Becoming greener is on many people’s agendas these days. Whether the intention is to save money or reduce the impact to the environment, this is true not only for individuals, but many high-tech companies as well. A necessity to knowing how to conserve energy is becoming aware of the aspects of your home or business that consume the most energy.
At the CEATEC conference this month in Japan, Toshiba and Intel announced a few of their upcoming plans to better 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.
Intel
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
You may have read that Toshiba recently acquired Landish Gyr, a company that specializes in smart-meter tech, Toshiba is using this as part of a “smart home” offering. This will allow people to more easily monitor the energy consumption in their homes. They are also developing cloud technology for a number of verticals, including city infrastructure and health companies.
While these two companies have big plans for energy monitoring in 2012, it seems as though many organizations in the US are moving away from it, namely, Microsoft and Google. In June, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Hohm, their energy-monitoring service launched in 2009. Google also seems to be changing its green game by shutting down Google Powermeter, that they also launch in 2009.
We can see that though companies in the US are moving away from energy monitoring, companies in Japan are focused on it. What will the future be for the green technology world? It’s hard to say, but if you have any ideas or speculations about this, we would love to hear them!