Intel touts personal energy management

Intel believes personal energy management could become as ubiquitous as the personal computer, reports SmarterTechnology.

"We believe that, given a choice, people will vote with their wallets to have a positive effect on both energy consumption, reducing their carbon footprint and making more use of sustainable, renewable energy sources," says Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner.

To this end, Intel has unveiled personal energy management hardware control panel that tracks current energy consumption; provides a household profile for usage; predicts what a user's electricity bill will be at their current rate of consumption; and gives them controls for setting the thermostat, turning on sprinklers and managing other household energy use.

A bid to impose efficiency standards on data centres has been met with resistance from a group of industry leaders, led by Google, who claim to represent many of the world's most advanced data centre operators, writes eWeek.

Google, Microsoft and Nokia have all signed a blog post which complains that a bid to extend a building efficiency standard to data centres will cause problems because it is “too prescriptive”.

The Ashrae 90.1 building efficiency standard, from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, is to be applied to data centres, but the operators believe it will push specific technologies, instead of rewarding better results.

Energy efficiency services provider Recurve has unveiled Recurve Software, an application aimed at home energy-efficiency contractors, states CNET News.

The first module of a planned suite, the program lets professionals generate a home-efficiency report with recommendations and a proposal for work, such as air sealing and insulation.

Recurve hopes the hosted application will automate some of the tasks for home performance contractors, many of which can be small shops, says Adam Winter, senior vice-president of building science. The application runs on tablet PCs, which can run Flash and Java, with most of the input done with a stylus, he said.