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If you're serious about cutting your electricity bills, fitting a wireless energy monitor should be top of your priority list. Although we all have electricity meters in our homes, they're no use hidden away in a cupboard only to be read once or twice a year. You need to get in touch with your electricity use and a wireless energy monitor will show you instantly how much electricity you're using twenty four hours a day.

The 81 million buildings in the U.S. consume more energy than any other sector of the U.S. economy, including transportation and industry, says the U.S. government. Here's five startups that are building software and hardware to help consumers and businesses cut down on power consumption.

Dubbed the "missing greenhouse gas," nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) was found by a recent study to have a global climate impact 17,000 times greater than carbon dioxide. The chemical is found in the LCD panels of cell phones, televisions, and computer monitors, as well as in semiconductors and synthetic diamonds. The chemical is not one of the greenhouse gases monitored by the Kyoto Protocol, due to the fact that LCDs were not produced in significant quantities when it was drafted.

Various departments at a car manufacturing plant are suffering from regular process outages due to voltage dips. These dips are causing production losses in the Metal Operation, Spray Coating, and Assembly departments that directly affect the productivity of the plant. The cost of those losses is directly related to the profile of the voltage dip (duration and depth). Various options to reduce these costs are investigated, with particular emphasis upon the Spray Coating and Assembly departments. The following conclusions can be drawn: 1. The number and type of dips occurring at the point of connection of the plant is regular. It is similar to what is monitored at other medium voltage stations that have the same grid structure. 2. A detailed analysis of the spray coating process reveals that installing a 'restart on the fly' system on the large conditioning fans substantially reduces the related voltage dip losses. 3. A detailed analysis of the Assembly department shows that there are two main bottlenecks that determine the restart time after a dip (the 'Drive' sub-process and the 'Cockpit', 'Marking', and 'Transport chain' users). These bottlenecks can be removed by installing a Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), which results in a payback time of 1.4 years. * 1 Introduction

The process, Current says, lets a utility more efficiently manage the distribution of electricity by allowing two-way communication between consumers and energy suppliers via the broadband network on the power lines. Based on data they receive from hundreds of homes, utilities can monitor usage and adjust output and pricing in response to demand. Consumers can be rewarded with reduced rates by cutting back on consumption during peak periods. And computerized substations can talk to each other so overloaded circuits hand off electricity to underused ones, helping to prevent blackouts.

wind -> birds & bats tidal -> fish pv -> squirrels

"The owner of a defunct uranium mine leaking pollution along a creek that flows into a Denver Water reservoir has launched a cleanup as ordered, state officials confirmed Thursday. Cotter Corp. installed a system that can pump and treat up to 50 gallons per minute of contaminated water from inside its Schwartzenwalder Mine, west of Denver in Jefferson County. Water tests in 2007 recorded uranium levels in mine water exceeding the human health standard by 1,000 times. Elevated levels in Ralston Creek also were recorded. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the action. State natural-resources officials also are monitoring the mine, which produced uranium for weapons and nuclear power plants."

Google's tail won't wag the dog. Big players already control the smart grid and its already-open standards. Google's SmartMeter is likely to remain more of a novelty than a game-changer.

Electric motors as the prime movers in all industry sectors are a major example. Generally regarded as highly reliable, due to tried and tested construction techniques, they are, nevertheless, subject to number of harmful conditions that can affect their performance and reduce operational life. One of the most common of these conditions is vibration, resulting from either electrical or mechanical imbalance in the motor.

"Google's PowerMeter can monitor home energy usage in great detail as well but it generally requires that an electrician install a smart meter or a home energy display. LaMonica reported a couple months ago that IBM and the utility company Consert have been working together on a smart grid program where major appliances can be hooked up to controllers and can communicate with a meter in much the same way as these TalkingPlugs do. With this system, a person can view the data and even control appliances on the web as well. The end use is much the same as these TalkingPlugs."

Normally these academics would be fine without our fascination. They weren't looking for glory when they decided to study organisms most people either can't see or wish they hadn't. But when the Deepwater Horizon exploded in April 2010, our collective bias toward cute big creatures started to matter a great deal. That's because the instant the spill-cam was switched off and it became clear that there would be no immediate mass die-offs among dolphins and pelicans, at least not on the scale of theExxon Valdez spill deaths, most of us were pretty much on to the next telegenic disaster. (Chilean miners down a hole-and they've got video diaries? Tell us more!)