Facebook's soon-to-be-opened data center in Altoona, Iowa will be 100% wind-powered, the company has announced. Electricity will be supplied by MidAmerican Energy in nearby Wellsburg, IA. It will be Facebook's fourth proprietary data center.
Sono, a noise-cancelling device that attaches to your window, has been shortlisted as a top-20 finalist for the 2013 James Dyson Awards. Similar in concept to noise-cancelling headphones, the device detects ambient sounds and actively emits a counter-signal to replace the noise with projected silence or even with another simulated sound like the chirping of birds. It runs on a combination of grid power and harvested energy from surrounding electromagnetic activity such as Wi-Fi signals.
Apple’s main data center is currently located in Maiden, North Carolina, covering 500,000 square feet that houses the servers for iCloud among other services. Wired has managed to take pictures of the new addons that Apple is adding to the data center which will help generate power, including a site for a 4.8 megawatt biogas plant, plus a solar farm that can generate an additional 20 megawatts, spanning 100 acres.
As part of the “Apollo” ultra-energy-saving vending machine development project, Coca-Cola parterned with Fuji Electric Retail Systems to develop the “A011” peak-shift vending machine that can keep products cool without using power for up to 16 hours per day. The vending machines shift their use of power for cooling away from peak daytime to nighttime hours when power capacity is high.
Perhaps in honor of Earth Day, you can now get one of Philips's incredible, seemingly infinite-lasting light bulbs for less than half of what you would have paid a week ago. The company said that in stores this week, the bulb will be available with a $10 instant rebate, making the price paid at the register $50 instead of $60. And in addition to that, consumers are eligible for another rebate of up to $25.
It's time to get a newly minted handle on everything electronic in your home, here provided by Verizon and Sigma Designs through Z-Wave Control technology. This system will be called "Verizon Home monitoring and Control" and is now available in the USA to all Verizon customers. You'll be able to lock doors remotely, see your home via networked cameras, and adjust, set, and control your thermostats, appliances, and lights. All of this is done through a gateway device that will, over time, be enabled to work with Internet-based connections via iOS and Android.
This week in science: the deadly nature of biofuels, marauding space junk endangering astronauts and maybe even our connected life, underwater jets, and giant rockets. Also, a couple of multitasking power plants, and a very different way to re-use plastic. Read on for more!
Bloom Energy makes Solid Oxide Fuel Cells that are able to power an entire home, and fit in the palm of your hand. These fuel cells have been used by Google and eBay to provide part of the power used on their campuses. The company's CEO, KR Sridhar, originally created technology that was meant to produce oxygen so that people could live on Mars. When NASA scrapped that project, he reversed the technology so that it pulled in Oxygen instead of pushing it out.
Phononic Devices, a maker of thermoelectric coolers and generators, has just raised $10 million in a second round of financing. Although thermoelectric technology has been around for decades, the technology has always been expensive and inefficient. Phononic believes they have the solution to modularize the technology to more quickly integrate it into consumer electronics such as your laptop and consumer appliances such as your refrigerator.
How can 7-11, with its glaring fluorescent lights, coolers, and Slurpee machines go green? Well, they have had success with a pilot program in Japan, and are now expanding it to 100 new stores, as well as renovating 100 existing stores to the new green model.
For most companies, the Consumer Electronics Show is about showcasing real devices, or devices that are in development but that will be launched at some point in the (near) future. Casio has chosen to take some time out of their schedule at this year's show in Las Vegas to showcase a brand new conceptualized watch that, unlike many other Bluetooth-enabled watches, focuses more on saving power, while still delivering the features that people would expect from a device of this nature.
Turnstiles may be one of those things that, if you ever find yourself thinking about it, may seem like a thing of the past. But they're still out there, doing their thing in train stations and what not all over the globe. But, let's face it -- it's been a long while since they've seen any kind of upgrade. So, if they were to get an upgrade, why not one that utilizes the energy that gets produced every day by people passing through them?