California-based company SunPods Inc. has recently unveiled at the Cleantech Open event in San Jose this Thursday, world's first factory-built, solar-powered electric-vehicle charging station. Dubbed â€Ã…“SP-300 Plug-N-Go,†this solar-powered EV charging station is able to charge two cars at the same time. The energy surplus can also be sold back to utility companies.
First of all, Italy is one of the leading innovators in solar power. On July 15, their electricity company Enel has unveiled Archimede, their most innovative power plant using concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, where parabolic mirrors focus the Sun's light onto capturing surfaces which take the heat to the storage location. For the first time in the world, molten salts have been used as storage for the heat they captured from the Sun.
Sewage treatment plants represent an interesting source of electricity. Oregon State University (OSU) have studied and developed a new type of coating that, if applied on the positive electrodes of microbial electrochemical cells used in such plants would raise the electricity production by about 20 times.
Measuring less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice, the see-through glass could be coated with SolarWindow's coatings at room temperatures using commercially available technologies.
In order to set a new round of record-breaking electrical hot-rodding at Portland International Raceway, the drag racer John Wayland has converted an old 1972 Datsun dubbed "White Zombie," into a zero-emission electric car powered by lead-acid batteries, becoming one of the world's fastest street legal electric cars.
Michigan, once a prosperous area for the auto industry, saw a decline once the economy collapsed. Now, because of government incentives through grants under the Recovery Act, nine electric car battery factories have reborn there, creating new jobs and putting things on track again.
The next time you do a search on Google after July 30, remember that they are buying energy from North America's largest wind power provider, NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. The search magnate will purchase 114 MW of clean energy within a 20-year contract.
To increase the light absorption of solar cells, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have perfected a nanostructure that could make up cheaper and more efficient solar cells and light detectors. Their structures absorb 99 percent of visible light and use 1 percent of the silicon semiconductor needed for flat crystalline silicon solar cells.
A new approach to generate electricity comes from engineers from Europe's northern countries of the Netherlands and Norway. They want to use the difference between salty and fresh water through osmosis in two different manners and say that their solutions could suffice the entire world's energy needs. The New Scientist joined them both in an interesting case study.
Germany and Spain may be the leaders in solar photovoltaics, but China comes from behind and amazes everyone with an enormous power station just above the Beijing-Shanghai railway station. The plant is able to produce 6.3 MWh (megawatt-hours) of electricity and can provide the needs of 12,000 households in Shanghai.
