The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has produced and made available a rich data set showing what happens, second-by-second, when clouds pass over a solar power installation.
Lowering energy consumption associated with computer data storage (specifically, cloud computing) and saving millions of dollars are possible now, thanks to new memory technology, a field that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have been exploring through a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded in 2009 titled, "Large: Storage Class Memory Architecture for Energy Efficient Data Centers."
"Cornell computer scientists have proposed an innovative wireless design that could greatly reduce the cost and power consumption of massive cloud computing data centers, while improving performance."
In what should be viewed as a contender for some sort of science prize for originality, researchers at Qatar University have come up with an idea whereby artificial clouds might be used to hover over stadiums for the 2022 world cup, which the nation will be hosting eleven years from now, to overcome nearly non-stop sunlight and extreme heat.