As you may already know, solar panels are great, but they have one big drawback: if as little as one shadow covers one of the cells, the entire power output slumps. Not to mention that if one of the cells themselves brakes down, the whole system crashes. To hear of such sensitivity in a technology of the future is rather disappointing, but TenKsolar can take up the challenge and solve these issues.
Free energy is, in essence, unachievable. You cannot get energy out of nothing - yet there are people all of the world claiming they've made discoveries in the field of "free" energy. They don't claim their devices get their energy out of nowhere, but from gravity, magnetism and a form of still undefined energy called "zero point energy."
It's a no-brainer that by eliminating paper usage, humanity would considerably reduce carbon dioxide emissions and will slow down deforestation. The health industry is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the U.S. just by the fact that it uses paper to keep medical records. A recent study has revealed that as much as 8 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse emissions could be avoided by transitioning to electronically-stored records.
In a couple of years, utilities will do just about anything to be able to store excess power coming from their future renewable sources, such as wind or solar. The good news is that lately several solutions have emerged from privately-funded startups. One of the solutions found that storing energy inside gravel-filled containers is a good idea, and Isentropic Energy, its creator, is really going to build a prototype.
If you say "wind power", you say Vestas, and if you say Vestas, you say China. Not as an owner, since Vestas is European, but as a long-time partner in China's quest to become a world leader in the clean energy industry. The newest proof of their "engagement" is the 100 MW order for wind turbines that was made to the company recently.
If our loyal readers remember, we recently posted an article about Ford's map of the best US cities to drive an electric vehicle in. Boston residents will probably remember their city as being one of them. Now Ford is not giving up on the task and is putting in practice the plans for the infrastructure: until 2012, the company wants to have Boston's streets nice and ready for its Ford Focus Electric.
Building wind turbines surely is a challenging task for the engineers in charge with it. A recent study, followed by the development of a software could clear out all the issues of wind turbine placement, so they don't interfere with each other and still occupy as little space as possible. The new approach is based on evolutionary algorithms developed by Dr. Frank Neumann, from the University of Adelaide.
A new aluminum alloy could soon clean out water and at the same time generate electricity for afflicted areas. Purdue University researchers Jerry Woodall and Go Choi have been working on the alloy of aluminum, gallium, indium and tin that could split polluted or salt water into hydrogen and oxygen and then reunite them to generate electricity and pure water.
Besides being a place where you can manufacture things cheap, no matter what the processes' cabon dioxide emissions are, China is one of the most advanced countries when it comes to electric cars and electrification, in general. Project Better Place, an Israel-based company aiming at developing more efficient charging infrastructures has just signed an agreement with one of the largest Chinese utilities.
These days, EVs usually rely on lithium-ion batteries and compete over which is more resilient. Promising models such as the Nissan Leaf are currently using them, but a trial of the largest taxi fleet in the world is proving the iron-phosphate batteries are better.
