Source: Great Lakes IT Report
by Matt Roush

Energy is too precious to waste, and so are taxpayer dollars, which is why the city of Ann Arbor looked for ways to get more bang for its streetlighting buck.

How the city is applying the latest in LED technology to light its streets and reduce power consumption by 50 percent is among the highlights in the latest edition of ElectricTV.net.

Across the United States, local governments are slashing budgets, presenting significant challenges to those entrusted with providing services to the community. The city of Ann Arbor suffered a 60 percent reduction, spurring the search for areas to cut costs, including the city's power consumption. The city had been spending more than $1.4 million a year. on street lighting.

Source: Great Lakes IT Report
by Matt Roush

Franklin-based Franklin Wind Energy Group LLC has purchased the exclusive United States manufacturing and marketing rights for a new type of micro wind turbine.

The U.S. rights for the wind turbine were purchased from VBine Energy of Canada.

"This is an exciting time to enter the U.S. market with this revolutionary product," said Franklin Wind chairman and CEO David Koyle. "Demand in the small wind market is increasing dramatically each year with applications across a wide range of industrial and consumer markets. We plan to become the leading supplier of vertical axis wind turbines in the U.S. and capture a significant share of the market for small wind turbines."

January 23, 2009

With the world grappling with ways to reduce carbon emissions and bring forth more energy resources, some are questioning why oil companies must still flare natural gas. The problem has long lurked. But as energy companies develop a wider liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, the practice may one day cease.

As the oil companies bring their crude to the earth's surface, they find that it is often mixed with natural gas. Unfortunately, the gas must often be flared off or re-injected back into the deep waters. An ideal use for such gas, however, is to transform it into LNG, or to convert it to a liquid form so that it can be shipped to ports around the world.

January 21, 2009

Politics is pervading efforts by the national labs to advance energy research.

The laboratories all point to nuclear energy's viability as a fuel source, saying that future reactors will be safer, more cost-effective and highly efficient. That will give nuclear energy a regulatory advantage and therefore help such producers raise capital for their projects. Several nations that include the United States have combined to come up with newer and better technologies that purport to be safer and more eco-friendly.

Solid-state lighting (SSL) products using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are proliferating in the lighting marketplace. Their low energy consumption, potential long life, and compact form make LEDs an attractive alternative to traditional light sources in some applications. It can be argued, however, that the marketing of SSL technology has outpaced the development and practice of using standard test procedures by which to characterize the performance of a product.