POINTFOCUS
Cardboard Oven Called The Kyoto Wins $50,000 Contest To Find The World’s Greenest New Invention The cooker took the FT Climate Change Challenge crown after beating 300 other creations, including a food additive which stops cows passing wind. The Kyoto Box oven - which costs just $3.50 to make - can cook casseroles, boil water and bake bread. It is made from two boxes, one inside the other with an acrylic cover, which lets the sun’s power in and traps it. Black paint on the inner box and silver foil on the outer help concentrate the heat while a layer of straw or newspaper between the two provides insulation. It is the brainchild of Kenya-based entrepreneur Jon Bohmer. Jon Bohmer and his oven Mr Bohmer and his oven Mr Bohmer, a Norwegian, set up Kyoto Energy with his Kenyan wife Neema, and has used his own money to fund the project. The oven is targeted at the three billion people who use firewood to cook in developing countries. Mr Bohmer said: “We’re saving lives and saving trees. I doubt if there is any other technology that can make so much impact for so little money.” He plans to use the prize to conduct mass trials in 10 countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia and gather data to back an application for carbon credits. The box aims to save some of the millions of children who die each year from food cooked with unclean drinking water.
solar Powered LED light
Eco Gadgets: SunLight – A Scalable Source Of Solar-powered Illumination Eco Factor: Solar-powered LED light. We have seen solar powered lighting solutions previously, but none of them was as innovative as the SunLight concept designed by Hermann Eske. The SunLight is a solar-powered light in which the solar panels are hidden below the main body. So how do you charge it? Simply open the roll and expose the solar panels to direct sunlight. 
Parabolic Solar Collector at MIT
Parabolic solar collector @ MIT The folks @ MIT are warming up to the idea of parabolic solar collectors, recently demonstrating this 12-foot dish of massive heating power - — the completed mirror focuses enough solar energy at its focal point to melt solid steel. The energy of typical sunlight is concentrated by a factor of 1,000. This was showcased during a demonstration, in which a team member held up a board, which instantly and violently combusted, when brought within range of the focal point.
Solar Thermal Walls
4 Megawatts of Solar Thermal Walls Installed at Fort Drum The largest collection of solar air heated buildings in the world can now be found at the military base of Fort Drum, in upstate New York. 50 SolarWall systems (totaling over 110,000 ft2) have been installed on 27 military buildings and will collectively generate over 4MW of peak thermal energy. The project is extremely significant in terms of the sheer magnitude of energy and CO2 savings, and shows the tremendous potential for solar thermal when it is deployed on a large scale. By using the free energy of the sun – instead of burning fossil fuels for heating purposes - the base will displace over 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide each and every year at one of the coldest locations in the United States. The base is also projected to realize fuel savings of 44 billion BTU/h (46,000 GJ) per year. The SolarWall air heating system heats the ventilation air that is required in commercial and industrial buildings using a patented transpired solar collector developed by Conserval Engineering. Ventilation heating is typically one of the largest single energy requirements for these types of buildings, which is why solar air heating can generate such significant overall energy reductions.
Need to live in your Van?
Verdier Remix of VW Van has a Sun Tracker solar panel working day & night charging the battery for the Hybrid motor - On board computer, Home theater, freezer/refrigerator, and Internet Connection!!
Solar LED Bricks
Efficient Use Of Solar LED Bricks Meteor Solar LED pavers. Solar bricks are self-contained — during they day they charge via the sun, and turn on automatically at night.
Chinese Cargo Ships with Solar Sails
Solar at Sea: Chinese Cargo Ships Will Have Solar Sails The Australian company, Solar Sailor, has signed a deal with the largest Chinese shipping line COSCO to outfit their tankers with large solar-powered sails controlled by a computer that angles them for maximum wind and solar efficiency and the company claims that the sails will pay for themselves within four years. The sails are 30 meters long, covered with solar PV panels that will provide 5 percent of the ships’ electricity and will harness enough wind to reduce fuel costs by 20 to 40 percent. The shipping and air travel industries have been the hardest to conform to new energy efficiency demands. Planes and tankers require huge quantities of fuel, but our global economy depends on both of them to survive, so they’ve been difficult industries to regulate. Even the latest environmental standards set by the EU included gimmes for shipping and airline companies. It seems as though China is slowly but aggressively moving into a position of leadership in the transition to a global green economy.
