Photovoltaicus - Renewable Energy - Solar Energy

Solar-powered laptops sure would be a great thing to have in mass production to (1) cut down on energy consumption and (2) not have to worry as much about the battery dying. One concept design which looks interesting is by Nikola Knezevic of Nikoladesign.

Kenzevic’s solar-powered laptop design is said to have "complete power autonomy." Power instead is supplied to the computer by an attached large solar panel. This panel, when not in use, can be detached. A smaller built-in battery would run the system at that point. There is also a DC in jack built into this design, just in case, we suppose, you happen to have a rainy day.

What seems to make this solar-powered design also more generally functional is proposed built-in GPS, Internet browsing, and satellite telephone access. We could certainly see a lot of uses for a portable device such as this, especially when hiking deep in the woods where you don’t find any power outlets.

[via BornRich]

Popular Science has just gotten a scoop that I’ve been waiting for ages to see. Ultracapacitors, which are completely shunned by most auto companies, have been quietly continuing development at small companies and in universities all over the world. The reason they’ve been so largely ignored is that they hold so much less energy than batteries. The best commercially available ultracaps have about 5% of the energy density of batteries.

Yet they also have tremendous advantages. You can charge them all the way up and all the way down without damaging them (lithium ion batteries stop functioning when charged all the way down.) They contain no chemical reagents and so are thermally stable under all conditions. And they can charge and discharge much faster than batteries.

Popular Science was recently able to visit a lab at MIT working on advanced vehicle technologies. One of these technologies is a nano-tube ultracapacitor that could potentially hold half the charge of a lithium ion battery. And while this alone doesn’t sound all that exciting, it’s a lot cooler when you realize that most batteries in hybrid cars hardly ever use more than 20% of their charge in order to extend the batteries life.

That’s right, 80% of the battery just sits there and never discharges. Ultracapacitors could discharge completely, over and over again, and never need to be replaced.

Unfortunately, after two years of work, the nano-tube capacitors still haven’t hit their theoretical capacity. And while it might not take long for them to make capacitors that have competitive energy levels, it will certainly take years, if not decades, to scale the technology up to industrial level.

Via PopMech

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy rocks. They have put numbers to what I have long expected to be true. Folks who complain about how much energy computers waste are crazy. Computers save tons of energy, while, themselves, using less energy than the lightbulb used to light the workstation. And now we know how much.

The study focused on a metric called "energy intensity." Basically, that’s the amount of energy necessary to produce a dollar of economic output. The first major drop in energy intensity occured after the oil crisis in the 1970s. That was a cost-based drop, not generally the ideal.

Then, after OPEC lost its stranglehold, energy intensity stopped dropping because energy was once again cheap. But then, starting in the late 1990s, energy intensity began to drop significantly again. This drop was unrelated to energy costs and was, in fact, a technologically spurred change.

Computers were helping us become more efficient. First, by using their power to design more efficient practices. And second, and much more significantly, by allowing people and things to travel digitally, instead of physically.

Telecommuting a couple days per week, reading news online, emails, document downloads, and instant messages all allow people and things to travel while consuming much smaller amounts of energy. What’s more, online shopping has reduced trips to retail stores, resulting in significant energy savings.

Energy intensity has continued to drop more than 2% every year since the Internet first appeared. Without the Internet, the paper’s authors suggest that we would need one billion more barrels per oil per year! Indeed, ever kilowatt/hour we spend on the Internet looks to have saved about 10 kilowatt/hours of energy.

Not that I need another reason to spend time online…

Via CSMonitor

You gotta hand it to those people who are creating real-world solutions to real-world problems. Giant solar-collecting space lasers are pretty cool…but Sintex is for real. The Indian plastics company has created a very simple "digester" that takes something we have too much of (poop) and turns it into something we don’t have enough of (energy).

The digester can actually take any organic material, including agricultural waste, kitchen scraps, or cow dung, and convert it to methane. This happens naturally, of course, and is happening in your septic tank (or at your sewage treatment plant) right now. The difference is that Sintex’s biogas reactor has a little tube that moves the methane into a storage container. From there, the methane can be used for any natural gas application. Cooking, drying clothes, heating the home, boiling water, etc.

A "primed" digester (primed with cow dung, for a source of good bacteria) can digest all the waste of a four-person household and produce enough energy for that household to cook all of its meals! The device costs $425 and will pay for itself in less than two years. The Indian government has agreed to subsidize 1/3 of the cost of the units. In theory, that will actually save the government money, as they won’t have to deal with the waste in other ways.

Sintex has only installed about 100 of the devices…but just wait. When real-world problems get real-world solutions, it’s hard to hold them back from success.

Via Forbes

The U. S. Navy has teamed up with Versa Power Systems to develop a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) for use in one of its new unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV). Typically, SOFCs are used in stationary devices and run at very high temperatures (up to 1,800 F). Because of these high temperatures, there is no need [...]

Bank of America Corp. will start considering carbon dioxide (CO2 - a major global warming pollutant) as a potential liability when it decides whether to finance utility sector projects.

Originally posted on sustainablog on February 27, 2008 (and I found out that Arizona is outbuilding this one, so it’s already outdated).

Every time I turn around, it seems like a new state or new nation is building the world’s largest solar power plant! So here’s the latest one: Australia will break ground next year on a 154-megawatt solar plant in Victoria. That’s nearly twice the size of the largest solar plant in the U.S.

Once it’s up and running in 2013, the it could generate enough power for about 45,000 homes. It’s a very small percentage of Australia’s total electricity generation, but it would cut about 396,000 tonnes of emissions from spewing into the air. The Victoria plant is also expected to be one of the most efficient solar power plants in existence because it will concentrate the solar power, using 112 curved mirrors to direct the sun’s rays onto photovoltaic (PV) cells.

This clean power plant will contribute to Australia’s goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. But we’ll have to wait and see how long it remains on top as the largest.

The Age
Earth Times
Financial Times

Your laptop (TGW) – DORmino has developed an efficient laptop mouse that gets its energy from laptop heat waste.

The key to all of this lies not in the mouse, but in the mouse pad. The pad absorbs heat and uses it to power the mouse.
Via :: Greener Gadgets Competition

Japan (TGW) – Japanese company Suntory Ltd. said this week that it has created an alternative artificial soil, named Pafcal, that will help keep cities green.

The soil is designed to ease the “heat-island” problem of rising temperatures in urban areas.

Some 450 grams of the sponge-like material, which is made of the synthetic substance urethane, can be put to the same use as one kilo of soil, the company said. Leafy plants growing in the synthetic soil can reduce the roof temperature by 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit).

Via :: Physorg

Volkswagen HQ (TGW) – Volkswagen will reveal its 70 mile per gallon diesel-electric hybrid, the Golf Hybrid, next month at the Geneva Motor Show.

The car is expected to have a parallel hybrid drivetrain with a 2 liter engine, an all-electric mode at low speed, start-stop capability, regenerative braking and a 7-speed DSG double-clutch transmission.

Volkswagen is considering manufacturing other green cars as well.

Via :: Wired