The media is fond of quoting claims that the internet will soon be using more power than the airline industry, that it will consume half of all the electricity produced or that two Google searches release as much CO₂ as boiling a kettle of water.

The Google search myth arose from a Times article in January 2009 which said that "a typical search generates about 7g of CO₂. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g". Urs Hölzle, Google’s Senior Vice President Operations, posted a response saying the typical search actually releases only 0.2 grams of CO₂ - that’s 75 searches per kettle. The Times has since published a "clarification" but the original figure still gets quoted.

On the broader issue, the amazing estimates of the amount of electricity that the internet supposedly uses stem from a 1999 article in Forbes magazine revealingly titled "Dig More Coal - the PCs Are Coming". The article claimed that the internet was then accounting for 8% of all electricity use with the total used by all computers (including the internet) amounting to 13%. Highly detailed studies by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory show that he actual figures at that time were less than 1% for the internet and about 3% for all computers.
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Ice Energy, a  Colorado company, has signed a contract with the Southern California Public Power Authority to deploy rooftop units that use electricity at night to make ice. The ice is then used to cool buildings during the day.

The system effectively stores electricity made at night when demand and cost is low and uses it to reduce electricity demand on hot afternoons, when demand is at its peak.

Initially, 53 megawatts of storage will be installed on rooftops in the power authority’s service territory. The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water is the biggest user.

Christopher Hickman, a vice president of Ice Energy, said that his product would replace gas generators that might run only 5 percent of the hours in a year.

According to Bill D. Carnahan, the executive director of the Southern California Public Power Authority “The total 24-hour efficiency improvement is 8 percent”.

The ice storage units cost about $US2,000 per kilowatt of capacity.

(Based on sources including the New York Times)

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A new type of natural-gas electric power plant, which has been proposed by MIT researchers, could provide electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, at costs comparable to or less than conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants.

Postdoctoral Associate Thomas Adams and Paul I. Barton, the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering, have proposed a system that uses solid-oxide fuel cells, which produce power from fuel without burning it. The system does not require any new technology but combines existing components or ones that are already well under development, in a novel configuration.

According to Thomas Adams, unless a price is placed on carbon emissions, "the cheapest fuel (for  generating electricity) will always be pulverized coal." But as soon as there is some form of carbon pricing at more than about $15 per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide "ours is the lowest price option."

Although no full-scale plants using this system have yet been built, the basic principles have been demonstrated in a number of smaller units including a 250-kilowatt plant. Prototype megawatt-scale plants are planned for completion around 2012.

Utility-scale power plants would be on the order of 500 megawatts but because fuel cells, unlike conventional turbine-based generators, are inherently modular, once the system has been proved at small size it can easily be scaled up. "You don’t need one large unit," Adams explains. "You can do hundreds or thousands of small ones, run in parallel."

He says that practical application of such systems is "not very far away at all" and could be ready for commercialization within a few years.

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Inventor and entrepreneur, John La Grou, hasdeveloped a "smart" electrical power outlet, called a Safeplug, containing a  microprocessor. The main reason for the invention was to prevent electrical fires by giving the wall socket sufficient intelligence to detect that an appliance was drawing too much power and shut it off.

However, the Safeplug also has the potential to save massive amounts of energy by switching off appliances and even allowing whole areas, such as hotel rooms, to be switched off remotely when not in use.

John La Grou describes his invention on this TED Talk video:

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Cisco Systems Vice President, Marie Hattar, estimates that the "smart grid" could be 100 times, or even 1,000 times, the present size of the Internet.

The smart grid is a modernised electricity network which would deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability. Over time, people’s homes will have sensors in appliances, which will give detailed information to help cut electricity usage and help utilities avoid stressing the grid during peak times.

Cisco Systems estimates that just the communications portion of building smart grids will be worth $20 billion a year over the next five years. The company, whose networking equipment is installed in all corners of the Internet, intends to make communications equipment for the electricity grid - everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers.

