Tag Archives: in focus
In Focus: The Smart Highway
Designers and urban planners around the world are constantly looking for ways to connect citizens to the skyscrapers, restaurants and museums around them. Vast amounts of money are spent designing parks, boutique retail spaces and condominiums. So how come our roads don’t get that kind of attention? That was the kind of question running through [...]
In Focus: President Obama’s Environmental Efforts
On Tuesday September 4, 2012, Democrats opened their national convention by defending President Obama’s record and asking Americans to be patient. In their first four years in office, the Obama administration’s green efforts have been resisted by unprecedented Republican obstructionism and an electorate misinformed about the science of climate change. Others have criticized Obama for not doing enough to move the green agenda forward. Despite a [...]
In Focus: Wearable Solar
You may have heard of flower power in the 1960s and now in the 2010s we have solar power—that you can wear. You may already have purchased from us a solar bag or solar backpack, but soon you may be able to purchase solar couture. Several companies have come out with solar-powered articles of clothing [...]
In Focus: Cross-Mating PV Connectors
There are over thirty other connector manufacturers in the PV industry today: Amphenol, Weiland, Radox, Tyco, Bizlink, and SMK, just to name a few. MC4, or Multi Contact connector for four square millimeter cable, is the standard locking system in the PV industry today. There are some manufacturers that will make the claim that their [...]
In Focus: Solar Dock Lights
On any coastal town, docks are a familiar sight to see. A lot of times people go out early in the morning and come home late at night. Providing power for lighting to these areas can be complicated, especially if no infrastructure is nearby. Solar power for the dock lights can be the perfect solution, [...]
In Focus: Smarter Parking Management
If you drive in this city, you’ve probably been in one of these two situations: One, too cheap to pay for parking, you go to a side street and take advantage of one-hour free parking. But having stayed a little longer than an hour, you find a $30 ticket on your windshield. Two, en route [...]
In Focus: Solar Monitoring Apps
Once you have a solar PV installation on your roof, you begin to look at electricity use in a whole new way. You and your family might play the solar savings game, where you see just how low your electric use can go, so you can feed it all back in to the grid and [...]
In Focus: LED Lighting
Around here we joke that in the future, children will grow up not knowing how to change a light bulb. And if that happens, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. That’s because energy-efficient LED lighting is so long-lasting that you could go 20 years or more without having to replace a burned out light [...]
In Focus: Environmental Impact Assessments on Buildings
Environmental impact assessments are carried out on buildings so as to ensure that the development has minimal or no negative effects on the environment. As part of these environmental assessments carried out on buildings, raters conduct energy efficiency assessments that help establish the amount of energy a building requires to operate. These periodical assessments help [...]