Electric vehicles gain momentum in Europe

Most major vehicle manufacturers now offer a range of electric models and prices on the forecourt are falling. The much anticipated electric-car ownership ‘breakthrough’ is ever so slowly gaining momentum...

Elektor and Toshiba challenge designers to create a new energy saving application for the demo-board of the Toshiba M370-controller. The contest is inspired by the EU target to improve energy efficiency with 20% by 2020. One measure is to stimulate energy saving strategies in the design stage of products. First prize is a 15” Toshiba multimedia notebook. Energy efficiency is part of the 2007 EU climate and energy goals, known as the 20-20-20 targets: reducing greenhouse emissions with 20% compa...

The European Commission announced this week it will take steps to free up radio frequencies for emerging technologies.With wireless data traffic exploding the demand on the already crowded radio spectrum will dramatically increase in the coming years. The EC sees low access barriers to the spectrum (PDF) as the breeding ground for wireless innovation but it fears overcrowding the finite resource may grind innovation to a hold. To address the problem the EC proposes to share radio spectrum. In...

Original article by Christian Lowe on Reuters Africa Europe will import its first solar-generated electricity from North Africa within the next five years, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in an interview on Sunday. The European Union is backing projects to turn the plentiful sunlight in the Sahara desert into electricity for power-hungry Europe, a scheme it hopes will help meet its target of deriving 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 2020. "I think some mo...

This Wednesday an interesting experiment for sustainable living will kick off in Groningen (a city in the north of Holland). In this experiment 12 domestic homes will be supplying their own power and will be fitted with so-called 'full scale smart grids'. The experiment is the first of its kind in Europe, will span 3 years and is largely funded by the EU. The homes generate their own electricity, store it, and even feed (sell) excess power back to the grid. The power is generated by means of co...

Electromagnetic compatibility, EMC, is the property of an electrical/ electronic apparatus to function satisfactorily without radiating unacceptable interference into its electromagnetic environment. At the same time, it should be immune to interference from other electronic/electrical apparatus.