Solar Powered Windows With Adjustable Haze Presented at Taipei Exhibition
Solar panels are usually big, black ugly things sitting on rooftops and making your house look geekily hi-tech. Chin Hua, a Chinese company, exposed one type of solar panel that, if applied to existing or future buildings, will decrease their carbon footprint by producing energy and will also play the role of window blinds.
STES: Underground Heat Storing Solution Designed for the Military, Also Applicable to Your Home
Storing hot materials while it's cold and storing cold materials while it's hot isn't anything new in concept, but transplanting the idea in geothermal science is both attractive and economic. For example, the Defense Department spends $3.5 billion on the energy needed by its bases, out of which most money go to cooling and heating.
New Graphene Production Technology Offers Hope for Cheap Hydrogen Storage
Victor Aristov, a Ph.D. at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, along with a team of other researchers, has discovered how to produce high-quality graphene by using the cheapest methods possible.
Michael Grätzel Receives 800,000 Euros Millennium Technology Prize for Inventing Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
Michael Grätzel, one of the world's most famous scientists and innovators in the field of solar power, has received the best prize any scientist...
Lithium Air Batteries Find That Gold-Platinum Catalyst Increases Their Efficiency and Lifetime
MIT researchers have just discovered an alloy that, if used as a catalyst, makes lithium-air batteries more efficient. This type of battery works by reacting the metal lithium with the oxygen from the air, and is very efficient at storing high amounts of energy (three times more than lithium ion). The industry awaits the development of lithium air batteries so they can be used in future electric cars.
Nano-Sized Solar Cells Inspired by Coaxial Cables Developed by Boston College Researchers
To make thin film solar cells have a higher efficiency than any of the previously experimented models, some Boston College researchers propose using nano-scale solar cells inspired by the working principle of coaxial cables. There's a so-called "thick & thin" issue in making thin solar cells, which states that a solar cell has to be thick enough to collect light in sufficient amounts, and at the same time it needs to be thin enough to extract current from it.
Hawaii To Run $1 Billion Undersea Cable That Will Share Wind Power Between Islands
Replacing Hawaii's dirty diesel powered generators that provide the electricity necessary to run the islands isn't an easy job. The state's current plan is to feed Oahu, the state's most populated island, through an undersea cable, from the wind farms on the islands Molokai and Lanai.
Scientists Use Palladium as Core to New Hydrogen Fuel Cell-Improving Nanoparticle
Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity when fed with hydrogen, which combines with oxygen and results water. Still, hydrogen fuel cells are expensive due to the catalyst used in the cathode for the reaction known as oxygen reduction. That catalyst is 100% pure platinum, which is a rare and expensive material.
Orange Brags Having Installed More Than 3 GWh of Solar Power in Africa
Mobile phones and devices are more and more present on the market, with a figure of 5.8 billion users expected by 2013. Thus, mobile telephony networks, through their corporate responsibility programs, have to plan their expansion taking into account the CO2 amounts their base stations emit, 24/7.
Mini Black Hole for Microwave Energy Created by Chinese Scientists Could Have Green Uses
Two researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves at Southeast University from Nanjing, China, have discovered and prototyped a device that acts like a black hole for electromagnetic waves in the microwave spectrum. It consists of 60 concentric rings of metamaterials, a class or ordered composites that can distort light and other waves.
