Are Solar Panels for the Birds? New Solar Powered Birdhouse Debuts

Oooms, a Dutch design firm, recently introduced a birdhouse outfitted with a solar panel on the roof. Okay, I can already hear you all asking, “Why would a bird ever need electricity?” As silly as it sounds at first, there’s actually a pretty neat explanation for the solar panel. 

During the day, the birdhouse gathers solar energy via the panel and charges a small battery. Once the sun goes down, a small light attached to the birdhouse’s perch is illuminated. No, it isn’t so the bird can read in bed, it’s actually designed to lure nocturnal bugs right to the opening of the birdhouse—essentially the bird version of late-night pizza delivery.

This seems like a neat way to enjoy having a birdhouse and feeder, without having to ever actually put out any birdseed. That said, I might be a little worried that I was messing with the birds’—and the bugs’—natural behavior just a little too much. What do you think?

If you’re interested, you can purchase your own solar birdhouse from the Oooms store, for the bargain price of 70 Euros.

Image via Oooms

TXU Energy Earns the ENERGY STAR® for Superior Energy Efficiency

TXU Energy recently announced that it has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) prestigious ENERGY STAR for its corporate headquarters. The designation is a national symbol for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection. This signifies that the building's energy performance rates in the top 25 percent of facilities nationwide.

TXU Energy implemented numerous energy efficiency steps that earned the ENERGY STAR rating, including a retrofit of the parking garage to LED lights, upgrade of the building automation system lighting controls, and improved operating procedures.

Commercial buildings that earn the ENERGY STAR use an average of 35 percent less energy than typical buildings and also release 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The EPA's national energy performance rating system provides a 1-100 scale that helps organizations assess how efficiently their buildings use energy relative to similar buildings nationwide. A building that scores a rating of 75 or higher is eligible for the ENERGY STAR. Commercial buildings that can earn the ENERGY STAR include offices, bank branches, financial centers, retail stores, courthouses, hospitals, hotels, K-12 schools, medical offices, supermarkets, dormitories, and warehouses.

To learn more about the program, check out The ENERGY STAR for Buildings and Plants.

Get Smart and Go Green Sweepstakes

For those of you who have to deal with a long commute to work, you know the awful pain of going to the gas pump and re-filling every week. If you don't have a fuel efficient vehicle, constantly stopping and paying for gas can be both tedious and expensive. Well, if you've been looking to get smart and go green with your vehicle, now might be the perfect time for you.

Green Mountain Energy Company and smart center Dallas and Fort Worth are teaming up to give Texas residents a chance to win a smart fortwo Passion coupe, valued at $16,235 before tax, title and license.The smart fortwo is one of the greenest and most fuel efficient cars that money can buy, pulling in around 41 miles per gallon on the highway. It also emits up to 50 percent less polluting emissions than average 2009 model vehicles. This is certainly a fitting give away for Green Mountain Energy Company, Texas' only electricity provider dedicated to cleaner energy.

Registering to win the smart fortwo is a piece of cake. Simply enter online or visit any number of Green Mountain Energy Company events. You need to get in fast though, because the give away ends on December 14, 2009. To enter the 2009 Sweepstakes, visit Green Mountain Energy Company. If you want to know more about the guidelines, check out the contest's official rules.

7 Ways to Easily Lower Your Electricity Bill

No one likes to get a huge electricity bill at the end of the month. With that in mind, here are seven easy ways to increase your energy efficiency and slash your electricity bill at the same time.

• Shop for a new provider — In many states, consumers now have a choice when it comes to their electricity provider. Check out WhiteFence to see if you have a choice in providers. If you do have a choice, you can compare plans from different providers and order your new service right on the site.

• Hunt down your energy vampires — We’ve blogged about this one before, but it bears repeating, many things draw power even when turned off. To combat this, unplug things like cell phone chargers or hair dryers when you aren’t using them, and consider purchasing some of the new smart power strips that allow you to turn multiple devices off at once.

• Use fans when you can — Fans use much less power than your AC system, especially when you take into account that your AC system has to cool the entire house, while a fan just has to cool you. They won’t do you any good if you’re not sitting in front of them though, so turn your fan off when you leave the room.

• Have your AC system inspected — There are many points along your cooling system where electricity can be wasted. Have a professional come out and look for issues, and you might just save 20 percent on your cooling costs.

• Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs — While everyone has heard about compact fluorescent bulbs by now, many people haven’t taken the plunge, even though they can cut your lighting bill by up to 75 percent! Sure, CFLs cost more up front, but they easily pay for themselves in energy savings over their life.

• Get a programmable thermostat — Instead of keeping your house at one temperature all day, invest in a programmable thermostat and cut down on all of the electricity wasted cooling an empty home. By programming your AC system to turn off while you’re at work, you could save up to 10 percent on your cooling costs.

• Turn off lights when you leave a room — It might be a dinosaur of a tip, but it’s one that makes a lot of sense. Teach your kids this one early to help encourage a mindset of reducing waste.

Will Your Next Roof be Made of Solar Shingles?

Last week, Dow unveiled Powerhouse, a new solar shingle. Essentially, the product is a small, flat solar panel that can be used exactly like a regular roof shingle. Each shingle connects to the next, creating a massive solar array that looks just like a normal roof.

So, what are the benefits of solar shingles over traditional solar panels?

For one thing, they look a lot better than the cumbersome solar panels we’re used to. Unlike the giant panels, solar shingles seamlessly blend with regular roofing shingles to create a look that many people wouldn’t notice as out of the ordinary. That’s important, because there are many people out there that either don’t want to take the plunge into solar power, or aren’t allowed to by their homeowner’s association, because of the “eyesore factor” of traditional solar panels.

