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"Personal computers in enterprise environments save energy and money by "sleep-working," thanks to new software called SleepServer created by computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego. Sleep-working enterprise PCs are accessible via remote connections and maintain their presence on voice over IP, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer networks even though the PCs are in low-power sleep mode. SleepServer can reduce energy consumption on enterprise PCs previously running 24/7 by an average of 60 percent, according to a new peer-reviewed study presented by UC San Diego computer scientists on June 24 at the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. (http:// mesl.ucsd.edu/yuvraj/research/sleepserver.html) "

A clean-energy economy will require lots of new hardware-sleeker wind turbines, more efficient solar panels, recharging stations for electric vehicles. It'll also require smarter software, to efficiently guide energy to where it's most needed. Always ambitious, Google hopes to be the architect of this software. Heading up its effort is Dan Reicher, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Energy who now serves as director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm.

Engineers at Purdue University and Sandia National Laboratories are using a system of sensors and computational software to improve the efficiency of wind turbines by allowing them to adjust to wind conditions.

"Electro Magnates is a cutting edge carbon-reducing sustainability project at the intersection of computer science, social media and behaviour change. The project's deliverables are to design, implement, and evaluate a suite of social software applications - including games - to encourage positive behaviour changes in energy consumption. The project will specifically design software interventions to be used by employees and students in educational and public sector work-places and environments in the county of Lincolnshire in the UK."

Intel plans to launch an effort called LessWatts.org on Thursday, a combination of open-source software and helpful hints to reduce power consumption of Linux servers, PCs and gadgets.

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.

effciency connectivity

Labels That Talk, from Kailua Hawaii, has come up with software that lets consumers print high-density bar codes on strips of paper that store recorded voice messages. Scan it with a handheld scanner and it plays back a message. The strip of paper you see in the picture can hold about eight kilobits, enough for a ten-second voice message, said Ken Berkun, president and founder.

There is some concern that millions of plug-in electric vehicles charging at the peak times, such as around 5:30 p.m. when people return from work, could cause power disruptions or require construction of new power plants. To address this, Google has written software with "vehicle dispatch algorithms" that can decide how to best charge cars, Reicher said. In addition to smoothing out the load on the grid, smart charging makes it easier to take advantage of solar and wind power, which are variable sources of electricity.

Steven Chu at the Department of Energy just opened up $346 million in stimulus funds for boosting the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings - but thinking ahead to new design, he wants the best ideas to be incorporated into structure designs from the beginning. How better tap into the hive mind than with an open-source software platform. He wants the DOE to provide advanced design tools for free or at very low cost so that it will become almost automatic that builders use the tools.

"SolarNetOne is a collaborative effort spanning several continents, organizations, and technical disciplines, with the goal of developing a feasible, sustainable solution for providing public and private Internet access and related services to areas that do not have the benefit of a reliable power or communications grid. With experts in open source software, photo-voltaic electricity, internet infrastructure, and true internet pioneers on the SolarNetOne team, we have endeavored to design and implement systems capable of bridging the digital divide under the most difficult of conditions, and in the most open method available."

I'm not generally a fan of Jeremy Rifkind's work. But, as a commenter is quoted as saying at the end of this BBC News report on Rifkind's latest ideas for energy policy, "The world has room for visionaries." At a Prague conference, Rifkind outlined a grand scheme for solving economic and energy problems by rapidly moving Europe to distributed renewable energy resources integrated with smart grid systems. If you strip out the seemingly-obligatory-in-public-pronouncements-these-days promise of millions of "green jobs," it is a vision of what a smart grid system can do for distributed energy. Sure, too ambitious by half, but that is part of what makes it a vision and not a program for immediate action. Although, I'll have to say, there is an odd bit of centralization in a distributed energy proposal in which at "any one time the system will know what every washing machine is doing in Europe" and in the case of "peak demand, [with] not enough supply, software can say to two million washing machines 'forget the extra rinse'." (Though Rifkind notes his system is entirely voluntary and participants would be paid for their contributions.)

Redmond, Wash.-based software giant unveils beta release from its new startup, announcing partnerships with four utilities and two leading meter companies, with more to follow.