Helios - Solar-powered Car
Helios - Solar-powered Car Serves As A Powerhouse When You Are Not Driving Solar-powered car concepts are on the rise; they promise more range, higher speed and better performance. This new concept by Kim Gu-Han of Universitt Duisburg-Essen, Germany, dubbed the Helios off-road car, adds another dimension to solar cars - the ability to power other electronics in your house when you are not driving it. 
Solar Tower, Large Scale Renewable Energy
SolarMission owns the license to breakthrough Solar Tower large-scale renewable energy technology with the potential to challenge the energy industry as it is operates today. The technology is based on the concept developed by renowned German structural engineer Professor Jorg Schlaich, founder and principal of leading structural engineers, Schlaich Bergermann and Partners. Solar Towers operate on the simple principle hot air rises; the movement of rising hot air is utilized to drive turbines to generate electricity. The concept uses solar radiation to heat air beneath a large translucent collector to create a constant flow of heated air to drive electricity-generating turbines. The turbines are located at the base of a very tall tower in the center of the collector, and the movement of the heated air through these turbines is increased by the updraft effect created by the tower. The solar tower can produce electrical generation in large-scale quantities and be a competitive alternative to coal and gas based electricity generation. Current development and design of the World’s first commercial Solar Tower in Australian will have the capacity to produce up to 200MW of electricity from a single unit. A power station of this size produces enough power for an estimated 200,000 households.
Solar icemaker
DVICE: Solar icemaker: get the sun to keep things cool for a change Just when you thought ice cube-creation technology had peaked, a team of engineering students from San Jose State University has come up an ice maker that has zero carbon footprint. It’s more than an eco-party trick — consider it an electricity-free alternative to refrigeration and air conditioning, which is critical if you happen to be somewhere off of the electrical grid, like in the developing world or in a disaster zone. It works like this: the solar icemaker uses a refrigerant liquid that evaporates when exposed to the sun. The vapor travels through pipes that come into contact an absorbent material, which cools when the sun goes down. Once the slow-cooling absorbent hits 104�F, the refrigerant turns back into a liquid and its temperature drops like a rock to below freezing because of pressure differences. Put some water next to the evaporator’s exterior and, presto, ice. A typical icemaker uses electricity to run a compressor to do this work, but the solar icemaker just uses solar energy, with no moving parts. And the systems are sealed, so barring a leak, they’ll never need replenishing. The icemaker makes about 14 pounds of ice per day — more than enough for the margaritas at your end-of-summer barbecue. The students’ prototype isn’t available yet, but maybe next summer….
New iJET Solar Cell is as Easy to Make as Pizza
New iJET Solar Cell is as Easy to Make as Pizza An Australian scientist has developed a new method of manufacturing solar cells using nothing more than some nail polish remover, a pizza oven and a standard inkjet printer. The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world. In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process. Firstly, she takes a standard silicon solar cell and sprays it with a substance similar to nail polish. Then, she inkjet prints something like nail polish remover onto the wafer in a set pattern in the same way that you’d print a normal photo. This enables the creation of high-resolution patterns on the cell at a very low cost. The cell is then metallized with an aluminum spray and baked at a very low temperature of around 550 fahrenheit in “something like a pizza oven.” Kuepper went on to explain how solar cells are currently manufactured using expensive “high-tech, high-cleanliness equipment,” too costly for many countries in the developing world, adding, “we’re trying to do away with all of that so that so we can ensure that these solar cells can actually be manufactured in a developing country’s environment that you might find in say Ghana or Laos for example.”
80% Efficient Solar Panel?! Works at Night?!
80% Efficient Solar Panel?! Works at Night?! | EcoGeek - Clean Technology The most expensive, carefully designed, and complicated solar panels in the world operate at about 40% efficiency. That means that, for every bit of sunlight that hits the panel, only 40% of it is turned into electricity. Scientists think that this is just about as good as silicon panels can do and are now looking at ways to make it cheaper, instead of making them more efficient. But suddenly, from nowhere, comes Steven Novack of the Idaho National Laboratories with an inexpensive, foldable solar panel that may turn out to be up to 80% efficient. The trick is nanotechnology. The surface of the material is printed with miniscule nano-antennae that capture infra-red radiation, the kind that the sun puts out in abundance, and is even available at night. Television antennas absorbe large wavelength energy, so in order to absorb ultra-small wavelength energy (photons) they had to create ultra-small antennas. The material is fairly simple to create, and scientists are confidient that it would scale easily out of the laboratory. But there is a bit of a hitch: There’s currently no way to capture the energy being created. So while there are electrons pouring out of the nano-antennas when exposed to the sun, there is no way to capture those electrons. But don’t worry, those geniuses in Idaho are working on that already. By putting a tiny capacitor, or AC/DC converter in the center of every tiny tiny antenna, they think they could make this new kind of solar panel export all that energy it’s created without raising the price, or lowering the efficiency too much.
