Michael Reynolds the hippie architect and subject of the film Garbage Warrior has spent the past 35 years creating eco-friendly homes known as Earthships. Reynolds didn’t come up with the Earthship concept overnight. It took him thirty years of experimentation to work out how to design buildings capable of self-sufficiency in power, water and sewage. The film tracks this development, and shows how his scientific approach resulted in the extraordinarily successful housing solution that we see today. Reynolds was originally inspired to seek alternatives to traditional architectural methods when he was at college. Growing piles of consumer garbage in his home town of Cincinnati and a national crisis in supplies of lumber convinced him early on that he should devote his career to finding new ways of building houses.

By Amy Lou Jenkins | Milwaukee Green Living Examiner - Examiner.com , June 30, 2009

The renovation, the insulation and the new kitchen all helped, but Meg Goldfeather couldn't get her 1926 University Heights bungalow to save enough power. She can't stand looking at her three-digit utility bills, knowing she could generate her own electricity using solar panels on her roof. But cost has been an obstacle. So when Goldfeather's electrician suggested she look at something called One Block Off the Grid, she was interested. “The minute I read it, I thought, this is absolutely it,” Goldfeather said. “Community effort, lower price.”

By Onell R. Soto - The San Diego Union-Tribune , May 31, 2009

The architect Cass Gilbert’s vision for the United States Custom House in Lower Manhattan resulted in one of the city’s grand classical buildings. But until recently it has been difficult to appreciate the subtlety and majesty of the 102-year-old structure when viewing it at night. At its base, huge fixtures produced scattered light that cast strong shadows on the windows, giving the facade the tired look of an insomniac. Aging light bulbs had shifted in color, throwing off an unwanted rainbow of green and pink.

By Eric A. Taub - The New York Times , April 30, 2009

When Kevin Linn of Coral Springs, Fla., received a special power meter last October, he was able to check his usage day by day and hour by hour via the Internet. He found spikes in midday when no one was home -- the water heater was churning away. And he discovered his pool pump was costing more than $50 a month. He adjusted the water heater to operate only from 5 to 7 a.m. and 8 to 10 p.m., the times his family of four needed hot water. He swapped the pool pump for a more efficient model. So far, FPL records show that he's saving about $13 a month, but Linn reports, "My bills are $100 a month less than my neighbors'."

By John Dorschner - PHYSORG.com , April 29, 2009

Your utility wants to talk to you. John Kieken of Manhattan, Ill., is already listening. He used to turn on the lights and run the washing machine, air-conditioners and other electrical appliances in his 106-year-old farmhouse whenever he wanted. At the end of the month he would get a bill from Commonwealth Edison, the big Chicago-based utility, and write a check. Now he is in continuous conversation. He watches a Web page that gives him an estimated price for electricity at the current time, and he treats a kilowatt-hour as if it were a pound of hamburger or a shirt on a department store shelf; if it is on sale, buy now, and if not, wait.

By Matthew L. Wald - The New York Times | Washington, D.C. , April 30, 2009

IBM is joining a Danish project to optimize wind turbine energy for plug-in electric vehicles, the latest sign of the growing interest among policy-makers in smart-grid technologies. The EDISON research consortium will seek to match power generation from wind turbines on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, with the power consumption of charging plug-in electric cars. The long-term goal is to boost the percentage of plug-in electric cars to 10 percent in the country while maximizing the use of wind energy in Denmark, which already gets 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources like wind. The project is partly funded by the government of Denmark.

By Martin LaMonica - CNET News , February 25, 2009

Environmentalists dream of a bigger and “smarter” electric grid that could move vast amounts of clean electricity from windswept plains and sunny deserts to distant cities. Such a grid, they argue, could help utilities match demand with supply on the hottest afternoons, allow customers to decide when to run their appliances and decrease the risk of blackouts, like the one that paralyzed much of the East in 2003. The Obama administration has vowed to make the grid smarter and tougher, allocating $11 billion in grants and loan guarantees to the task in the economic stimulus package passed by the House last week.

By Matthew L. Wald | Washington, D.C. - The New York Times , February 06, 2009

Pepco Holdings Inc. hopes to pilot a smart grid concept in the region, installing new smart meters in thousands of homes in Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Tantallon in Fort Washington. Pepco has requested regulatory approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission for the pilot program, in which residents could find out in real-time how much they’re spending on electricity and the utility could learn about outages just as quickly. It’s one of the first steps in Pepco’s long-term plans to roll out a smart grid in Maryland and the District by 2013.

By Vandana Sinha - Washington Business Journal , February 12, 2009

Philadelphia-area residents have a rare opportunity to learn how to transform neighborhoods and live independently off-the-grid at a multi-media lecture, "Philly Earthship," 7:00pm, Monday, March 2, 2009 at Philadelphia's Pyramid Club. Earthship Biotecture is a global company offering proven, totally sustainable design and construction services by recycling by-products of our society into beautiful modern Single-Family residences, residential developments, commercial structures, demonstration and disaster relief projects without the use of fossil fuels.

MSNBC , February 06, 2009

Xcel Energy, the nation's No. 1 retail provider of wind power, leads the $100 million effort in this university city of 100,000 in the Rockies foothills. By 2010, homeowners will monitor how much power they're consuming. Plug-in electric vehicles will feed power into the grid. Energy-saving appliances and thermostats will feed information to the network. And all of it will enable Xcel to distribute electricity when and where it's needed, saving millions of dollars and the need to build more power plants. Other benefits: Lower carbon emissions, coordinating energy use with the availability of power sources such as wind and solar, and savings by avoiding power disruptions.

By Judith Kohler - The Associated Press | Boulder, Colorado , February 06, 2009