Balloon Shaped Solar Collector

Balloon Is Solar Collector: Solar Technology to Power the Planet

Cool Earth Solar has developed a breakthrough solar technology that can ultimately produce enough clean energy to address the global energy crisis. This technology dramatically reduces the cost and time to develop power plants capable of generating massive amounts of clean, inexpensive energy. They’ve designed a breakthrough solar technology based on a two-pronged design philosophy:

* Use a minimum amount of materials

* Use materials that are inexpensive and abundant

CoolEarth has created an innovative way to harness the sun's energy. Instead of large expensive solar panels or costly concentrating mirrors, the company is using balloons made of metalized plastic films. Half of the balloon is transparent, letting the light in to be concentrated into a small high-efficiency solar panel by the concave interior. Each is 2 meters across and, depending on the source, estimates vary from 500 watt to 1 kilowatt. They are supported by cables, leaving the ground below clear and limiting environmental impact.

Read more at: http://www.coolearthsolar.com/technology

Charge your cell phone by plugging in your jeans: Fabric Batteries

Fabric Batteries for Clothes that Can Conduct Electricity

Breakthrough:
A carbon-nanotube dye that can turn fabrics into batteries to make clothes that conduct electricity. All you have to do is dip a piece of fabric in a solution infused with tiny tubes of carbon, and it turns into a battery. Simply coating a piece of cotton or polyester with the formulation transforms it into a high performance energy storage device that is a boost to the emerging field of wearable electronics.

The approach was first demonstrated by Stanford University in 2009 on plain copying paper, but now it has been applied to textiles for the first time. “Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials... which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technologies," the authors wrote in the journal Nano Letters. The research could pave the way to unobtrusive wearable electronics for use in health monitoring systems, the fashion and gaming industries, and for any application that requires computers.

A team led by Prof Yi Ciu incorporated single-walled carbon nanotubes - cylinders of carbon about a billionth of a meter across – into the textiles by a simple dying process. The dye is made by dispersing carbon nanotubes in water and using sodium dodecylbenzenesulphonate as a surfactant. The material is dipped into the mixture and then dried in an oven at 120 degrees Celsius for ten minutes to remove water.

The conductivity of the material is increased by simple mechanical pressing and boosted still further by increases in the number of dipping and drying steps. The fabric maintains its properties when stretched and pulled and there is no decrease in conductivity - even when it is rinsed in water. Cotton proved to be up to 3 times better for energy storage than man-made fibers as its porous nature allowed for better ion transport.

Experts believe the technology could be commercialized in a short space of time, and that its uses will not be limited to just energy storage devices. According to Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley it has the potential to be a low-cost flexible electrode for any electrical device.The Stanford researchers say the next stages of their research are to use the approach with materials that can store more energy, and then demonstrate how to integrate the textile energy storage devices into clothes.

Read more at: http://www.tcetoday.com/tcetoday/newsdetail.aspx?nid=12465

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

Pavement slabs work to capture energy

Pavegen Slabs Collect Kinetic Energy

If the energy people expend dancing and working out can power cellphones, lights and other electrical appliances, why not apply the same concept to all the energy spent by millions of people every day simply walking along city sidewalks? That's exactly the premise behind Pavegen slabs, which can be inserted among regular sidewalk sections to capture the kinetic energy people spend just walking.

Each rubber slab from UK-based Pavegen Systems gets depressed by about 5 mm each time it gets stepped on. Using just that small movement, it can convert the kinetic energy used into electricity, which is then stored in the slab. Specifically, 5 percent of the energy harvested is used to make the slab's LED glow, making it clear to users that their energy has been captured. The rest can be used to power pedestrian lighting, information displays and many other applications. Pavegen's patent-protected technology has also been used to harvest energy from users' footsteps on stairs.

Check out their website: http://www.pavegensystems.com/index.php

IBM Reveals Five Innovations that Will Change Cities in the Next Five Years

IBM unveiled a list of innovations that have the potential to change how people live, work and play in cities around the globe over the next five to ten years:

· Cities will have healthier immune systems

· City buildings will sense and respond like living organisms

· Cars and city buses will run on empty

· Smarter systems will quench cities’ thirst for water and save energy

· Cities will respond to a crisis -- even before receiving an emergency phone call

An estimated 60 million people are moving to cities and urban areas each year - more than one million every week. The fourth-annual “IBM Next 5 in 5” focuses on cities because the world is experiencing unprecedented urbanization. Last year, our planet reached an important milestone - for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population resided in cities.

IBM’s Next 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends expected to transform cities, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s labs around the world that have the potential to turn these predictions into reality.

Cities must simultaneously address increasing populations and deteriorating infrastructure. IBM is already working with cities around the world to make them smarter so they can sustain growth.

Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m7ticc7jnE

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news180296667.html

Visit: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ideasfromibm/us/smartplanet/cities/index.shtml

EnergyHub Dashboard

The Smart Thermostat
A couple of years ago, Seth Frader-Thompson was driving a Prius. Priuses have little screens on the dashboard that tell you what gas mileage you're getting, in real time, as you drive. It crossed Frader-Thompson's mind that houses should have something similar. So he built the EnergyHub Dashboard, a little device, with a screen, that can talk wirelessly to your furnace and your various appliances and let you know exactly how much electricity (or gas) each one is using and how much it's costing you. It can also turn appliances on and off and raise or lower the temperature in your house so you can rein in the real power hogs. EnergyHub is currently partnering with utilities for trials and will be available direct to consumers in early 2010.

Read more: http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/19/smart-home-startup-energyhub-to-sell-its-gear-mid-2009/

Salt and Paper Battery May One Day Replace Lithium Batteries

Salt and Paper Battery May One Day Replace Lithium Batteries
A new thin-film battery has electrodes made of polymer-coated paper and an electrolyte made of salt-soaked paper. A laboratory prototype shows the cell pressed between glass slides and packaged in an aluminum pouch.
Salt and paper battery can be used in many low-power devices, such as medical implants, RFID tags, wireless sensors and smart cards. This battery uses a thin-film which makes it an attractive feature for many portable devices that draws a low current.

At Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers have developed a flexible battery made of two inexpensive materials: cellulose and salt. The cellulose is derived from a polluting algae found in seas and lakes. The algae's walls contain cellulose that has a different nanostructure, which gives it 100 times the surface area.

The battery is made by coating the paper, made from this cellulose, with a conducting polymer and inserting a salt-solution-soaked filter paper between the paper electrodes. Chlorine ions travel from the batteries positive terminal to the negative terminal while current is produced in the external circuit by the flow of electrons. The battery can be recharged in tens of seconds because the ions flow through the thin electrode quickly. In comparison to a lithium battery that would take 20 minutes to recharge.

The salt and paper battery is still in the early stages of development as compared to other thin-film technologies. For a battery to be cost effective you need to able to obtain the material at relatively low cost and have a good manufacture process in place. The battery could be produced commercially in about three years and made available to distributors.

Read more at: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23472/?a=f

Solar IVY

Solar Ivy: Introducing GROW: a new approach to solar and wind power
GROW is a hybrid energy delivery device that provides power via the sun and wind, and draws inspiration from ivy growing on a building.

Solar Ivy utilizes a structural stainless steel mesh system, which is manufactured by Carl Stahl Decorcable in Germany. Their system is designed to enable plants (such as ivy and other crawlers) to grow up the sides of buildings without causing damage to the building's exteriors, a typical problem of many vertical gardens.

These leaves are made of 100% recyclable polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities. The solar cells are thin film flexible photovoltaic modules encapsulated in Tefzel, and are manufactured by PowerFilm Solar. Solar Ivy is a flexible system that can adapt to most building types, sizes, orientations and latitudes. GROW have the ability to provide varying degrees of opacity to modulate heat gain, light transmission and view. Because of the modular design, future iterations of Solar Ivy will be able to include more efficient and less expensive PV modules once those products are both available and cost effective. This modularity also makes Solar Ivy easy to support and update: if one leaf should fail, it can be replaced very easily.

Mini gas-fired power plants in people's basements

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany
A technician of German automaker Volkswagen's adjusts a mini gas-fired power plant at the VW plant in the northern German city of Salzgitter. An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people's bas
The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid. The two firms said the concept of "SchwarmStrom" (literally, "swarm power") would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar power.

The plants also reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent compared to conventional heat and electricity generation, they added in a joint statement. In the coming year the programme will install 100,000 of the mini plants, producing between them 2,000 megawatts of electricity, the same as two nuclear plants, Lichtblick and VW said.

"SchwarmStrom is revolutionising power production in Germany. It clears the way for more renewable energy and an exit from power from nuclear and coal," the statement added. "The home power plants together form a huge, invisible power station that doesn't make the countryside ugly or require additional infrastructure." The project "is thoroughly feasible if the project reaches the forecast size," Claudia Kemfert of the DIW research institute told AFP. She added by way of comparison that "just getting rid of incandescent light bulbs would be the same as shutting down one nuclear reactor."

Gas plants have an advantage over nuclear power stations in that the heat produced by the latter is wasted, the DIW energy expert said. But "the most ecological would be to feed these mini-plants with biogas" rather than natural gas, Kemfert noted.

Lichtblick said another advantage of its plan was that tens of thousands of generators could be mobilised to meet a surge in demand or if drought made it hard to cool nuclear plants or a calm spell idled wind turbines. VW will contribute to the project by providing a gas-powered engine similar to one used in its popular Golf model.