New solar Power Plant opens
First Solar Thermal Plant in 20 Years Launches in CA : CleanTechnica By turning a long line of mirrors, the first solar thermal plant in nearly two decades was launched last week in Bakersfield, California. Unlike solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity, this plant will focus sunlight on tubes that contains water. The light heats the water, creating steam, thus turning turbines. At full capacity, Kimberlina will generate 5 megawatts of power, enough for 3,500 homes in Central California. Although this is a small amount of energy when compared to other utility scale power plants, this plant will serve as a gateway for a much larger solar plant. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Ausra, the manufacturer of the solar panels announced a purchase power agreement in November, 2007 for a 177 megawatt solar plant. Once completed, the Carrizo Plains solar plant in Central California will generate enough power for 120,000 homes. Solar technology is particularly well suited for the American Southwest where vast amounts of sunshine make this region rich with solar energy potential. Air conditioners are responsible for a large amount of the electric load and the highest electric demand corresponds with solar radiation. Ausra is well known for their claim that 100% of the US electric load (day and night) could be generated in an area that is 92 square miles by 92 miles. This is made possible by steam storage, thus allowing solar plants to operate after the sun has set.
Solar Thermal takes off
How Solar Thermal Power Works - Stirling Energy SunCatcher News - Popular Mechanics Planted in the New Mexico desert near Albuquerque, the six solar dish engines of the Solar Thermal Test Facility at Sandia National Laboratories look a bit like giant, highly reflective satellite dishes. Each one is a mosaic of 82 mirrors that fit together to form a 38-ft-wide parabola. The mirrors’ precise curvature focuses light onto a 7-in. area. At its most intense spot, the heat is equivalent to a blistering 13,000 suns, producing a flux 13 times greater than the space shuttle experiences during re-entry. “That’ll melt almost anything known to man,” says Sandia engineer Chuck Andraka. “It’s incredibly hot.” The heat is used to run a Stirling engine, an elegant 192-year-old technology that creates mechanical energy from an external heat source, as opposed to the internal fuel combustion that powers most automobile engines. Hydrogen gas in a Stirling engine’s four 95 cc cylinders expands and contracts as it is heated and cooled, driving pistons to turn a small electric generator. The configuration of the dish and engine represent the fruit of more than a decade of steady improvements, developed in collaboration with Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems.
New Solar Balloon Creates 400 Times More Energy Than The Average Solar Cell
New Solar Balloon Creates 400 Times More Energy Than The Average Solar Cell There are many new forms of alternative energy but maybe none as interesting as the Cool Earth Solar “Balloon.” The concept behind this design is that they create an “inflatable plastic thin-film balloon (solar concentrator) that, upon inflation, focuses sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell held at its focal point. The design produces 400 times the electricity that a solar cell would create without the company’s concentrator.” Cool Earth has already began construction on a power plant in Livermore, CA that will utilize this new technology. The plant is modest in size, creating only 1.4 Megawatts but if this plant works as well as they expect it to, they plan on launching a full sized plant next summer. One great thing about this device is that it’s made up of a very common and cheap material. “Plastic thin film is abundant and cheap,” said Cool Earth Solar CEO Rob Lamkin. “It only costs two dollars for the plastic material necessary for our solar concentrator.” It’s ideas like this that I think will stick. It’s cost efficient. It’s made of an easy to find material and it’s an environmentally sound concept.
New Solar Power Material Can Capture Every Color of the Rainbow
New Solar Power Material Can Capture Every Color of the Rainbow : CleanTechnica Scientists have created a new material that could dramatically increase the efficiency of solar cells, by literally capturing every color of the rainbow. Whereas other materials only catch a small range of light frequencies, and therefore only a small fraction of the potential energy, the new invention is capable of absorbing all the energy contained in sunlight. According to team leader, Prof. Malcolm Chisolm, “There are other such hybrids out there, but the advantage of our material is that we can cover the entire range of the solar spectrum.” The discovery, made by an elite team at Ohio State University, opens the door to the development of a new generation of hyper-efficient solar cells. Although at this point the material is said to be some years from commercial development, the university has enough confidence in its potential to commit a large slice of its $100 million ‘high impact’ research budget to the research team over the next five years. Such long-term investment lends a great deal of credibility to the project, and is likely to increase the chances of the invention moving from the laboratory towards commercial development.
