Intel and Toshiba: Energy Monitoring
Becoming “greener” is a hot topic lately, not only amongst the public but also in high-tech companies. Many businesses are looking into green tech as a way to save energy , save the environment, or to simply save money. One of the primary things you must know when looking into conserving energy is what uses the most energy?
At the CEATEC conference this month in Japan, Toshiba and Intel announced some of their upcoming plans to more easily allow companies to watch their energy usage. In this “Green Age,” it’s no surprise to see major players in the technology world coming forward with big developments that allow more regulation and monitoring of the amount of energy being used. Below are a few of the ecologically-forward changes and additions these two companies announced they will be implementing in 2012.
PC users will be able to monitor the energy consumption of their PC with the application Intel has developed. With an easy to read dashboard where the data is organized and displayed in graphs, charts, and statistics, you will be able to much more easily see how your computer is using energy.
Toshiba is combining their recently acquired Landish Gyr smart-meter tech with some of their own developments to bring a “smart home” offering to the table. The “smart home” gives people understanding of the energy consumption inside their homes. Toshiba is also creating a variety of cloud technologies for energy monitoring that will be available to many different types of industries including healthcare and city infrastructure.
Japanese technology companies are presently highly dedicated to monitoring energy consumption. That being said, it is interesting that many companies in the US are pulling away from this. Microsoft and Google are just two examples. Microsoft announced in June that they are discontinuing their energy-monitoring service called Hohm. While Google announced it is taking a break from the green game by shutting down Google Powermeter.
We will see what he future holds for the green technology world. It may well head further towards energy monitoring or turn to something else entirely. If you have any ideas or speculation on how technology companies will become greener; please share them with us.