"Our expectation is that this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet. If you think about it, some homes have Internet access, but some don’t. Everyone has electricity access - all of those homes could potentially be connected," Marie Hattar said.

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In an idea that could profitably be copied everywhere, the Ottawa Public Library has made 75 Kill-a-Watt meters available for residents to borrow.

A Kill-a-Watt meter is a small electronic device that you plug into a power outlet and, when you plug an appliance into it, you get a reading of how much electricity is being used.This feedback can allow you to cut your energy use, discover which appliances drain energy even when they appear to be turned off and get rid of any appliances that are draining too much energy.

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The CSIRO has developed a way to network household and commercial fridges together in a way that lets them ‘negotiate’ with each other the best time to consume electricity.

According to Sam West, an engineer at the CSIRO. “A lot of people don’t realise that fridges cycle on and off regularly, which means you’ve got a bit of discretion about when they use power”. The controller enables communication between other fridges on the network and also the power source. It has the potential to smooth out fluctuations in electricity demand by enabling fridges to manage available power. Simulations have shown the technology is capable of supporting 10,000 or more networked units.

“The fridges work together to decide when to cool down, and thus consume power, based on how much surplus power will be available,” said West. “They are able to anticipate power shortages and change their running schedules accordingly to use as little power as possible during these times.”

The networked fridges are also able to take "surplus" energy produced by renewable sources such as solar panels and store it in thermal mass inside the unit. The technology could also be applied to other household appliances such as air-conditioners and clothes dryers.

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Isreali engineers are about to begin testing a stretch of road containing piezoelectric crystals that produce electricity when squeezed, enabling them to harvest some of the energy which vehicles lose to the environment during their journeys.

The system is expected to produce up to 400 kilowatts from a 1 kilometre stretch of dual carriageway. The technology is also applicable to airport runways and rail systems. The harvested energy can be transferred back to the grid, or used for specific road infrastructure purposes, such as lighting or signage.

In addition to being able to produce its own power, the system can deliver real-time data on the weight, frequency and speed of passing vehicles as well as the spacing between vehicles. As such, the embedding of piezoelectric generators to create "smart roads" could eventually become an integral part of traffic management systems.

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The Australian electricity grid includes three major sections which are not connected:

• the so-called National Electricity Maket, linking all of the east coast and South Australia
• the Western Australian grid in the south west of Western Australia, centered on Perth and
• the Pilbara local grid serving the mining area in the north west.

Associate Professor Neil Howes has suggested linking  these three grids in order to make better use of Australia’s rich renewable energy porential.

In particular, a 1500 kilometre high voltage DC connection between Norseman in Western Aystralia and Port Augusta in South Australia would link the solar potential of the western deserts, the wind potential of the southern coast and the geothermal resources of South Australia into the eastern National Electricity Market. In addition, the time difference between the east and west coasts would extend the length of time during which daylight solar energy was available by three hours a day.

Professor Howes also suggests that a 1000 kilometre high voltage AC line be built connecting the southern Western Australian grid at Norseman with the northern Pilbara region, which has Australia’s best solar stes, as well as major mining and natural gas developments.

Dr David Mills, who was a leading solar researcher in Australia before founding Ausra which is now one of the world’s leading solar energy producers, has put forward a different proposal for the Pilbara region - that a powerline be built, not to the south, but to the north, to supply electricity to Indonesia and South-East Asia. Dr Mills points out that it makes much more sense to export electricity to Asia than to export gas which is then burned to generate electricity,

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Korean researchers have found a way to make lithium-ion batteries, which are commonly used in notebook computers, mobile phones and the latest hybrid vehicles, hold eight times more charge than they do now.

Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most energy-efficient storage devices for their size. Electricity flows through the batteries as positive lithium ions move toward a negative electrode, while negative electrical particles move to positive zones. But graphite, which is used in the negative electrode, can store only a limited amount of lithium ion - giving a usage time of around 2 hours.

A group led by Professor Cho Jaephil of South Korea’s Hanyung University have found that, when the graphite is replaced as the main material of the negative electrode with porous 3D silicon particles, the batteries last between 16 and 32 hours.

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