Solar State of the Market Q3 2008
In 2013, the market for solar systems — consisting of modules, the balance of system components, and installations — will exceed $100 billion in annual revenue, reaching over 23 GW (GigaWatts). While volumes will grow by 48% annually, up from 4.9 GW in 2008, revenue will grow at a compound annual rate of 33% from $33 billion in 2008, as a few key trends emerge: * Modules will move into oversupply in 2009, driving down costs and challenging manufacturers to differentiate
* Concerns about building capacity will be eclipsed by concerns of maintaining margins
* Worries about polysilicon supply will abate, but a shortage of rare materials will clip the wings of promising thin-film technologies
* Innovations as diverse as upgraded metallurgical silicon and turnkey production equipment will help to drive down costs and enable solar to reach prices at grid
NREL Solar Cell Sets World Efficiency Record at 40.8 Percent
ElectricalEngineer.com - Online community for future and present Electrical Engineers Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date. The inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell was designed, fabricated and independently measured at NREL. The 40.8 percent efficiency was measured under concentrated light of 326 suns. One sun is about the amount of light that typically hits Earth on a sunny day. The new cell is a natural candidate for the space satellite market and for terrestrial concentrated photovoltaic arrays, which use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells. The new solar cell differs significantly from the previous record holder – also based on a NREL design. Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. This is accomplished by growing the solar cell on a gallium arsenide wafer, flipping it over, then removing the wafer. The resulting device is extremely thin and light and represents a new class of solar cells with advantages in performance, design, operation and cost.
Efficient, Cheap Solar Cells
Technology Review: Efficient, Cheap Solar Cells Suniva, a startup based in Atlanta, has made solar cells that convert about 20 percent of the energy in the sunlight that falls on them into electricity. That’s up from 17 percent for its previous solar cells and close to the efficiency of the best solar cells on the market. But unlike other high-efficiency silicon solar cells, says Ajeet Rohatgi, the company’s founder and chief technology officer, Suniva’s are made using low-cost methods. One such method is screen printing, a relatively cheap process much like the silk-screen process used to print T-shirts. So far, the high cost of solar cells has limited them to a marginal role in power production, accounting for less than 1 percent of electricity worldwide. Rohatgi calculates that the company’s low-cost manufacturing techniques will make solar power competitive with conventional sources, producing electricity for about 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour—the average cost of electricity in the United States and far less than prices in many markets. Suniva’s cells are efficient largely because they can trap light, keeping photons inside the active material of the solar cell until their energy can be used to free electrons and generate an electrical current. The basic concept of trapping light is not new. It relies on texturing the front surface of the layer of silicon that forms the active material of the solar cell. The texturing creates facets that redirect incoming light, refracting it so that, instead of passing directly through the silicon, it travels along the length of the silicon layer. The photons thus stay in the material longer and have a better chance of being absorbed by atoms in the material. When that happens, the energy in the photons can free electrons that are used to generate current. Light trapping can be enhanced by pairing the textured surface with a reflective layer at the back of the silicon layer. The mirror keeps the light in the solar cell still longer, further increasing the number of freed electrons. As a consequence, the silicon can be half its ordinary thickness while absorbing the same amount of light. Using less of an expensive material reduces costs directly. But it also allows solar-cell makers to make do with cheaper, less pure forms of silicon. In a conventional solar cell, which can have a silicon layer 200 micrometers thick, impurities within the material can easily trap electrons before they reach the surface and escape to generate a current. In a layer of silicon just 100 micrometers thick, however, the electrons have a shorter distance to travel, so they’re less likely to encounter an impurity before they escape. Lower-grade silicon is much cheaper and easier to make than the highly refined silicon ordinarily used in solar cells.
