I thought it would be fitting this time around, as climate change negotiations proceed in Copenhagen, to discuss an interesting study done by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Stanford University, Microsoft, and Intel.

by Marcin Wichary on Flickr

Many people have heard some version of “Moore’s Law” – that the number of transistors on a chip approximately doubles every two years. This study reveals a related trend in energy consumption per computation.

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Filed under: Technology

Crazy drivers, traffic jams, road construction… if you commute to work by car you’re probably familiar with these frustrations. In the past, I’ve had the pleasure of living close enough to work that I could easily take a bus in the winter and ride my bike in the summer. In fact, the complication of parking made these modes of transportation much easier than driving.

Currently, biking to work is more difficult. However, last year I heard about Bike to Work Day, which occurs during Bike to Work Week in the middle of May (you guessed it, Bike to Work Month). I knew that I was not quite in shape for it then, but made it a goal to take on the challenge of biking to work this year during Bike to Work Week.

Don't worry mom, I've already stopped

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Filed under: Local, Musings, Travel

One might say that I’ve been addicted to efficiency for quite a while. Even before learning about the need to conserve fuel and reduce CO₂ emissions, I would organize my activities and errands so that I could take care of them in as few excursions as possible. The logistics of ordering these tasks was almost an odd form of entertainment for a mind trained by late nights playing board games in college (computer science and engineering may have had some effect as well). These days, however, my mind has turned to other – perhaps more practical – conservation decisions involving hybrid cars, rain barrels, and energy efficiency.

This device monitors voltage, power, and cost

In today’s post I would like to share some investigations that I have done with a couple of cool energy efficiency tools. Perhaps you’ve heard of vampire energy. I’ve suspected that some of my home appliances are vampires, and a few weeks ago I decided to start doing some investigation of my own by purchasing a consumer-grade energy meter to measure the amount of energy that various electronics around my house consume. I haven’t done much analysis yet, but I have found that during normal use over a month, my entertainment center uses 75.04kWh and costs me $10.20 in electricity. This amounts to $122.40 over the course of a year. When everything is in standby, these undead electronics suck down 36kWh in a month (I need to run this test with the DVR on another outlet). Leaving the system in standby for a year would still cost me about $60.
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Filed under: Technology