Posts tagged electricity
In recent months, the Alphabet Inc. unit put a DeepMind AI system in control of parts of its data centers to reduce power consumption by manipulating computer servers and related equipment like cooling systems. It uses a similar technique to DeepMind software that taught itself to play Atari video games, Hassabis said in an interview at a recent AI conference in New York. The system cut power usage in the data centers by several percentage points, “which is a huge saving in terms of cost but, also, great for the environment,” he said. The savings translate into a 15 percent improvement in power usage efficiency, or PUE, Google said in a statement. PUE measures how much electricity Google uses for its computers, versus the supporting infrastructure like cooling systems.
via http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016–07–19/google-cuts-its-giant-electricity-bill-with-deepmind-powered-ai
The electricity-eating microbes that the researchers were hunting for belong to a larger class of organisms that scientists are only beginning to understand. They inhabit largely uncharted worlds: the bubbling cauldrons of deep sea vents; mineral-rich veins deep beneath the planet’s surface; ocean sediments just a few inches below the deep seafloor. The microbes represent a segment of life that has been largely ignored, in part because their strange habitats make them incredibly difficult to grow in the lab.
via https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160621-electron-eating-microbes-found-in-odd-places/
During last year’s regional assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, for instance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) filed a formal complaint after an Indian National Congress party elder allegedly told tribal voters that the EVMs would electrocute them if they voted for non-Congress candidates. The BJP won the election, but the Election Commission’s FAQ now reassuresprospective voters that there is no chance of electrocution from “short-circuitry or [any] other reason.”
http://qz.com/199553/indias-democracy-runs-on–1–7-million-electronic-voting-machines/
University of Southern California (USC) have discovered bacteria that survives on nothing but electricity — rather than food, they eat and excrete pure electrons. These bacteria yet again prove the almost miraculous tenacity of life — but, from a technology standpoint, they might also prove to be useful in enabling the creation of self-powered nanoscale devices that clean up pollution. Some of these bacteria also have the curious ability to form into ‘biocables,’ microbial nanowires that are centimeters long and conduct electricity as well as copper wires — a capability that might one day be tapped to build long, self-assembling subsurface networks for human use.
http://mobile.extremetech.com/extreme/221698-biologists-discover-electric-bacteria-that-eat-pure-electrons-rather-than-sugar-redefining-the-tenacity-of-life
“We are at the beginning of a new era in power markets,” the UBS analysts write. ”Purely based on economics, we believe almost every family home and every commercial rooftop in Germany, Italy and Spain should be equipped with a solar system by the end of this decade.” It says up to 18% of electricity demand could be replaced by self-produced solar power in these markets, at the expense of centralised generation. Even as soon as 2020, up to 43GW of unsubsidised solar could be installed in Germany, Italy and Spain, replacing up to 9 per cent of electricity demand. This is on top of reduction in demand caused by energy efficiency measures and weak GDP growth.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/ubs-boom-in-unsubsidised-solar-pv-flags-energy-revolution–60218