Amish going solar
Mainstreet : Lifestyle : Why the Amish are Hip to Solar The Amish conjure thoughts of horse-drawn buggies, hand-churned butter and hand-made wooden furniture. Technology certainly doesn’t spring to mind. The Amish people are known for their no-thrills approach to life, which includes the rejection of most modern-day conveniences. They use refrigerators, batteries and power generators, but hooking into the electric grid is a no-no because it would connect them to the outside world. But some members of an Amish community in northeastern Indiana hope to get electricity from solar and wind power, The News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne reported last week. Victor Wagler, a 63-year-old Amish man, is seeking permission from Allen County officials to build an 87-foot steel tower he plans to top with a wind turbine. The generator would be capable of producing about 538 kilowatts of electricity per month, according to The News-Sentinel. Along with a solar panel, Wagler plans to power his home and barn. So what makes solar and wind power acceptable? Why Solar Is Kosher According to an Amish interpretation of the Bible, members of the community should live with limited influences from the outside world. Around 1920, Amish leaders decided the linking of electrical wires into their community would bring temptations from the outside world into their community and destroy church and family life. But Amish leaders stopped short of condemning electricity itself as an evil. The connection to the grid was the problem, they said. The Amish probably aren’t the most obvious advocates of distributed renewable energy. But they are boosting business for installer Solar Energy Systems of Nappanee, Ind. The company’s owner told The News-Sentinel that the Amish make up 70 percent of his clientele. Pope Power Meanwhile, the Vatican is getting ready to install solar panels on the roof of the Paul VI building, a receiving hall that seats 12,000 people, according to an article by ZENIT, which covers the Pope and the Vatican. The panels, scheduled to be installed during the next two months, are coming from the German company SolarWorld. The firm gave 2,000 panels to help Pope Benedict XVI celebrate Three Kings Day, which marks the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus. The panels are expected to generate about 315.5 megawatts of electricity annually. The Pope has been vocal in his opposition to global warming, and in March included destroying the environment on a list of “new sins” (see Green: The New Religion?). He is not the first religious leader to give solar power his blessing. The Dalai Lama, for one, already has solar power at his private living quarters at the Gaden Jangtse monastery in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, according to the Solar Electric Light Fund, a nonprofit that supports solar power in developing countries.
Solar Beads Could Cut Costs By 50%
Solar Beads Could Cut Costs By 50% Here’s another solar innovation that could reduce cost of solar energy by as much as 50%. A company in Japan has developed a novel way of making solar cells with arrays of thousands of tiny silicon spheres surrounded by hexagonal reflectors. The key advantage of the system is that it reduces the total amount of silicon required, says Mikio Murozono, president of Clean Venture 21, based in Kyoto, Japan. “We use one-fifth of the raw silicon material compared with traditional PV cells,” he says.
20 Solar Chargers To Green Your Gear
Eco Delight: 20 Solar Chargers To Green Your Gear - Ecofriend
How One Young Couple Raised Money for Their Renewable Energy System
Using a Wedding Gift Registry to Go Solar - thedailygreen.com It wasn’t the variable of available sunshine in their suburban Chicago neighborhood that inhibited Sarah and Kiril Lozanov from going solar. Rather, it was the challenge of cost – and of earning homeowner’s association approval for the new construction solar would warrant on their condominium rooftop. After reading of the Losanov’s plans, the majority of their 75 wedding guests enthusiastically contributed to their solar fund. Sarah and Kiril identified government incentives to cover the balance of their project. A State of Illinois solar rebate check defrayed 30% of the system cost and a federal tax credit yielded $2,000. The two incentives offset the solar system cost by about 50 percent. Just how was a couple in their early thirties going to afford a solar system to power their 800 sq. ft. condominium? The idea came to them when they sat down to plan the gift registry for their September 2007 wedding. “As we curled up to create our gift registry, we talked about the kind of life we wished to lead,” recalled Sarah Lozanova, (sic) a renewable energy specialist at Solar Service Inc. in Illinois. “We thought about the clean, healthy world we value, and concluded that the only thing really wanted was a solar system,” she said. Instead of being intimidated by the price tag of the $12,300 system they calculated they would need, the Lozanovs embarked upon an energetic campaign to educate family and friends about the benefits of going solar – and how a contribution to the 1.7-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system they wanted to install on their condominium rooftop would empower them to create the sustainable lifestyle they yearned to live.
Brilliant Noise
Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Solar Revolution
‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution - MIT News Office In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine. Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night. The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced. Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis. The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, Nocera said. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.
