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Turning A Farm’s Waste Into Power #VERGE16
All Power Labs promises to turn agricultural and forestry waste from a pure cost to something of value. Their Power Pallet, shown above, has been installed in hundreds of locations worldwide and converts waste into electricity, heat, and biochar. Biochar which represents sequestered carbon also makes a great soil amendment, according to Tom Price, Director of…
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Using Sense to Save Dollars and Cents
Sense provides a non-invasive, real-time method to measure electricity in the home. The real power isn’t in the Watts measured, but the signatures they create that allow them to identify things, such as when particular appliances turn on and off, and then infer information, such as how many hours per day a TV is on…
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From Connected Smart City to Smart Region
The promise of remote sensors, always-on connections and artificial intelligence-powered decision-making promises to create what might be called the smart city on the hill. Getting to that utopia will not be easy, as city policy makers must address many questions on things such as business models, standards, technology obsolescence and citizen privacy. The biggest challenge may be what…
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Analytics – Making the Smart Home More Efficient
Smart thermostats brought the first wave of intelligence to whole-home heating and cooling. Relatively low-cost control of vents to direct heat and cooling to specific rooms, such as shown in this development on display at International CES 2015, could be considered the next advance in temperature management efficiency. Combining these developments into analytics to determine…
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Living in an Age of Abundance
We are living in age of miracles was a takeaway from the presentation by Ramez Naam, Chair for Energy and Environment of Singularity University at VERGE’s GreenBiz conference. As background, Singularity University isn’t your typical educational institution, starting with its purpose, which is, “We’re building an abundant future together.” With the rise of automation and artificial…
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The Energized and Lit City
Distributed energy production via renewables is what Deborah Acosta describes as the InDERnet and it will cause a huge disruption to the electrical distribution industry. Speaking at the Smart Gigabit Bay Area conference, Acosta, the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Leandro explains that the power of distributed energy is more than just renewable…
