SOME FUN FACTS ABOUT ENERGY USE

Energy Efficiency Starts at Home
TV blasting, air conditioner humming - that's no time to start the dishwasher, do laundry, or bake a cake.

 Studies show how consumers can save energy by running their appliances at the optimal time of the day - or have smart monitors do it for them. The "smart" home of the near future will communicate with the electricity grid to know when power is cheap, tell appliances when to turn on or off, and even alert when renewable energy resources are available to offset peak demand.

 The idea is that eventually our appliances and homes are going to be able to 'talk' to the grid.

The goal is to reach 50% energy savings for new construction and 40% savings for building retrofits.

Cooling Efficiently in All Climates
Nothing runs up the energy bill like air conditioning. Air conditioning currently accounts for 15% of all electricity use in the United States, and can be as much as 70% of use during hot summer days.

Researchers borrowed ancient cooling ideas and combined them with outside-the-box thinking to come up with a radically new kind of air conditioning. The system first dehumidifies the air, and then sends it through an evaporative cooler to produce cool, dry air in any climate. The keys are paper membranes that separate the air from the water and the liquid desiccant, and a re-routing mechanism that uses a thermal cycle to refresh the desiccant and vent moisture away. The technology has the chance to lower air-conditioning energy bills by 40% to 80%, because it uses water rather than electricity to perform most of the process.

More Efficient Buildings
Forty percent of the nation's energy is used in buildings - from hospitals to factories, restaurants to office complexes.

Our nation's architects and engineers are looking to find ways to reduce by 50% the energy intensity of large hospitals, schools, and retail buildings.

U.S. hospitals spend more than $5 billion annually on energy, equaling about 2% of a typical hospital's operating budget.

Schools Finding Big Energy Savings
New schools and those going through a renovation can demonstrate an average energy savings of 30%. Among cost-saving measures, the blueprints called for pretreatment of humid air rather than over cooling the entire airflow; aligning the new schools on an east-west axis, with large, efficient, south-facing windows; and smart monitors to assure that only the lights that are needed are turned on.

The potential savings are monumental, amounting to some $75,000 per year, per school. In the United States there are about 100,000 public schools. This year, $14 billion will be spent constructing about 750 new schools and renovating others. If all the new and renovated schools followed green-school designs, the savings would be more than $50 million the first year, compounded each succeeding year. And the average school is built to endure 50 to 100 years.

NEW BATTERY ADVANCEMENTS

New batteries can recharge in 10 minutes

Researchers  say they've developed a lithium-ion battery using nanoparticles that has more energy capacity and recharges more quickly.

Scientists report using porous silicon nanoparticles in place of the traditional graphite anodes has yielded superior battery performance, holding three times as much energy as graphite-based designs and recharging within 10 minutes.

This discovery opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion batteries.

The new batteries, which have applications from cell phones to hybrid cars, could be commercially available within two to three years.

Previous silicon anode designs using tiny plates of the material quickly broke down from repeated swelling and shrinking during charging/discharging cycles.

Using this design, porous silicon nanowires less than 100 nanometers in diameter and just a few microns long are used, and the tiny pores on the nanowires allow the silicon to expand and contract without breaking.

This also increases the surface area of the battery, allowing lithium ions to move in and out of the battery more quickly, improving performance.