A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW6-1SlvtN4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
When you consider that New York City disposes of more water as waste than nearly 70% of the countries in Africa (accounting for over 340 million people) consume, you would hope that they’re doing something useful with it. And they have been. With some of it.
Continue reading… “New York City’s New Plan to Turn Sewage Into Heat”
Molten salt technology was demonstrated at the Solar Two project
One of the biggest problems with solar energy is that the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day. This means that unless users are only planning on using electricity when the sun is shining, some form of energy storage system is required. Since storing excess electricity in rechargeable batteries isn’t really practical for large-scale solar power plants, another storage system is needed. U.S. utility-scale solar project developer SolarReserve has now received approval for the first solar power plant in California that uses molten salt technology to store the sun’s thermal energy as heat so it can generate electricity when needed, at any time of the day or night.
Continue reading… “California Has Approved First Molten Salt Solar Power Plant”
Copper Mountain Solar Facility
While it is nowhere as large as Canada’s 80MW Sarnia Solar Project (which is the world’s largest PV plant), the US has just opened the country’s largest PV plant in Nevada. The 48MW Copper Mountain Solar Facility, initiated by Sempra Generation, began construction January this year and the facility was finished just a few weeks ago.
Continue reading… “America’s Largest Solar Plant Opens in Nevada”
Underwater turbines could tap the Mississipi’s power.
Tens of thousands of turbines anchored to the bottom of the Mississippi River could someday provide more than a gigawatt of renewable energy, enough to power a quarter of a million homes. That’s the vision of Free Flow Power, a startup based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that recently received preliminary permits from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granting it the right to explore energy production at dozens of sites along the lower Mississippi over the next three years.
Frederic Scheer, Cereplast CEO, hopes to use an algae byproduct to make utensils and other items.
Clean-tech ideas that have received government funding include using bacteria to make a gasoline-type fuel. Solar proposals seeking funding include sending collectors into space and beaming the sun power back to Earth.
Continue reading… “Futuristic Concepts in Green Technology are Getting Attention”
Will we have jellyfish power soon?
Thanks to more acidic oceans, jellyfish populations seem to be flourishing. While they aren’t exactly edible for humans, they might be useful for powering nanodevices. Swedish researcher have been turning thousands of Aequorea victoria, a common North American jellyfish species, into liquid and extracting a green fluorescent protein (GFP) that makes the animals glow in the dark to see if it can also help create a biofuel cell that will generate small amounts of energy — enough to power microscopic nanodevices.
Continue reading… “Glowing Green Jellyfish Goo Could Power Medical Devices”
The industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life unbearable for some.
Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on. “In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
The lamp, a shining example of how humans can make use of an underutilized and perpetually renewable energy source — feces — is the brainchild of Matthew Mazzotta, a conceptual artist who studied at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who wanted to give back to the community…
Mobile phones are charged wirelessly during Fujitsu’s demonstration.
It could spell the end to tangled charger leads and your favourite gadget running out of power just when you need it most.
Continue reading… “Wireless Charger Could Power Your Mobile Devices From Across the Room”
“Hygroelectricity,” meaning “humid electricity” could be the next big power source.
We’re already making great strides at pulling electricity from the motion of the air and from the photons that stream through it, but what about pulling electric charges right out of the air itself? Researchers have solved a mystery about how electricity forms in the atmosphere, and in doing so may have found a way to pull electricity right out of the air.
Continue reading… “Next Big Power Source? Pulling Electricity Out of Thin Air”
Urine could hold the secret to low cost energy, university boffins have revealed.
Researchers have developed a system to test whether it can be used in fuel cells as an alternative to flammable hydrogen or toxic methanol.
The work at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, concentrates on urea, or carbamide, a mass-manufactured fertiliser and major component in human and animal urine.
The new Carbamide Power System could offer a non-toxic, low-cost, easily transportable alternative, academics said…
Continue reading… “Urine Could Hold The Key To Low Cost Energy, Say Scientists”
Continue reading… “World’s Largest Hydrogen Fuel Cell Heads To Ohio”