Alaska Police Pull Over Solar Powered Car, Think It’s a UFO
Alaska Police Pull Over Solar Powered Car, Think It’s a UFO : Gas 2.0 Alaskan police have pulled over a solar-powered car, which they mistakenly identified as a UFO. For almost two years, Canadian Marcelo da Luz has been driving his solar-powered car, the Power of 1 (Xof1 for short) across North America in an attempt to set a world distance record for a solar vehicle. When he reached Alaska earlier this week, the admittedly off-the-wall looking car was spotted by a concerned citizen, who dialled 911 to report a UFO sighting. Alaskan police quickly took off in hot pursuit, and pulled poor Marcelo over for interrogation. Luckily for the bemused Canadian solar pioneer, the police decided not to take the matter any further although, amazingly, this is the seventh time that saucer-shaped vehicle has been pulled over during its odyssey across Canada.
Solar Updraft Towers to Generate Food and Energy
Solar Updraft Towers to Generate Food and Energy A new breed of solar tower may soon be sprouting up in Namibia, providing the nation with a carbon-free source of electricity and food during the day and night. At one and a half kilometers tall and 280 meters wide, these massive solar updraft towers could potentially produce 400MW of energy each - enough to power Windhoek, the nation’s capital. Proposed by intellectual property company Hahn & Hahn, the towers generate energy by forcing heated air through a shaft lined with wind turbines. Additionally, the base of each tower will function as a 37 square km greenhouse where crops can be grown. Solar updraft towers are an oft-overlooked source of alternative energy, although they do require a great expanse of space and copious amounts of sunlight. Theo von Backstrom from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University states: “One of the main reasons why commercial solar chimney power plants have not been built that they have to be very large to be economically viable”. Fortunately Namibia’s arid desert region provides plenty of space for such a generator, and the country sees around 300 days of sunshine per year. Solar updraft towers generate energy by using sunlight to heat the air within a vast transparent greenhouse situated at the base of the chimney. As the hot air rises, it is funneled into the reinforced concrete chimney, driving a series of wind turbines which in turn generate energy.
USB Solar Tree that charges your gadgets
USB Solar Tree That Charges Your Gadgets - Cell Phone Beat The power of the sun is phenomenal, so much so that our very existence depends upon it. Plants and trees trap the solar energy to recharge their cells…meaning create food for sustenance. Similarly this unique PhotonSynthesis Tree by Vivien Muller traps the sun’s energy to recharge your gadgets via USB. This is beautiful example of replicating nature’s theory in practical life that not only is eco-friendly but also sensible. Keeping up with the decorative theme of this hub, all the wires are plugged and concealed under the electronic bonsai tray. Fifty-four tiny photovoltaic panels juice up the device and modules are all fitted together via 3.5 jack connectors.
Power from light, information through light
Lightfleet Corporation Develops Optical Interconnect Lightfleet has invented and developed a new way of letting computers talk to each other using broadcast light to eliminate the wires. This invention, called CorowaveTM technology, makes systems smaller, use less power, do more work, and communicate with less congestion. Direct cabling or using a switch both present challenges When you fill a data center with computers, they all need to talk with each other. The electrical power consumed by the technology used to connect these computers is quite high and the accompanying cooling requirements are also very high. Some switch installations are using up to 24,000 watts per hour for a 32-computer switch. This often can be 50% of the electricity being consumed by the computers the switches are supporting. Focusing on lowering the amount of electricity being sapped by switches can have a significant payoff.
Home brew solar concentrator!
Making a small solar concentrator
Home Brew Solar Power
How I built an electricity producing Solar Panel “Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. I found a great piece of property. The problem is, it’s so remote that there is no electric service available. That’s not really a problem. No electricity equals no light pollution. However, it would be nice to have at least a little electricity, since so much of life in the 21st century is dependant on it. I built a wind turbine to provide some power on the remote property. It works great, when the wind blows. However, I wanted more power, and more dependable power. The wind seems to blow all the time on my property, except when I really need it too. I do get well over 300 sunny days a year on the property though, so solar power seems like the obvious choice to supplement the wind turbine. Solar panels are very expensive though. So I decided to try my hand at building my own. I used common tools and inexpensive and easy to acquire materials to produce a solar panel that rivals commercial panels in power production, but completely blows them away in price. Read on for step by step instructions on how I did it. “
Harnessing sunlight on the cheap
Harnessing sunlight on the cheap A team of students, led by mechanical engineering graduate student Spencer Ahrens, has spent the last few months assembling a prototype for a concentrating solar power system they think could revolutionize the field. It’s a 12-foot-square mirrored dish capable of concentrating sunlight by a factor of 1,000, built from simple, inexpensive industrial materials selected for price, durability and ease of assembly rather than for optimum performance. Rather than aiming for a smooth parabolic surface that would bring the sunlight to a perfect focus, the dish is being made with 10-inch-wide by 12-foot-long strips of relatively low-cost, lightweight bathroom-type mirror glass. The frame is assembled from cheap aluminum tubing, with holes drilled in precise locations using a simple jig for alignment, so that the struts can be assembled into a framework that passively snaps into just the right parabolic curvature. The control mechanism, which allows the dish to track the sun automatically across the sky, is also remarkably simple—photocells mounted on each side of the dish with opaque baffles, which cast a shadow on the cell when it drifts out of alignment, connect to a simple circuit that turns on small electric motors to push the dish back into the right position.
