Power ... What is it good for

The title has nothing to do with the Edwin Starr Song or the Lord Acton quote about absolute power. Instead it is catchy (I hope) intro to start a conversation (which requires you to comment) about power.

In today's post I am going to talk about 3 "powerful" stories:

David Greenfield published an article titled "Is the Smart Grid a Dumb Idea" and the answer is of course not. The question is do we have the discipline to replace our historically haphazard electric grid with something that can transmit our ever increasing need for power (the current economy excluded) in a much smarter fashion with much less loss and much greater awareness and management of the power we are using.

Windmills - I have a fascination with windmills, not the old fashion type, but the large modern windmills that are sprouting up in places such as North Central Indiana. My fascination comes from combining something old with technology to create green. Green power for consumers and green cash for the farmers who are turning their farms into homes for hundreds of windmills.




Indiana Windmills

Big Brother Fan | MySpace Video

Drying my hands - I have written about the pros and cons between paper towels and hand dryers, with high efficiency hand dryers carrying the day. When I wrote that, it seemed like high efficiency hand dryers were pretty rare, but in my recent travels I have noticed that Excel Dryers are becoming more and more common. While it may appear that we are actually using more power than "just using" paper towels, the reality is this kind of trend is good for power conversation when you factor in the power required to make, deliver and dispose of paper towels.

There you have it. I have "powered" through some ideas on Power and ways to use it more efficiently. I will continue to come back to the power topic from time to time because as a technologist I understand that I am very dependent on power for technology to work. For that matter, all of us are dependent on having clean, reliable, renewable power to make our livings and our families comfortable ... and that is a powerful statement to make.

Read about these products and ideas and contribute your own ideas to the conversation.