While the aesthetics of the system do matter, the real benefits here are cost and ease of installation. Instead of requiring a specialized installer, Powerhouse shingles can be installed by a regular roofer, slashing installation costs. And instead of the 20 to 30 hours a traditional solar array takes to install, a Powerhouse system can be installed in around 10 hours. Dow hasn’t released any firm numbers, but estimates put savings at about 30 to 40 percent.

Dow plans to start rolling Powerhouse shingles out on new homes mid 2010.

via Green Inc. | Photo credit: Dow Chemical Company.

Now You Can Use Google’s PowerMeter without a Smart Meter

Imagine if you could see, in real time, exactly how your household was using electricity. You could easily root out all of your energy hogs, allowing you to increase your energy efficiency and lower your bills. That’s the promise of smart meter technology.

A smart meter is basically a traditional power meter with a brain. Instead of just telling how much electricity you’ve used since the last time you looked at it, they also reveal precisely when you used it, and what you used it for. All of this data can then be interpreted online in a new crop of software tools, where people can dig into the data and really understand how their family uses electricity.

Google’s PowerMeter is one of the most popular of these tools, and is completely free of charge. The only downside is that until now, smart meters were the only way to get your data into the PowerMeter system. While smart meters are terrific, they are only available in certain places at the moment, leaving most people with no way to monitor their electricity use with the service.

This week though, Google announced its first device partner for the Power Meter platform, Energy Inc., makers of the TED (The Energy Detective) 5000 series of products. These devices offer all of the features of a traditional smart meter, but are available to everyone, not just those lucky enough to have access to a smart meter. All TED 5000 owners can now export their electricity data into PowerMeter and access it everywhere from their home PC their cell phone.

The TED 5000 series is available today right now at the official TED store starting at $199.95.

Colorful New Solar Panels Work Even on Cloudy Days

While solar panels are a terrific way to harness clean energy, they do have their downsides. One of the biggest problems with traditional solar panels is their performance when clouds come out, as they require direct exposure to sunlight in order to produce electricity. Another major issue with the solar panels on the market today is their steep cost due to the amount of silicon they require.

An Israeli company named GreenSun Energy has been working to address these problems, and have developed a new type of solar panel that works without direct exposure to the sun. One key to the design is the colorful hues of the panels, which allow them to transform only some parts of the sun’s light sunlight into solar energy. This reduces heat and eliminates the need to cool the panels.

They work best on bright days, but as they are able to convert even dispersed light into electricity, can produce lots of power even when clouds roll in. And, since they don’t have to directly face the sun, they can be deployed anywhere on a building, not just on the roof. The clever design also cuts down the amount of silicon compared to traditional panels, keeping costs low.

While still quite far from production, GreenSun Energy is confident that these panels will revolutionize the green electricity market when they do go on sale. If they can keep increasing efficiency and reducing costs, we could soon see entire buildings covered with these panels.

For more details, check out National Geographic for a short video about the new panels.

Potential Geothermal Energy Projects

As more states turn towards renewable energy sources, the rise of large scale green energy projects has been underway for the last several years. Texas, for instance, just completed a $1 billion wind complex that covers 100,000 acres of land. Similar projects like this are going up all around the country, with varying scales in how much energy they can produce.

In fact, the Geothermal Energy Association reports that if all of these outstanding energy projects were completed, they could supply up to 7 gigawatts of geothermal power. Seeing as how the country currently has 3 gigawatts of geothermal output, that adds up to a whopping 10 gigawatts that the U.S. could supply from all of its geothermal projects. This is the equivalent to "the power needs of about 7.2 million people".

CNET has compiled a list of the states that are working on geothermal projects, and the amount of geothermal capacity that each one contributes to this overall total. To read more about the potential of these future geothermal projects, head on over to CNET.

Smart Grid Test Yields 20 Percent Energy Savings

A smart grid is basically a power grid that’s aware of factors like weather, energy prices, and customer’s needs and can adapt to swings in power supply and demand. The promises of such a system include improved reliability, lower costs and a vast reduction in energy use. We’ve been hearing about eco-friendly smart grids for years now, but now it looks like widespread implementation may be just around the corner.

The New York Times’ Green Inc. recently reported about a smart grid experiment is being carried out on the Fayetteville Public Works Commission system in North Carolina, and the initial results seem to justify all of the hype. The trial includes 100 homes and features collaboration between technology companies IBM and Consert.

Controllers were attached to high-use electrical appliances such as air conditioners and pool pumps in participant’s homes. The participants then logged into the system, completed a detailed profile of their lifestyle (when they leave for work, what temperature they like to keep their house at, etc.) and set targets for their electricity bill. Based on a combination of that information, the customer’s billing history and local weather conditions, the grid’s software then started controlling their appliances.

The result? After the first month, a 20 percent decline in the amount of electricity used. The test has been so successful, that the Fayetteville Public Works Commission is now rethinking the scale of a proposed new power plant.

Getting Natural Gas Service for Light Up Season

I'm not sure what it's like around the rest of the country, but things are starting to cool down a little bit here. Now that Fall is officially underway, we're fast approaching the time of year when natural gas service becomes more important as use goes up along with the cold weather.

In a deregulated market like Ohio or Georgia, this is the perfect time to switch natural gas providers and see if you can save money on your monthly bills. If you are in either of these deregulated markets, a recent press release from WhiteFence highlights OhioNaturalGas and GasGeorgia. With these two free Web sites, shoppers are given the power to choose and save on their natural gas service.

How long since you've compared natural gas rates? Now's the time to do it, before the bills start to climb. To read more about saving money during light up season, view the WhiteFence press release.