Tag: electricity

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Alternative Transportation, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Japanese researchers transmit electricity through solid concrete

tires

The researchers used a set of modified tires set on top of the concrete.

Thanks to researchers from Toyohashi University of Technology, the dream of having electric cars without limited range is one step closer to reality.  The group showcased an experiment with the ability to send up to 60 watts through almost four inches of solid concrete.  Although the technique they are using isn’t exactly new, they did manage to squeeze out between 80 and 90%t efficiency is.

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Analysis, Art, Crazy Photos, Culture, DIY, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest News, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Photos of people living off-the-grid in the United States

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Living ‘off the grid’ can entail going without some common luxuries.

Eric Valli spent 3 years taking photos of people in the United States who have “decided to live light on the earth.” The photographs are terrific. It looks like Valli spent time with two clans: a frontier/settler type group, and another group that look almost like cave people. I wish he had included more information about them!

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Global Warming, Globalism, Great New Product, Green Friendly, New Discoveries, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Dual-Action wind turbine generates power and water

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Wind can create both power and water?

Throughout the developing world, millions of people struggle with a shortage of clean water and steady electricity. This wind turbine could solve both problems in one shot by pulling both power and water straight from the wind.

The WMS1000 Wind Turbine was invented by Marc Parent and is built by the French start-up Eole Water. Sitting atop a 24-meter mast, the machine generates electricity with a conventional 30kW direct-drive turbine in a 12-ton nacelle with a 13-meter blade diameter. The WMS1000 can self-regulate the energy it produces, allowing it to provide a steady stream of power even in gusty or choppy winds. Installing an array of the turbines, which each have a service life of 30 years, creates a small-scale, decentralized power grid perfect for remote areas…

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Analysis, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Creating liquid fuel with electricity

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Researchers have generated isobutanol from CO2 using a genetically engineered microorganism with solar electricity the sole energy input.

Electric vehicles have come a long way in the past decade, but they still have many disadvantages when compared to internal combustion engine-driven vehicles. The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles have a much lower energy storage density when compared to liquid fuel, they take longer to “refuel,” and they lack the supporting infrastructure that has built up around conventional vehicles over the past century. Now researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a process that could allow liquid fuel to be produced using solar generated electricity.

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Great Videos, Nanotechnology, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Heated farbric using carbon nanotube coated fibers

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3A_lpEO0t8&hd=1[/youtube]

Kuraray Living and  Hokkaido University have been working together to create a soft washable fabric woven with carbon nanotube coated fibers that produces heat when electricity is applied. So when it’s perfected, your electric blanket could get a lot less bulky.

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Ecological Products, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

MIT creates solar panels from leaves and grass

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Photosynthesizing Solar Cells

Andreas Mershin, a researcher at MIT, has created solar panels from agricultural waste such as cut grass and dead leaves. Mershin says in a few years it will be possible to stir some grass clippings into a bag of cheap chemicals, paint the mixture on your roof, and immediately start producing electricity.

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Great New Product, Nanotechnology, Science & Technology News, Solar Power

Researchers develop paint-on solar cells

solar paint

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles coated with cadmium sulfide produced a yellow paste that, when painted onto a transparent conductive material, generates electricity.

The next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home could generate electricity from light — electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.

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Analysis, Great Videos, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Quantum levitation in action (video)

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Quantum levitation

Researchers at the Tel Aviv University have created a track around which a superconductor can float, thanks to the phenomenon of “quantum levitation“.  Suspending a superconducting disc above or below a set of permanent magnets – the magnetic field is locked inside the superconductor ; a phenomenon called ‘Quantum Trapping’.

 

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Analysis, Science & Technology News

Top 10 worst home energy hogs

set top box

Set top boxes uses an average of 28.286 watts while off.

Electricity prices have been relentlessly rising over the past decade.  That has made many consumers more conscientious about how they use electric power. Many of those conscientious people may find it frustrating — to put it mildly — that their daily or even hourly efforts to turn off devices they’re not using hasn’t delivered the results they’d expected.

 

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Breakthrough Thinking, Culture, Current Events, Economy, Global Warming, Globalism, government, Green Friendly, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

France launches €10 Billion offshore wind project (1,200 turbines & 10,000 jobs!)

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Harvesting the wind in water.

The French government of Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a €10 billion ($14.26 billion) tender to build about 1,200 wind turbines in 5 different offshore wind farms. The goal is to diversify France’s energy generation (they are very reliant on nuclear, which accounts for about 80% of their electricity generation) with renewable sources and to have 23% of France’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020. The wind farms will be located off France’s coast on the North and West and should produce about 3.5% of the country’s electricity according to government authorities. The farms should come online between 2015-2020…

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