When you consider that Google.co.uk and Google.com had a massive 90.56% share of the UK search market in May of this year and that this figure was only marginally lower in the months leading up to this representative period, then it would be fair to say that on the basis of the search words we enter into our search engine Google knows quite a lot about us.

But how much do we know about Google? Which facts do you find most interesting and which most intriguing?

That Google has the largest network of translators in the world, for example. Or the fact that Google was initially against the idea of having the name of its company introduced into the English language as a verb as they thought that this could significantly affect the value of Google as a brand name? That 99% of Google’s annual revenue is obtained from Adwords and that revenue sky rocketed from $19m in 2000 to $26bn in 2009? (bad news for AltaVista who turned down an offer to snap up the PageRank technology which Larry Page and Sergey Brin used to set up Google for a paltry $1m). Or that the employees at Google are entitled to three free meals a day and that on one day in the week they are allowed to – no, urged to – work on projects of their own to encourage new ideas, promote creativity and create an atmosphere which the workforce feels happy in?

And what about the servers and computers that form the hub of the organisation? How much power do the combined computer centres at Google consume? The answer is 260 million watts per year (Of course if you don’t believe me, you could always google it). Which is how much about 200,000 households – or the equivalent of a small city – require over the same period.

That sounds like a lot. And it is. But Google is nonetheless a global giant that cares about the effect it has on the environment and the gargantuan amount of power it consumes. Google has already implemented countless programs and initiatives to reduce both energy consumption and the company’s carbon footprint. The servers are extremely energy efficient and consume about half as much electricity than normal data centres. In addition, Google has been a carbon-neutral company since 2007.

Ok, so because of the company’s sheer size, Google is making a massive contribution to help save the environment and, at the risk of sounding too dramatic, ultimately our planet. But what difference can a change in our own individual behavioural patterns make?

More than you think. You only have to multiply your contribution – however small or insignificant it may at first seem – by one thousand, one million or even one billion to realise what difference each of us could make. And just so as to keep everything in perspective, Google, the company which according to the Forbes list is ranked at 17 in the world with regard to market value and at 45 with regard to profit, lets goats crop the grass around the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company could afford a whole fleet of lawnmowers, but that is not what setting an example is about. No idea – or contribution – is too wayward as not to be thought over (see the Google Green Site to find out more about the company’s innovative, forward-thinking ideas and solutions).

So what does all this tell us? That environmentalism, is not just a word, it is a conviction. And that everybody and anybody has a responsibility towards the planet.

So do your bit now and see where you can save energy and at the same time save money by cutting the energy consumption in your home, office or workplace and unearthing those greedy little energy gobblers which squander your precious power, hike up your electricity bill and collectively have a such an enormous negative impact on the environment.

The BX11 energy cost meter from Trotec can show you exactly how much each of your electrical appliances is consuming and how big a saving you could make if you were to use your energy more wisely and think twice about switching off a set in stand-by or switching to a more modern appliance which you have already put off buying far for too long anyway.

Trotec. Because green is not just a colour. It’s a way of thinking.

On our German Facebook page, we just ran a little competition in which we asked our fans to post their best tips for saving energy. In the course of this contest, they shared a lot of useful advice and proved that there are quite some things you can do to save not only precious energy from being wasted, but also a nice amount of money from being spent in vain. A lot of useful, amusing and surprising tips were collected, but then a little dispute emerged between two of our fans. The point of issue was:

Is it energy-efficient to boil the water for pasta in an electric kettle before proceeding to cook the noodles on the stove?

The question is whether this really saves energy (because an electric boiler is not only faster, but also needs less energy) or maybe even consumes more (because two single appliances must be heated). Since we were the ones who had raised the question in the first place, we thought it is kind of our responsibility to clear up this confusion. Or maybe we were only looking for a good excuse to meet up with some colleagues for a little reunion outside the office… and after all, we at Trotec have the means to find the solution to this dilemma. That is, we have the right equipment: The BX 11 is a handy little device that allows you to measure the energy consumed by any electrical device you decide to plug in – and even gives you the exact amount of money spent.

So we arranged to meet for a collective pasta-cooking (and not to forget: eating) with the whole social media team here at Trotec. The set-up for our experiment was as follows:

1 Electric kettle, 1 hotplate, 1 BX11 Energy cost meter, 3 l of cold water and – of course – a lot of spaghetti and pesto.

In the first step, we boiled the water on the hotplate and then cooked the spaghetti for 8 minutes – al dente as any Italian mamma would recommend. This took us as much as 38 minutes and therefore was a hard test on our patience – after all it had been a long day and we were all hungry. Our calculations revealed that, assuming an electricity rate of 20 cents per KW/h, cooking our pasta the traditional way cost 18 cents.

In the second course we did the same thing, but this time boiled the water in the electric kettle before cooking the spaghetti on the stove. The same amount of water, the same cooking time but quite different results: This method was not only much faster (only 22 minutes altogether), it also consumed considerably less energy. 13 cents, to be precise, which is 5 cents less than in the first case.

So, what does this little experiment tell us? Well, at least in my case it saves quite some time and money to use an electric kettle when cooking pasta. To what extent you can apply these results to a normal stove or even a gas-powered stove really goes beyond my grasps of physics, but I think the tendency is clear: The kettle is our indisputable winner in terms of energy-efficiency!

