuclear power in favor of coal in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

2019-11-08: Germany Expensive Energy

France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets 400 Terawatt hour per year from nuclear but Germany gets 226 Terawatt-hours each year. 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.

China has a more recent buildup of nuclear energy. China has spent less than $150b from 2000 to 2019 to develop 300 Terawatt-hours per year of nuclear energy.

Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years.

2020-01-04: Nuclear Energy Saves Lives

Germany’s closing of nuclear power stations after Fukishima cost billions of $ and killed 1000s of people due to more air pollution

US energy independence

the bakken fields have been underreported. ideally this energy independence will mean that the middle east will have to get real jobs, and will no longer be a geopolitical time bomb.

Wireless Electricity

whatever happened to this, from 2009? the biggest holdback for all our devices is electricity.

Efficient computing

this could supersede moore’s law for the next 10 years. we have enough compute power for most tasks but scaling them down to lower power would open vastly more applications.

Land of giants

anthropomorphized high voltage pylons

Mexican gulf bleed-out?

a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making,” “fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway”. 2B barrels of oil could leak into the Gulf before the reservoir has fully depleted itself.

Fiber Photovoltaics

The new solar cells are made from millions of miniscule plastic fibers that can collect sunlight at oblique angles – even when the sun is rising and setting.

Tweet-a-Watt

This project documents my adventures in learning how to wire up my home for wireless power monitoring. I live in a rented apartment so I don’t have hacking-access to a meter or breaker panel. Since I’m still very interested in measuring my power usage on a long term basis, I will build wireless outlet reporters. Building your own power monitor isn’t too tough and can save money but I’m not a fan of sticking my fingers into 120V power. Instead, I’ll build on the existing Kill-a-watt power monitor, which works great and is available at my local hardware store.

this looks like a fun project

Boosting Car Mileage by 10%

“This is a disruptive technology. It’s a game-changer.”

how is a 10% increase a game changer, exactly? are we so close to the limit that bigger increases are infeasible?