bioluminescent plants

Glow-in-the-dark plants have been a novel creation for decades now, but as far as practical use goes, their benefits have remained to be seen. Without a useful purpose, the cost of genetically engineering plants to glow is simply not worth it.

However, there is perhaps no other source of light that is as eco-friendly as a natural-born glow from a living organism. Saving energy on traditional lighting is creating the market for bioluminescence that has been lacking for the last 20 years.

In fact, glow-in-the-dark plants aren’t the only bioluminescent that’s currently possible. According to CNN researchers in the United Kingdom have figured out a way for glowing bacteria cultures to be placed inside glass tubing. The result is transparent piping that emits the green glow of an equally green liquid within.

This liquid is composed of bacteria feeding off of methane gas. The bacteria has been genetically modified to glow green. Think of it as bio-born neon, just without the variety – at least so far.
But as far as the bacteria-based bioluminescent goes, practical use still needs to be sorted out.

No one particularly wants to be bathed in a sinister-looking green color within their home, no matter how environmentally sound it is. Not only that, but the light is admittedly limited in this regard. Step but three feet away from the source and your world becomes a dark place with only a faint green glow to keep you comfortable. Alternatives such as CFLs will reign supreme.

More hope is held out for the potential for bioluminescent plants, fungi, and other eukaryotes to help pave the way for a more eco-friendly approach to municipally-provided power. Road signs as well as road hazards could potentially be emphasized via such glowing plant matter, instead of wasting money on additional traditional lighting. It’s a feature of the future landscape that is edging closer to reality thanks to both the research and the demand. Inside the home bioluminescent plants may save money as well (and not only plants).

If you’re fan of “The Big Bang Theory” like an am, then you may recognize the one episode where Sheldon genetically altered goldfish to make them glow in the dark. These goldfish served as nightlights in his and Leonard’s apartment. What they needed, though, was to use Anywho to look up the name of another mad scientist with a dimmer switch for the goldfish when they were ready for bed. And such would be the case for plants as well.

One of the definitive presents of our time may very well be the gift of a glowing mini-colored ficus as a replacement for a bedside lamp. Other bioluminescent plants could replace solar walkway lamps and solar garden lamps.

Regardless of the domestic uses for bioluminescence, the future of our roadways has never looked greener. Imagine the landscaping business a few years from now when bioluminescence hits its stride.

Since most of us spend of our time at home when we’re not working, it makes sense for us to be aware of our energy consumption when we are there. For that reason, there are a lot of home technologies that help us to monitor our energy consumption and even save energy in the process. Most people are unaware of their daily carbon footprint or how sustainable their homes are, but there are simple ways that we can all move to being more eco-friendly and viable even when at home.

Some of the technologies that are providing people with easy ways to monitor and cut their energy and water usage include the following.

1. Low Flow Showerheads and Toilets

Low-flow showerheads and toilets are beginning to gain popularity in the home. Hot water can account for up to 25% of a home’s total energy costs and 15% of it being due to showers! So, it makes sense to try and reduce the amount of hot water used. By installing low-flow showerheads, you can reduce your water, and energy, consumption by up to half! According to BC Hyrdro, if “10,000 B.C. households switched to low-flow showerheads, the annual energy savings could power 300 Canadian homes for a year.”

Hand-in-hand with low-flow showerheads are low-flow, energy efficient toilets. By installing this type of high-efficiency toilet, you can “save over 30,000 litres of water a year”! This is not only better for the environment, but also results in you saving money.

2. Water Usage Meter

You can also seek to save water and energy by buying a water saver usage meter. These handy little devices show you exactly how much water you are using so that you can take steps in order to reduce your water usage by not over watering your garden, for example. These meters fit on standard hoses, have LCD displays, a reset button for every usage in addition to an auto shut-off to help conserve power.

3. Energy Star Appliances

One of the best and most efficient ways to save energy in the home is to switch to appliances and products that do the work for you! There are many options in the realm of Energy Star appliances including fridges, dishwashers, laundry machines, dryers and even the smaller items such as blenders.

By switching to an Energy Star appliance, you will use “10 – 50% less water and energy than standard models”.

