Airmiles “My Planet” eco Label page

 I got an email from Airmiles.ca summarizing a range of eco labels that we migh see on a day-to-day life - EnergyStar, EPEAT, WaterSense, and a whole lot more.  It’s great! You should check it out when you have time!

Standby power sucking electricity out like a Vampire!

Standby power consumption from plugged in electronics, microwave, and other electrical equipment really uses a lot of power!  For Canadians, eliminating standby power consumption would save a typical household 450 kilowatt-hours of electricity and $42 a year, or 4 per cent of the home’s total energy use, according to a 2008 report by Navigant Consulting Inc which is summarized in this Globe and Mail article.  Pretty cool hey?

Some other interesting fact: 

• Canadians would cut five of the 6.3 terawatt-hours of standby power per year with more energy efficienct products
• 6 terawatt-h is enough to power all the homes New Brunswick
• this will eliminate two megatonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions

And this is a pretty good movie illustrating how standby power, like a vampire, is sucking blood/money out of us!

Cool green gadget - LightCap 200/300 solar caps

This is a really cool gadget!  It’s a solar LED light that is made to fit on a standard 2″ water bottle such as a Nelgene.  What’s really cool about it is that when you have water in the bottle, water reflects the LED light and makes the bottle acting like a latern!  Check out more pictures and all features about LightCap 200 here!  It costs ~ $25 bucks, comes with light sensor so it turns off automatically during the day time!  Or check out the new design LightCap 300 - the batteries lasts 15 hours!

I think i’ve gotta buy it…..

The evolution of video game console energy efficiency

A refrigerator in the 1970’s and 1980’s uses 1400 kWh/yr.  A refrigerator in the 1990’s uses about 700 kWh/yr; an energy star refrigerator today uses 425kWh/yr.  My point is that refrigerators, as boring as they might be, use less than 1/3 of the energy it used to 30 years ago.  You think that all new technologies are more efficient?  Think again….  This is a table extracted from Noah Horowiz’s Improving the Energy Efficiency of Video Game Consoles article published in November 2008. 
 

WOW… other than Nintendo Wii which has a power rating lower than previous Nintendo consoles, the power rating for XBox and PlayStaions are just - crazy. For Xbox, the first generation of Xbox360 uses about 3 times as much power. The newer generation Xbox360 has been improved and uses slightly less power, but still, the newest version of Xbox360 uses almost twice as much power as Xbox. The figures are way more rediculous for PlayStations. PlayStation 3, when it first came out, actually uses 23.6 times more power! I understand that new game consoles are like a computer and thus usese more power than old ones, but I’d like to think that there are energy efficiency opportunities in these game consoles! Also worth noting is that for Xbox360 and PS3, they draw just as much power when it’s idling!! The reason is that it’s like a computer is running as long as you have it on!