There are many museums lining the mall in Washington D.C. These museums focus on history. For the past two weeks a museum of the future was placed on the mall as the Solar Decathlon competition took place. It was a village like no other – twenty student designed and built solar homes all striving to [...]
I’m here at the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. If you ask any student to point to the silicon content in their house they will immediately point to their solar array. Very few will point to the dozens of inverters, power supplies, TV’s, computers, ipods, horizontal axis washers, LED lights, or other items that are [...]
Starting tomorrow in the U.S., TI will host MCU Day, its largest worldwide training event to be held around the world at more than 150 locations. This free, one-day technical training event will explore TI’s broad MCU portfolio, including MSP430™ ultra-low power MCUs, C2000™ real-time MCUs and ARM® Cortex-M3-based Stellaris® MCUs as well as ARM9-based [...]
Electronic energy meters have fostered their way into the market the last decade replacing conventional electromechanical meters. This has led to increased accuracy and features, reduced cost and size, and an opportunity to get smart. Energy measurement in its purest form, is just a mathematical sum of products of voltage and current. Just like any [...]
The deployment of smart meters in Europe is planned to reach about 100 millions of units in the coming 10 years.
This past week, I was able to see the efforts provided by the entire European utility market while visiting major meter manufacturers in France. France is very unique in that its market is very [...]
Today TI announced that it is sponsoring this year’s Solar Decathlon, to be held in Washington D.C. October 9-18. Similarly to 2007, 20 university teams are competing in the 2009 event and I’m sure each and every team is hacking their way through home construction, product acquisition and a myriad of design changes as problems [...]
Wireless communications for Automated Meter Reading (AMR) promise tremendous time and cost savings for utilities. However, specific challenges exist when selecting and implementing an AMR solution. Due to certain topology restraints, AMR can be conducted via “drive by” (or “walk by”) reading, where a utility employee literally drives by and collects the data. Therefore, data [...]
This week, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, ACEEE, released a comprehensive report titled “Semiconductor Technologies: The Potential to Revolutionize U.S. Energy Productivity”. In conjunction with this report the Semiconductor Industry Association, SIA, released a series of recommended public policies that would help ensure the energy savings that the ACEEE report identifies.
In general, [...]
In 1970 Senator Gaylord Nelson called for the first Earth Day to be held on April 22nd. The goal was to raise environmental awareness and seek solutions to the environmental degradation that had begun to afflict parts of the planet. Senator Nelson once said “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not [...]
With the stimulus package kicking in, there seems to be some money flowing in with announcements being made on several areas in the renewable sector.
There is a $3.2 billion funding announcement made by the Obama administration that will go towards local energy efficiency programs across the U.S. The goal is to reduce the electricity demand, [...]