4. Energy-Saver Light Bulbs

Another easy way to save energy in the home is by switching to energy-efficient lighting in every room. For example, ENERGY STAR® compact light bulbs use “75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs”. Another option is to switch to halogen lighting. It has light output “similar to a regular incandescent bulb but uses up to 40 percent less energy”.

5. Solar Powered Gadgets

A Technology that is becoming steadily popular these days includes solar powered chargers and gadgets. While solar power for your home in the form of panels is still very expensive, we can instead harness the suns energy in smaller portions. These days the market has everything from solar chargers for our cell phones and mp3 players to solar alarm clocks to solar powered lights for the garden. They even have solar powered TV’s now!

Regardless of what type of technology suits your fancy, by switching even a few of your gadgets over to solar power, you will benefit from cost savings. Not to mention that you will feel better knowing that you’re reducing your carbon footprint and saving the environment.

Other ways you can upgrade to more energy efficient lighting is by using a 100-watt bulb in place of two 60-watt ones. The single 100-watt not only produces the same amount of light, but it is also more energy efficient. There are also many energy-saving devices that can be used in conjunction with lighting such as motion sensors, dimmers and automatic timers.

While these are some of the top energy-efficient items for the home, there are many other options in today’s market and many more arriving all the time. Green technology, though not necessarily a new trend, has been picking up in the past few years as people start to become more and more environmentally aware and responsible. As a consumer, the next time you go shopping for new technology, appliances or gadgets for your home, be sure to check out some energy-efficient models instead!

If you’re anything like me, the outlook right now for powering your home is looking abysmal. Oil prices are at an all-time high. We’re trying to get away from burning coal, but radiation leaks after the Japanese tsunami are making everyone question. Unfortunately all of these occurrences point to us using power sources which are both inefficient and bad for the environment.

We’re moving closer to ultra-efficiency and net-zero homes and I’ve got an awesome set up to conserve my home’s electricity for my lighting.

Between 12-15 percent of energy use in homes is lighting. That’s a huge amount if you consider that people are running TVs, microwaves, refrigerators and stoves which are all huge energy suckers. I’ve got two techie tricks of easily saving energy in your home.

1. Dim the Lights

I have a Crestron system in my home, but you can do similar things with almost any home automation package. What you do is program your lights to only come on to 75% of full luminosity when activated. You would think that 25-percent is a lot, but it’s hardly perceptible to your eyes.
This trick ends up cutting your lighting portion of your bill by 20-percent by itself. As an added bonus, you will find your lights will last 4 times longer than at full blast because of the wear and tear on them being so much less.

When someone drops a contact lens or you need the most light possible, you can always turn on full power to them, but you’ll find yourself loving how much you’re saving without even trying.

2. Motion Sensors

How much energy do you waste because your kids leave the lights on and walk out of the room? Just twice this month I walked outside in the morning for a run and realized we left the porch lights burning all night long. So frustrating!

We’ve all seen the garage lights that turn on when there’s motion, right? We’re talking that, but on anabolic steroids.

Imagine a motion sensor in every living space. When you walk into the room, the lights automatically turn on. When you leave, they turn off. No wasted electricity and you may never have to touch a light switch ever again.

A really fun program you can run on it is between the night hours, only to bring lights on to 10-percent when motion is detected. That way your eyes don’t hate you if you have to use the bathroom or run to the kitchen for a midnight snack, and you won’t have to worry about stepping on any toys along the way.

But Automation is Too Expensive!

Yes, what Tony Stark has in his house is much too expensive for you, but surprisingly home automation lighting is getting extremely reasonable. It’s not uncommon to find lighting for $140 per switch, and add a processor and programming, and you can be into a basic system where the energy savings payback period is attractive.

There are many low-cost, even do-it-yourself automation systems out there where you can also cut costs if you need to. I’m always a Crestron fan, though, if you can fit it into your budget, as it’s going to be rock solid and you won’t be troubleshooting every Saturday.

And as more and more people see it as a viable option, prices will continue to drop, making it more viable! So if you can’t find room in the budget for it now, watch for the future. Then dream that someday your home will be so efficient that the power company will be paying you for feeding excess power back to the grid.

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About the Author: AJ Wilcox is the marketing manager for a Utah home theater company that specializes in whole-home automation and integration. He’s got two kids and a wife, and loves running, technology, and drooling over exotic cars.

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?