Now, besides the electric companies there are other big players on the Information Technology (or is that Internet Technology) side that are also interested in smart grid applications. Companies such as Google, Intel, Verizon, Cisco Systems, and IBM all have a keen interest in seeing smart grid technology rollout.

But, why would IT companies have such a large interest in the electric companies? As it turns out the electric companies are not very IT savvy or IT equipped when it comes to smart grid technology.

There is money to be made helping the electric company track power usage in their service areas. Using the right software and hardware infrastructure can help avoid power outages in general (and especially as more electric cars are being plugged into the grid in the near future) and quickly start load sharing with other resources.

Like I stated before smart metering inside the home is also supposed to let people monitor their own appliances to see which use more power so that either physical changes or behavioral changes can be made. Let’s for instance say that one day you’ll be able to Google your water heater and see that it is using way too much electricity.

At this point you may want to go down to the hardware store and purchase a $20 blanket for it. Let’s also say that you Google your refrigerator and it is consuming much more electricity that others in the neighborhood.

You can then tell your kids that “they are letting the cold air out” when they endlessly stare at the open refrigerator looking for something to eat or you can fill your refrigerator with food or jugs of water, which also help keep it cold and use less grid juice.

No matter what, when consumers have the information on just how and where the electricity is being consumed in their own homes then conservation may become a bigger motivator in going green for many who wouldn’t have bothered or known how to before.

The installation of the smart meters will affect around 800,000 homes in Indiana. Duke Energy is also moving forward with smart meter technology in part of North Carolina as well.

Other states that have smart metering projects include California, Colorado and Florida. In fact, this week a technician from Southern California Edison, which services my home installed a new meter.

I spoke with the technician about the new meter tying into Edison’s smart metering system and it looks very promising. The feature that sounds most encouraging to me is that homeowners will be able to logon to the Internet and see which appliances in their homes are using the most electricity.

I’m the kind of person who would like to see that my Energy Saver appliances are living up to expectations and be able to gauge and make behavioral adjustments on how to more efficiently conserve energy.

Myung-bak has decided to ride his bike today instead of taking a car. In addition his secretaries are taking public transportation such as buses and trains for their morning commutes and to experience a car-free lifestyle.

Across the world in Europe, people are also expressing their advocacy for World Car Free Day. Using their muscles in Brussels, people have also taken to their bicycles to help cut down on gas consumption and take a small bite out of global warming.

Rollerbladers, skateboarders and people simply walking are among the crowds of tens of thousands of Europeans today giving up their cars for the sake of humanity. Advocates have been doing this in increasing numbers since the 1973 OPEC oil crisis. Velotaxis and now popular in Germany and Italy has seen a drastic increase in the number of electric bikes.

In Louisville, Kentucky a man named Tim Darst, who is the director for the Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation will be traveling 200 miles by local bus today in order to showcase World Car Free Day in his region.

So, the message is, if you can, do without your car today. If this is not possible, then at least cut down on driving, do hypermiling and at least contribute a little to the greenness of the Earth. I, myself, will be taking an unusually long walk in support of this day.

Engineers at UC Berkeley in the California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) program developed the magnetic bus and guidance system. The system involves spacing a procession of magnets a few feet apart along the pavement and letting the bus follow them on “auto pilot”.

Even though the bus driver took a hands-off approach he still had control of braking and acceleration. Computers onboard this magnet bus read the road sensors and then controlled the route of the bus including turns. Often referred to as “smart car” technology this smart bus technology put the vehicle within centimeters of its desired destination.

This means the route that the bus travels is more predictable than with human steering. With predictability comes less fuel used on the route along with quicker passenger load and unload times, which means less fuel, less emissions and happier customers.

One of the goals of this test was a first step towards competing with light rail. The scientists theorize the magnetic buses could travel the freeways at 60 mph and because they can start and stop on a dime and in unison, there could be a procession of buses during peak travel times that would emulate light rail trains.

There are three types of gas savers that can make a difference in using less fuel in one’s car or truck including behavioral modification, technology that assists behavior and fuel additives.

In regard to behavioral modification, there is a group called Hypermilers that take changing their driving behaviors to an extreme. They may go shoeless to feel the gas pedal better, drive within the speed limit, coast downhill in neutral and roll through a stop sign on occasion to save gas.

The Hypermilers don’t like to back out of a parking space since this wastes gasoline so they look for parking spots that they can pull out of front first. They hate braking and air conditioning wastes fuel, so they do as little of each as they can.

The next type of gas saver is technology that will help drivers with their behavior changes so they can squeeze the most fuel out of their vehicle as possible. One such product is the air-cushioned Sutticar Fuel Saver Kit that installs underneath the gas pedal in a car or truck that creates smooth acceleration, saving gas.

The third of the gas savers (that I’ve talked about before) is an additive that will help with the fuel mileage. Now, let’s face it, most fuel additives that you buy off the store shelf are just a waste of money. They make exaggerated claims and simply don’t work.

The gas savers that do work are HHO generators for cars. These devices electrolyze a small amount of water into hydrogen and oxygen and inject this into the vehicle’s intake system, replacing some gasoline or diesel fuel with clean burning energy.

