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Today social networking giant Facebook revealed a new load balancing system for its several data centers that results in some serious energy savings. The system for balancing web requests on web server clusters, called Autoscale, saves power by “10-15% for different web clusters,” according to a blog post today from Qiang Wu, an infrastructure software engineer at Facebook. The company has been working on data center energy efficiency for a very long time. Facebook built servers from scratch for its data center in Prineville, Ore., saving energy significantly. Other companies have also worked on data center energy efficiency. Google even uses artificial neural networks to cut data center energy…

WindStream Technologies, Inc. announced today a contract was awarded through its Malaysian distributor, My WindStream Energy of Kuala Lumpur, to deliver the company’s patented SolarMill® hybrid solar wind system technology for a new eco-housing project in Sungai Ular, Cherating Pahang, Malaysia.  Phase I of the contract calls for 50 SM2-4P SolarMill units to be delivered in the next 90 days. Subsequent phases of the project are being scheduled to complete the deployment throughout the 800 home housing complex. Once completed, the eco-housing project in Sungai Ular, Cherating Pahang, Malaysia, will be the largest deployment of WindStream’s hybrid solar and wind energy technology in the world. The completed…

  When you own a small business, you never have enough of two things: Time in the day or money in the bank. For the last four years, my business partner Claire Mazur and I have run Of a Kind — a website that introduces up-and-coming designers to the world through a combination of eCommerce and storytelling — and along the way, we have unearthed a slew of tools that make our lives easier and our workloads more manageable. Better even? They are cheap or free. Though we are super-fans of a few standalone platforms — see: Help Scout for customer service and Slack for team…

An innovative ‘tri-generation’ clean energy system fueled entirely by raw plant oils could have great potential for isolated homes and businesses operating outside grid systems both in the UK and abroad. Developed by a consortium led by Newcastle University and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), through the RCUK Energy Program, the small-scale combined cooling, heat and power system has been designed to provide dependable electricity without the need for a mains connection. Ideally suited for small-holdings and businesses, and particularly applications in the developing world, the waste heat that is produced by the system is used for cooling and heating in…

Solar technology has evolved beyond just your grandpa's big, bulky photovoltaic panels on the roof. Advances in flexible, hyper-efficient and nano-scale materials of late has made it possible for solar cells to begin popping up in all kinds of shapes and places you might not expect. Here's a quick rundown of some surprising spots where solar technology dwells – be sure to flip through the gallery to get a full grasp on the scale of the increasingly solar-powered landscape.   Solar Energy at sea Solar panels are great, so long has you can find the real estate on which to…