The Windspire is is a practical, quiet green energy device, and could just get a shot as mass consumer adoption.

It’s a 1 kW, vertical-rotating, bird friendly wind turbine. It super quiet at 25 db, “the average noise of a residential neighborhood at night”, which is great for residential uses.

It’s a bit expensive at $4,000, but it can produce up to 2,000 kWh per year. It’s a great way to offset some of your grid-power with all-natural, sustainable wind power.

Bird friendliness is also important to this design. You’re not going to hurt any animals using this, and in a residential environment with lots of birds, that’s crucial.

All-in-all this is a brilliant design that could really get some consumer attention if it was a bit cheaper. The low noise is great for a residential environment, and it’s small enough to fit in an average backyard as well. Most importantly, it’s bird friendly so you’ll take care of your local wildlife as well as the global climate.

Windspire

via Treehugger

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Well we’ve been seeing a whole bunch of new electric vehicle concepts, securing the age-old idea that we’ll all drive electric cars in the near future.

Unfortunately electric cars still have a problem with range. Most of them are very energy efficient, but still can’t drive very far without needing a recharge.

Mitsubishi has put some innovative ideas into the iMIEV to solve this problem. Use green energy!

The iMIEV features a solar panel on the roof and two compact wind turbines in the front to generate electricity. Along with solar and wind, the iMIEV has a regenerative braking system, which uses braking friction to generate electricity.

These technologies help recharge the car’s battery and helps to improve the car’s range. The solar roof alone adds about 20 miles to the range. It’s not much, but every little bit helps, and if it’s green energy, all the better!

In addition to the green power, the car features LED based lighting, heat-absorbing window glass, and green plastic - a plastic made from plant resin.

It’s great to see some innovative thinking in creating a green car, it’s ideas like this which will give us the car of the future, not just a simple concept.

via Treehugger

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AutoblogGreen has posted a list of the top 10 eco-friendly RVs.

Now, RVs aren’t exactly known to be green; they guzzle gas. This list has some impressive vehicles however.

Here are some of my favourites:

Modern Park Trailer

This one looks more like a small office building on wheel than an RV, but contained in this large-windowed RV is a bathroom, living room, and even a bedroom and closet. Pretty cool!

VW Westfalia Concept

This one really makes me want to dress in tie-die, get high, and follow a band around for the summer. While it might remind you of the old hippie vans, this concept has one modern high-tech upgrade: it’s solar powered.

Solar powered hippie van? Can you get any more cool?

GMC Pad Concept

This one looks so cool it has to get a mention. It’s only a concept right now, but the design is striking. The inside is apparently “all about media display” and check out these pictures to see what that means:

These are some great examples of some green RVs and RV concepts. Good to see RVs taking to green technology!

Read the whole list from AutoblogGreen

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The Powercost is a home energy monitor, allowing you to see how much electricity you use.

The Powercost will tell you how much your energy is costing you as well, allowing you to see the effects of any green initiatives you’re trying in your home. You will be able to see exactly how much energy you are using, seeing this will help to motivate you to reduce you consumption, and save some money while you’re at it!

It’s easy to install and only includes 2 pieces. The sensor is separate from the display, so unlike some other monitors, the display can be placed anywhere and is not required to be on an outlet.

If you live in Ontario and have Hydro One as your energy provider, you are actually eligible for a free Powercost unit. Give them a call and get yours!

If you’re outside of Ontario, you can get your own Powercost for $150.

via Treehugger

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Do you remember wind-up toys? I used to prefer those over the battery kind since your didn’t have to wait 6-8 hours for a charge.

Well in addition to those simple toys, wind-up power has moved into the lighting industry.

This wind-up lamp is powered by a high-carbon tensile steel spring, which basically means it’s going to last a long time. With a super-efficient LED bulb, you could get some great charge time!

In addition to a green power source (human power), it’s going to have power whenever you need it, and not when you don’t. You’ll no longer have to worry about losing your lighting in a power outage, or wasting electricity if you forget to turn it off. Great green innovation!

This isn’t available for purchase yet, it’s only a design. It’s a great idea however, and is already used in wind-up emergency flashlights. I could see this technology becoming a lot more widespread.

via Keetsa

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This monitor is a mash-up of a bunch of different pieces of information to create a better view of your energy usage and costs.

It gets information about time-of-day costs and local weather, and combines this with your energy usage. This allows you to see what usage times are costing you the most, let’s you see when your usage is unusually high, and lets you predict when your bill is going to spike.

This monitor has the benefit of using additional sources of information to help you better analyze your electricity usage.

This is being tested in select markets before hitting the shelves soon. If you are in New York city, you can get one for testing from Consumerpowerline. If you’re outside New York, you’re outside the testing area, but send them an email anyway and you might be able to get your hands on one.

via Treehugger

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Phantom power has been the talk of the town recently.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s simple. Many of our devices today have low-power or standby modes which serve to reduce start-up times. Unfortunately these modes still use power, even when you aren’t using the device. Basically, all these devices are wasting power just sitting there.

We’ve seen some great idea to solve this problem. From intelligent powerbars to tables with integrated plugs, to a switch to cut the power to entire rooms.

The Ecostrip is the next generation of phantom-power reducing devices. It recognizes that most of these power-sucking devices are computer peripherals.

The ecostrip has a USB port which plugs into your computer. It’s simple: when your computer turns off, so does the rest of the powerbar. All your other devices get their power cut, and you’ve solved the problem. No price announced yet, but it should appear on store shelves soon.

Just remember to turn off your computer!

via Treehugger

UPDATE: You can buy the ecostrip here

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