But LBBW auto analyst Stefan Sigrist told AFP: "This is mainly a marketing offensive. It is chic for VW to bask in a greener light." Although the generators are not a new concept, the project is novel in that Lichtblick would retain control over the plants after their installation. Households would pay around 5,000 euros (7,250 dollars) to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system.

But individuals would then pay a lower price for heating and receive a modest "rent" for hosting the generator, as well as a bonus at the end of the year calculated on electricity revenues that resulted from Lichtblick's sales.

Emergency light works on telephone line

Telephonic Emergency Light
This is a unique light which does not require any power supply or does not need any charging. It works on your normal landline telephone connection. Just keep this light plugged in to you phone line. Whenever there is a power failure, just press the ON button. The light will instantly light up giving you enough light in your room or office.

• This is a powerless Emergency Light which draws power from telephone line.
• ZERO COST Operation: No electricity bill, No batteries, No fuel, simply plug in your phone line and enjoy unlimited lighting. ( No phone bill also)
• 21 Super bright white LED lights which does not need replacement as their life is 1,00,000 hours.
• Indoor & Outdoor use: For outdoor use, there is an optional power source wherein you can insert 3AAA size batteries and use it without the phone line also.
• City Usage: In cities, where are no frequent power cuts, people usually does not charge emergency lights and keep daily. They also do not have fully charged torches or lamps. But if suddenly power goes off, this light can be very useful as phone lines still works.
• Village Usage: In towns where there are frequent power cuts, this light can be used on zero cost operation.
• Slim design can be mounted on wall or can be kept on table.
• Can be easily carried while traveling.

Check the link: http://www.shoponlineindia.net/pages/tlamp/

Harnessing the Energy Beneath Your Tires

Introducing MotionPower™: Harnessing the Energy Beneath Your Tires
One New Jersey Burger King recently equipped its drive-thru with a speed bump that harvests electricity from cars that pass by. The speed bump is part of a pilot project from New Energy Technologies, and if all goes well, drivers could see energy-harvesting speed bumps at drive-thrus, toll plazas and even shopping centres.

The speed bumps, or “MotionPower Energy Harvesters,” look much different from your typical concrete humps. The “bump” is actually flat, with long, skinny pedals running across the top. As cars drive over the speed bump, it pushes the pedals down and turns the gears inside. The spinning creates about 2,000 watts of electricity from a car moving at five miles per hour.

Energy created by the cars is instantaneous (like solar and wind power), meaning that speed bump developers must also figure out a way to store power for later use. To that end, developers at New Energy Technologies are currently experimenting with mini-flywheels (a device that stores energy by spinning), and also plan to look into supercapacitors and other energy-storing mechanisms. Eventually, once storage is perfected, the speed bumps could be used to power street lamps or even feed power directly to the grid.

New Energy Technologies Inc.
is the first public company to develop roadway technology to capture the kinetic energy of vehicles.

Advantages:
• Cost-effective -- easy to manufacture and low operating costs
• Simple and reliable mechanical configuration which is easy to maintain
• Ease of Installation
• Low-profile assembly can be mounted directly atop existing roadways with little or no modifications to roadways
• Modular scalable configuration
• Can be installed in virtually any location

Read more at: http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/

World's first floating wind turbine

The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said Tuesday.

The turbine known as Hywind, which measures 65 metres (213 feet) tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, lies some 10 kilometres (seven miles) off the island of Karmoey near the Scandinavian country's southwestern coastline, the company said. It rests upon a floating stand that is anchored to the seabed by three cables. Water and rocks are placed inside the stand to provide balast. Three powerful cables anchor the stand to the seafloor.

StatoilHydro plans to test Hywind over the next two years before it looks to set up any more floating wind turbines with international partners. StatoilHydro sees Japan, South Korea, California, the east coast of the United States and Spain as some of the potential markets to where this technology could be exported. Hywind can be used in waters from 120 metres to 700 metres deep allowing it to be placed much further away from the shore than static wind turbines already in operation. "It is not so easily seen from the coast, it can be placed in areas not used by others," she said.

"We could use such wind turbines in countries where coastal waters are very deep or where there is little space left for land-based turbines," Stroemmen Lycke added. A total of 400 million kroner (46 million euros, 66 million dollars) has been invested in the 2.3-megawatt floating turbine, making it a far more expensive option than its fixed counterpart. "Our goal is to bring down the price to the level of fixed wind turbines that are currently installed in waters some 60 metres deep," Stroemmen Lycke said.
Read more at: http://www.statoilhydro.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Onshore/Pages/Karmoy.aspx
http://w1.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pressrelease/2009/renewable_energy/ere200906064.htm

To see the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyPpQ4gnjg