The Green Optimistic

I like the way science evolves and still, for years, nobody seems to look at the new inventions. This may be the case with solar, because almost weekly we discover news about useful inventions in the area of solar power. Instead, old and inefficient methods are still being commercialized and “promoted”, at their high prices, like it’s wanted to decrease their real usage in real life conditions, not promote it.

ABI Research analysts say that the future of mobile telephony will be sun powered. They say all BTSes (cellular base stations) will be equipped with solar panels, backed up by diesel generators.

This solar-powered cooker allows the poor people, on the one hand (which I support) to reduce the forest cutting and save their money, by using free solar energy, and on the other hand to eliminate the risk of choking with the smoke their wood chimneys make in their homes.

Last week in Bakersfield, California, was launched the first solar thermal plant in nearly two decades. This plant will focus sunlight on tubes that contain water, a different process, compared to other solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.

By writing the previous article and doing some research on steel and solar power, I came across a YouTube video showing what a solar furnace (or solar concentrator) can do to a piece of steel. While cooking a hot dog is “a child’s play”, melting steel is something you must seriously think about.

Unlike the Americans or the Europeans, the Chinese know their way into the cleaner future everybody dreams of. They probably began understanding a long time ago and now bringing into practice the cleanest possible way of transportation: a solar powered electric car.

Kept in secret until yesterday, a newly appeared company, named SiOnyx, unveils an invention of some Harvard researchers, that is going to revolutionize the whole industry. Harvard has been studying their “black silicon” for almost ten years, but nothing has come out of their lab, due to internal policies regarding the output of their discoveries to commercial companies.

Solyndra, a company situated in Fremont, CA, has invented a new type of cylindrical solar panel, cheaper to install and more powerful compared to the conventional panels, which are made of flat solar cells.