California Clean Tech Open, TED 1000 and the Refrigerator-Unit Electricity Measure
Jay Parkhill November 1st, 2007
I attended the California Clean Tech Open Finals this week, a business plan competition for emerging companies in the clean technology area. The companies were impressive and the event sold out at 900 tickets- both great signs for the sector.
Having reflected on it, two thoughts stick in my head about the event:
1) The tradeshow format (someone I know likes to refer to it as a “science fair”) is brutal, and perhaps hardest on new businesses. With no context (esp name recognition) other than the information the companies present it is very hard to tell which companies have real prospects.
2) One of the evening’s speakers was Noah Horowitz from the NRDC. He gave a fascinating talk about the power drain of consumer electronic devices. Per my recollection, a 2 or 3 tuner digital video recorder such as Tivo uses as much energy per year as a refrigerator. An Xbox360 or PS3 uses huge amounts of peak power, and if inadvertently left on will drain as much electricity as two refrigerators per year.
I had no idea I had so many refrigerators in my house. If nothing else, the event prompted me to buy a TED 1000 to display real-time electricity usage in my house. I’ll be interested to see how many more refrigerators I have hiding in my house.