… If you have any further wishes or suggestions for us to test for you – let us know! Our English Facebook page is the ideal place for you to share your thoughts. And who knows? Maybe the idea for our next experiment will be yours …

Electricity from the sea is no longer a vision: the future has already begun off the coast of the Orkney Isles in the North of Scotland where the world’s largest wave test facility has been installed near the small port of Stromness, a site which was not picked for its rugged views and primeval landscapes but because it has the highest wave energy potentials in Europe, if not the world.

Huge hopes have been placed in the eco-friendly plant dubbed “Oyster” which transforms the energy produced by the waves into electricity. This incredible feat is achieved by means of flap gates anchored to the seabed which pump seawater from 10m long yellow pipes floating half a kilometre off the coast in the Atlantic through a turbine installed on land to the rhythm of the waves.

Now that the first contracts allowing sea areas to be used to generate electricity have been awarded, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, already predicts that Scotland will one day be “the Saudi Arabia of marine energy”. In fact of the ten licences that were issued worldwide, nine were specifically for areas off the Orkney Isles.

The project is an extremely ambitious one: one of the intermittent targets that has been set is to provide 350,00 households with electricity derived from this power source by the year 2020. So just how realistic are these plans? Neil Kermode, managing director of the European Marine Energy Centre Ltd, the company providing the marine-based energy technology, has his doubts. He believes that these are still early days compared to other renewable energy alternatives like wind farming. He puts this partly down to underfunding, pointing out that it is not only seawater but also money that needs to be pumped into the project for it to succeed on such a scale.

So until the necessary steps have been taken to ensure that this revolutionary new form of inexhaustible and therefore hopefully more affordable energy is made available to people not only in the outer corners of Scotland, but also all over the world, we, the consumer, will have to continue to cut back on the amount of electricity we are using to keep our electricity bills in check. What a better a way to do this than with the BX11 energy meter, the easy-to-use, plug-in-and-monitor energy-saving device that can knock £100s of pounds off your energy bill by unearthing the greedy little appliances around your home that gobble up electricity even when they are in stand-by so that you can do something about changing your own little cosmos.

Buy a BX 11 energy meter today and make a statement that will also make a difference on your bank statement.

Nowadays a chimney sweep is often considered a symbol of luck: in parts of Great Britain they are extremely popular at weddings where they are thought to bring the bride luck. And in Germany small pipe cleaner chimney sweeps in pretty little plant pots are often given as a gift on New Year’s Day.

But not everybody can count themselves quite so lucky: the “Gebührenverordnung für Schornsteinfeger”, the new act regulating the fees which chimney sweeps can charge for their services, has resulted in a price increase of up to 60% for a third of all households in Germany. And although according to the media portal “Der Westen”, the changes, which have been in place since January 2010, will not affect the other two thirds of all families, this will come as small consolation to those who will have to dig considerably deeper into their pockets when the chimney sweep comes knocking at their door.

For those affected the new legislation will prove to be a bitter pill to swallow. These additional costs come on top of the costs which members of health funds are already having to pay for an ailing health care system, and with an imminent rise in VAT looming on the horizon some families will be looking for other ways to cut their household budgets and save money on other essentials.

For example electricity. But here’s where we can help. You can literally knock £100s off your electricity bill by switching off certain appliances like set-top boxes, hi-fi systems and DVD recorders at night instead of just switching them to stand-by, and also by identifying – and eliminating – the true electricity gobblers in your home.

An energy meter from Trotec will provide you with just the information you need to unearth these nasty little culprits. Information including the exact amount of energy each of your appliances is consuming and just how much that relates to in hard currency.

And with a bit of luck you will end up saving more than you had hoped for.

Heat small rooms with a compact electric heating unit and keep an eye on the power consumption of appliances in your household.

See the BX10 energy cost meter at a glance …

Have a look at the compact TDS 20 electric heater …

This offer is valid only on December 22nd.

Even on December 7th there’s much more to get:

Benefit from a wide range of possible applications due to a high-performance humidifier of the latest generation and two very reliable measuring devices for the use in the home.

You may never get the chance again to snatch such a great special offer. Don’t hesitate and order your B400 large-scale humidifier package with free accessories now!

Save money today and buy online now: B400 humidifier plus free accessories

This offer is valid only on December 7th.

But let’s have a look at our favoured dehumidifier first:
The TTK 100 S is one of the most powerful appliances in its class. The device got a maximum dehumidification performance of approx. 40 litres in 24h, an air flow rate of 190 m³/h and a maximum power input of 0.65 kW. The dehumidifier TTK 100 S is equipped with an adjustable hygrostat, an overload protection as well as with an automatic hot gas defrosting mode. Although having much power the device is far from being an electricity gobbler.

Just look and see – with the energy cost meter EKM 3650 !

Reveal appliances in your household consuming too much electricity. Have a look on how much power a device in standby mode needs. Simply read the measured data on a display without having to calculate any costs. The EKM 3650 is a fully automatic energy cost meter which is easy to use and very effective. This smart tool is also approved by a certificate of a global leader in independent testing and assessment services, called “TÜV”.

If you need further information you may have a look at our website…

…to see more benefits of the TTK 100 S dehumidifier.

…to see the technical data of the energy cost meter EKM 3650.

Click here to buy your savings package of an EKM 3650 and a TTK 100 S