Dec 18 2009

The Green Seen

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks Inc. scores $100 million in a new round of financing to expand in the U.S. and abroad, raising total funds to about $250 million. Silver Spring, based in Redwood City, Calif., installs networking infrastructure for smart grid applications and has contracts with utilities PG&E, Florida Power & Light, Pepco Holdings and American Electric Power.

The outlook for LED lights is brightening, according to semiconductor research company iSuppli. Global LED revenue is projected to grow by 10.9 percent in 2009 to $7.4 billion, up from $6.7 billion in 2008, and to jump up to $14.3 billion by 2013. LEDs are increasingly used in everything from street lights to flat-screen TVs and are beginning to penetrate the residential market as a replacement for incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs, the company said. LED manufacturers are releasing 40-watt replacement bulbs with the traditional Edison shape.

U.S. and Canadian wind energy associations say a literature review found no medical basis for health complaints that come up near large wind farms. There is no evidence that audible or "subaudible" turbine sounds and vibrations have physiological effects, the industry-financed study says. It concedes that some people are irritated by swishing noise from wind mills. A Canadian surgeon who belongs to a group fighting wind farms in Ontario says the study's authors were "picked and paid for by the wind industry."

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