Intel Sees Future in Wind Power, Electric Cars

Now all we need are wind-powered cars.

Intel's known for providing some of the chipset and CPU technology in our computing rigs and notebooks, but the company also applies its technology to green efforts such as wind power and electric cars.

John Skinner, Intel's director of marketing for its Eco-Technology division said earlier this week that the chip company sees wind forecasting as one of the next big things – specifically in figuring out when the wind will blow and how fast.

"There's a lot of opportunities for sensor technology and high performance computing," he said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference, as reported by Reuters. "We are starting to explore it."

"We see numerical forecasting (in wind) as very interesting opportunity," he said, adding that "every extra bit of granularity and predictability" on wind power is very valuable.

Current wind turbines use 7-watt ultra low voltage Intel Celeron processors or the 10-watt Pentium M processor LV 738. Each turbine-mounted controller supports four 10/100Base-T Fast Ethernet ports, in addition to a wide range of DC power sources.

Electronic vehicles, by nature, require more silicon involvement than traditional cars. For that reason, Intel sees a chance to jump into the electric car market as well.

"Electric vehicles are going to contain a lot of electronics," he said. Intel believes it could play a role in energy management and range prediction. "It would be an extension of our business in telematics."