Emerging technologies
How to cut your energy use

You have all read about how energy is becoming a scarce resource. In light of this, adapt looks at some of the emerging technologies which can help cut energy use.

First up: batteries. They power our laptop computers while we’re on the road and enable us to communicate on the move through mobile phones and mobile email devices such as the Blackberry.

Now, you may not have heard much about it, but the battery industry is currently revolutionising at a very high pace. Researchers at Stanford University, for example, have happened upon discovery which could soon see commercially available laptop batteries that last more than a day off a single charge.

Specifically, the researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries – also used in iPods, still and video cameras – as much as 10 times more charge, potentially giving a conventional Li-ion battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life rather than just four.

Toshiba also announced the commercial launch of its Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB) which can recharge 90 percent capacity in less than five minutes.

The rise of the solid-state drive (SSD) – a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data - is also a boon for the energy conscious.

The Flash-based iteration of SSDs, in particular, does not require power and is non-volatile so therefore able to retain memory during sudden power outages, ensuring data retrievability. That makes them a great candidate for laptop and desktop PC hard drive replacements.

With no moving parts, SSDs are also inherently less fragile than hard disks so giving them greater stability over their disk counterparts. While still expensive, and limited to capacities between 12GB to 256GB, time will see these types of drives fall in price and rise in capacity thus taking over from the energy hungry hard disk drives which dominate the market.

Another interesting development is around processors. In April this year, computer scientists at HP Labs found a fourth fundamental circuit element, called a memory resistor which has so far existed only in theory.

This circuit could act as the ultimate virtual bookmark, remembering your settings and exact place even when you power off. The HP Labs team has dubbed their finding ‘the Memristor’ as it will be able to retain a complete history of the information it has acquired during the PC’s operation - currently, computers use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to recompile settings when booting up.

Additionally, Memristors will also enable very small nanoscale devices to be made without generating all the excess heat that scaling down transistors is causing today. That translates to much greater energy efficiency.

Finally, screens. The growth in the use of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology as an alternative to liquid crystal displays is also heartening. OLED displays, unlike LCD displays, do not require a backlight to function so the power consumption is far lower. This means greater battery life from mobile devices such as phones and laptops.

The costs for OLED screens are still high, and there are creases to be ironed out around the degradation of materials in the OLED screens, but again, it’s just a matter of time before these screens become common place.

So, we may not be there just yet, but all of these technological advancements give us comfort that it soon will be possible to lower energy consumption massively by using the right set of hardware.