Germany’s new building code requires that all new construction generate 25% of its own power. It is an excellent model, because decentralized power generation will be more effective at using renewable sources as well as reducing infrastructure burdens. Too bad our government doesn’t see the logic in it.

In Korea, LG is selling Sulfur/Plasma lights (currently illegal in the States). There are some issues with cell phone/Wi-fi interference, but the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum replaced 94 HID lights with just 3 Sulfur/Plasmas, (before they became illegal) and there’s no mercury. HID’s, most often seen in street/parking lot lighting applications, are some of the biggest energy hogs out there, often drawing more than their bulb wattage due to ballasting.

I look forward to LED lighting, and it is making strides, because i switched to CFL several years ago and have been nothing but disappointed. The spectrum is terrible (and i bought the good ones) and the self-ballasting unit is unreliable: long warm-up that tends heavy to the red. We can already buy a 50 watt equivalent LED that goes into a normal socket, draws an average of 4 watts, and has a 50,000 hr life span. I’ll be trying them out just as soon as i can afford to.

Finally, i wish that fuel cells would find a home-application market. Hydrogen generation can come from natural gas, which homes already have. The waste is water, which can be collected in a home setting. It seems to me that the technology would be easier to implement if it was stationary, and the initial cost would be better absorbed with a mortgage than an auto-loan. But that idea goes back to decentralization which is such an anathema in the US that we might as well be the USSR.

Thanks again, looking forward to next week.