Most commercial buildings in Australia have moved away from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents, which are much more energy efficient and last longer. The limitations of CFLs are slow warm up time, early failure if frequently switched, and high cost for dimmable CFLs. Additionally some speciality bulbs, such as chandelier bulbs, don’t have readily available CFL equivalents. But as CFLs are four or five times more efficient than incandescent in our energy audits we always try to build a strong case for switching to CFLs.

But incandescent may be getting a second life. Australia enacted the first legislation banning  sales of low efficiency lamps (incandescent) and the US followed. With a much larger market than ours this has sparked some innovation in the design of incandescent lamps.

Philips now has a incandescent that is 30% more efficient than a standard incandescent. Osram is shortly coming out with one 25% more efficient.

These sort of efficiency gains still leave CFLs as clearly the superior option, but as there is more research undertaken the incandescent could get even better yet.

If incandescent efficiency can be improved by 20% a year, it will take six or seven years to catch up with where CFLs are now. Which is a long time, unless there is an innovation that provides a quantum improvement in efficiency.

LED lights on the other hand are now getting close to CFL efficiency.

Its great to see all this lighting innovation happening, and hopefully we will soon see screw in and plug in bulbs that are more efficient than CFLs

When your IT equipment is due for upgrade it’s the perfect time to greatly reduce your computing energy use. But how do you know what products to use?

The US EPA Energy Star standard is now the defacto standard for energy use computing equipment. This certifies products as either being energy star compliant or not.

This is now a quite stringent standard, with version 5.0, the latest version, coming into force on 1 July 2009. The standard takes into account the power used by computers when off, in standby mode, and when in idle mode (that is when on, the operating system has loaded, and activity is limited to basic system applications).  Each mode is weighted according to an estimate of the hours per year the computer will be in each mode.

For example to be energy star compliant a category A desktop computer (your typical office computer with a single core processor) would need to use say less than 2 watts when off and in standby mode, and 39 watts or less in idle mode. Most desktops we measure when undertaking audits consume more than these threshold limits. A similar category A notebook would need to use say less than 1 watt in off and standby modes, and 13 watts or less in idle mode.

Thin client requirements are similar to laptop/notebook requirements.

The Energy Star (5.0) standard covers five categories:

1. Desktops, Integrated Desktops and Notebooks
2. Workstations
3. Game Consoles (under development)
4. Small Scale Servers
5. Thin Clients

So a simple way to maximise the energy savings from your next computer upgrade is to specify that ALL equipment (desktops, notebooks, thin clients, servers) be Energy Star (5.0) compliant. Or if your upgrade isn’t happening for a year or so, to the most recent Energy Star version at that time. You can see full details of the standard at the Energy Star website.

And of course if you are currently operating desktop computers seriously consider thin clients (which will cost no more, but greatly reduce your energy use) or notebook computers.

The Energy Star site includes a list of products that are available internationally, and not just in the US.

In conjunction with the Energy Star site you can also use the EPEAT website, which assesses products against a range of sustainability criteria including:

• Materials selection
• Design for end of life
• Product longevity/life cycle extension
• Energy conservation
• End of life management
• Corporate performance
• Packaging

The EPEAT site lists products available in 40 countries, including Australia. It is a program of the Green Electronics Council, a charitable not for profit organisation. EPEAT is a green electronics certification system. The list of EPEAT certified computers in Australia is pretty small, so if you have a preferred vendor who isn’t on this list I’d encourage you to ask your vendor to get their product EPEAT certified.

Computers continue to get more powerful, but are they using less power? This afternoon I interviewed Stuart King from Dell Australia/New Zealand. Stuart talks about how computer power use is coming down, discusses the Intel vPro technology for power management, thin client computing, and how you can greatly reduce computer power use at no cost. Click here to listen to this interview which looks at how computer technology is advancing. This interview is particularly recommended for anyone in the process of upgrading their computers - the perfect time to achieve some big energy savings for your organisation.

Its now possible to buy a 200 watt micro wind turbine for $449 from Jaycar electronics. A couple of years ago they were even including a four meter tower with the wind turbine. If you live in a windy flat spot with no trees or houses upstream of the prevailing wind it’s a bargain. But don’t waste your money buying one of these and putting it on top of your suburban house, in your backyard or on top of your office building.

Encraft in the UK have published the results of a trial on the operation of 26 building mounted wind turbines with a combined 168,950 hours of operation. The purpose of the trial was to see how grid connected small wind turbines performed on a range of building types and locations. It was undertaken in 2007 and 2008. A range of turbines from different manufacturers were tested, with capacities from 400 to 1,250 watts. The report includes photos of each installed turbine. Looking at the photos it becomes pretty obvious that the wind turbines that performed the best were mounted high, well above surrounding buildings.

The gist of the report comes in paragraph three “as anyone who knows anything about wind power will attest, urban environments and building mounting is probably the most challenging context in which to try to make wind power work.” The report then goes to show that the average availability factor of turbines in the trial was 0.85%, improving to 4.15% if turbines which were switched off or broken were taken into account.

At a 4% availability factor a 200 watt turbine would only produce 70kWh a year, about 20% of the energy used by a small energy efficient fridge. At a 1% availability factor that drops to under 20kWh. Take off the power that the generator might use and the effective power output could be zero.

The report notes that many of the turbines on the best sites (high rise) were turned off because of noise complaints.

Encraft say that the “technology is still at a development stage and is likely to make a tangible contribution to energy and carbon saving only on the most exposed site and tallest building.”

A couple of years ago I researched putting a small wind turbine on my surburban house. Someone from the wind industry advised that for the turbine to work it had to be twice as high as the nearest obstruction. Otherwise the air would be turbulent, reducing output and leading to early failure. I figured that building a 50 meter tower in my backyard and getting the necessary planning permit wasn’t worthwhile. And of course it also helps if you live in a windy location.

With this rule of thumb in mind it becomes obvious pretty quickly that urban or surburban wind generation in most cases just isn’t viable with current technology. And the UK study proves it. Maybe emerging technologies that may be able to operate better in turbulence may prove more useful in urban environments, such as the linear wind generator.

This 8 minute video shows how Linfox is going about reducing its carbon emissions. What stands out for me in this video is the broad commitment across the organisation to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Use it to help inspire a similar commitment in your organisation.