SUNRGI Develops XCPV System That Produces Solar Power As Cheap As Fossil Fuels
SUNRGI Develops XCPV System That Produces Solar Power As Cheap As Fossil Fuels SUNRGI is a company which designs and develops solar energy systems, and they presented their latest project at National Energy Marketers Association’s 11th Annual Global Energy Forum in Washington, DC. They created a technology what could produce electricity from solar power as cheap as coal. The technology is based on XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics) which amplifies by 1,600 the energy coming from the Sun. This energy is concentrated on very efficient solar cells which will produce the electricity at a cost of 5 cents per kWh. Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Association, was very excited by this technology and he stated that “Solar Power at 5 cents per kWh would be a world-changing breakthrough. It would make solar generation of electricity as affordable as generation from coal, natural gas or other non-renewable sources, without requiring a subsidy”.
Photosynthetic dimmer switch
Berkeley researchers identify photosynthetic dimmer switch In a study of the molecular mechanisms by which plants protect themselves from oxidation damage should they absorb too much sunlight during photosynthesis, a team of researchers has discovered a molecular “dimmer switch” that helps control the flow of solar energy moving through the system of light harvesting proteins. This discovery holds important implications for the future design of artificial photosynthesis systems that could provide the world with a sustainable and secure source of energy. The pigment-binding protein CP29, one of the “minor” light-harvesting proteins in green plants, has been identified as a valve that permits or blocks the critical release of excess solar energy during photosynthesis. Furthermore, it has been proposed that the opening and closing of this valve can be controlled by raising or lowering ambient pH levels.
Nanobot Solar Cells
Molecular Nanobots are the world’s smallest robots In Japan photo-reactive nanocrystals are being developed for more efficient solar cell production. Rice University is developing methods that use the reactivity of nanoparticles to clean contaminants, especially biological contaminants from water. In agriculture, nano-sensors will be sprinkled on crops or soil to monitor temperature, water, salinity, nitrogen and disease. Robert Freitas is developing an artificial red blood cell able to deliver 236 times more oxygen to tissues than natural red blood cells. Freitas predicts his device will be used to treat anaemia and lung disorders, but also will enhance human performance in sport and warfare. Researchers at the Florida University have created a nanocapsule gel to deliver drugs into the eyes through soft contact lenses. The importance of nanotechnology to the future of mankind cannot be overstated. Nanotech’s promise is clean industries, cures for disease, nearly unlimited energy supplies, a continuance of Moore’s Law, the end of hunger, and the elmination of aging. Welcome to Molecular Nanobots.
1,000 Acres of Giant Solar Mirrors to Rise in Israel’s Desert, Finally
1,000 Acres of Giant Solar Mirrors to Rise in Israel’s Desert, Finally After seven years of dead-end negotiations, Israel will soon turn 1,000 acres in the Negev Desert into giant solar thermal stations. The $700 million enterprise will comprise two plants to supply 250 megawatts of power in total, equal to 2.5 percent of the nation’s electricity needs. And it’s slated for solar stardom. When the plants come online in 2011, the project will be one of the biggest concentrating solar power (CSP) operations in the world. It will be a lucrative deal for the chosen builder, and an international bidding frenzy over who gets the contract could be just around the corner.
Floating solar concentrator with stirling generator
Dr. Sergey Vasylyev and Inventor Dr. Viktor Vasylyev
This paper discusses and theoretically studies an innovative type of high-temperature solar concentrators, the so-called ring-array concentrators (RAC). The expected optical performance of RAC exceeding that of dish-parabolic mirrors and simultaneously improving the operation performances and manufacture allowance prompt for considering the design as an ultimate improvement of reflective solar optics.