But, no matter which way you choose to go in regard to choosing one or multiple gas savers, the important part is to leap into the process now. Gasoline prices aren’t coming down anytime soon. So, the sooner you start saving, the more money you’ll have for other areas of your life.

But a recent breakthrough in energy-saving supercomputer technology will mean that this intense number crunching will be become feasible very soon. A company named Tensilica has teamed up with the Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to design new supercomputing architecture using small processor cores that will be able to handle 100 to 1000 times the throughput of traditional high-end computers.

The drawback for supercomputers has traditionally been that they use an extreme amount of energy, put off a high degree of heat and require very complex physical installations that their cost has been prohibitive.

According to Horst Simon, Associate Laboratory Director about the breakthrough, “Such processors, by their nature, must deliver maximum performance while consuming minimal power – exactly the challenge facing the high performance computing community. One of the most compute-intensive applications is modeling global climate change, a critical research application and the perfect pilot application for energy-efficient computing optimization.”

By making supercomputers energy efficient and thus less costly, we will receive many answers to pressing environmental concerns much more quickly. And the faster we get a handle on the issues surrounding global warming the more intelligently, we can decide as a population how to combat the problem in the most effective manner.

The demonstration by GE is one step towards offering other organic electronic products (such as organic solar panels) that have less environmental impact that other systems at a fraction of the price. The new manufacturing process involves a newspaper printing like roll-to-roll technique for high production output.

Researchers have been working on organic lighting solutions for a number of years. In 2004, GE developed an 24” x 24” OLED panel, which showed that this technology was not only possible, but that it would one day be competitive with other lighting technology.

The organic light emitting diodes that GE has developed are not bulbs like other LED’s, CFL or incandescent bulbs, but a thin, paper-like material that open up a new way of thinking about lighting one’s home or business. Currently OLED’s compete with LCD screens on computers, cell phone, PDA’s and other devices.

But, GE envisions that one day OLED wallpaper will exist to illuminate one’s home or flat ceiling tiles. In fact, in the not too distant future you may be eating your organic meal underneath a set of organic lights. Won’t that be illuminating?

When put in the hands of consumers, smart thermostats that are digital and programmable will help cut energy costs by as much as 33-percent per household. These intelligent devices can be set to reduce temperatures at night in the winter and raise the heat level as needed in the day and evening. Smart thermostats can also cool a home in summer in timeframes conducive to the household members.

Now, the issue that has come under fire recently in regard to smart thermostats, particularly in California, is pending legislation that would let the power companies have access to these devices and regulate them as needed to avoid blackouts. Some people see this approach as too Big Brother and want the option of letting the power companies take over or manually overriding them at will.

No matter what is finally decided, the quickest way to reduce greenhouse gases from coal burning power plants is to use less energy in homes and businesses. Smart thermostats are just one device we can use here and now to start taking action today.

CFLs are a good short-term solution for replacing incandescent light bulbs and cutting down energy costs by as much as 80-percent. LED bulbs are a long-term solution that will most likely take over the lighting market several years down the road.

CFLs are now readily available to consumers from hardware stores or general discount stores such as Wal-Mart of Target. In addition, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 passed a few weeks ago has mandated that CFLs be used in all government facilities in order to save energy.

CFLs do have some inherent problems, however, such as they contain mercury and need to be handled with care. If a CFL is broken, it is recommended that windows to outside air be opened for at least 15 minutes and the room evacuated. Disposal of CFLs is also an issue since they have to be handled as hazardous material and cannot be put into the recycling bin.

LEDs have been in use for a while on digital clocks, watches and car dashboards. They are also now being used in desk lamps, art galleries and Christmas lights. LED bulbs can use 20 to 50 times less energy than incandescent bulbs and may last for 20 years.

In terms of replacing incandescent bulbs, LED lights do not currently meet cost or technical requirements, but this is most likely to change in the next couple of years as research develops.

So, if you want to make a different now, switch to CFL bulbs. But, keep your eyes open for LED bulbs as they are coming down the pike, as they say, and will change the way we all illuminate our world.

LED Christmas lights are said to consume only one-tenth the energy of regular incandescent bulbs. The LED lights around the National Christmas Tree, however, use one-sixtieth the energy, from 125 watts last year to 2.5 watts this year.

One aspect that makes LED Christmas lights more efficient than incandescent lights is that incandescent lights use colored glass or plastic to determine the color of light emitted. LED lights, however, are more efficient in that they determine the color of light emitted at the atom level on the chip.

And, the White House is not the only high profile government building using LED Christmas lights. For the second year in a row, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver have lighted up the State Capitol Christmas tree in Sacramento, California powered by hydrogen fuel cell.

What is different this year, however, is that the Sacramento State Christmas tree has switch from incandescent lights of last year to LED Christmas lights this year. The 65,000 LED lights cut the cost of energy 98-percent over last year.

Now, that LEDs have been given the green light on Christmas trees, expect to more of these energy efficient sources flooding market over the next couple of years.