A report to be released later this morning, from the office of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Council on Environmental Quality, outlines a strategy for persuading more Americans to retrofit their homes to make them more energy efficient. Such improvements could save up to $21 billion each year, the report said.

[...]

Creating an “energy performance label” for existing homes. New homes, the report notes, can get an “Energy Star” label reflecting relatively low energy usage, but existing ones cannot. The government proposes to fix that, and also develop a “national home energy performance measure.”

via Government Report … Continue Reading

via 10 Monitoring Tools Bringing Smart Energy Home
Thanks to funds from the stimulus package and renewed attention to energy savings, 2009 is the year companies are planning to launch wireless energy dashboards that will sit in your home, monitor energy data from your electricity meter and let you know if you’re being an energy hog. While tech firms have been trying to sell you on the “digital home” for years — complete with wireless networks that can do everything from control your entertainment equipment to operate high-tech security systems to roast a chicken — the new energy management firms … Continue Reading

Ada Poon @ Stanford

“Smart Operation of Smart Grid”
April 23 – Packard 101 – 4:05pm
Felix Wu
Emeritus Professor, University of California at Berkeley
Professor, University of Hong Kong

“Smart Grid – Analytics and Information Integration”
April 27 – Packard 202 – 4:05pm
Edwin Liu
Vice President of Smart Grid, Quanta Technology

“California Smart Grid Study”
May 6 – Packard 101 – 4:05pm
Angela Chuang
Senior Project Manager, EPRI

“Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM)”
May 15 – Packard 202 – 4:05pm
Mesut Baran
Professor, North Carolina State University

Most homes waste considerable amounts of energy, but solutions such as replacing appliances and renovating buildings are prohibitively expensive, and few people are vigilant about unplugging unused equipment and turning off lights. Econetix is developing a home energy kit that’s easy to install and will theoretically save enough energy to pay for itself in about a year.

The kit includes a “smart” thermostat that automatically optimizes heating and cooling, remote-controlled light switches that install into sockets rather than walls, and power strips that turn off standby power to unused devices. All of the kit’s elements can be controlled from a Web … Continue Reading

Below is a link to the online “Building Dashboard” for Storey House, one of the undergraduate residence buildings at Stanford University. This project was implemented as part of the Stanford Green Dorm Project. It allows residents to monitor their energy consumption online. Residents can view the overall consumption of the building, and compare consumption by floor. The application even allows the students to create competitions and challenge other floors to reach certain efficiency goals.

Stanford University, Storey House – Building Dashboard® | Lucid Design Group.

Electricity seems to be getting smarter. As utility and software companies band together to make the smart grid a burgeoning reality, electric cars are quietly and efficiently taking people to and from work. But as our homes and cars get smarter, are people getting any smarter about energy use?

We tried to answer this question when we developed the SmartSwitch, a dimmer switch equipped with a network connection and a miniature brake pad. The switch provides tactile feedback about the amount of energy being used either within your household or by the electrical grid as a whole. Our goal with this … Continue Reading

wattzon-presentation-at-long-now-presentation

[slideshare id=932316&doc=longnow16jan09sm2-1232398224894979-2]

Greener Gadgets | SmartSwitch | Peter Russo & Brendan Wypich, Stanford University 2009.

A classmate and I partnered up on a project last quarter for our master’s thesis. The result was a device we called the SmartSwitch. We entered it into a design competition and we’ve made it to the semi-finals. If you have a moment, please vote for our project! The top 10 will be judged in NYC in February.

In the early 80’s he worked as a designer for frog design in west germany on projects such as walkmans for sony, computers for apple computers, later moved to paris as a consultant to knoll international, becoming author of the highly successful alessandri office system.

ross lovegrove.

Philips Light Blossom: Solar and Wind Powered Streetlight : TreeHugger.