prostheticknowledge:

Japanese Solar Power System

What looks like a metallic flower art installation is new solar tech. From National Geographic:

Rising electricity prices and limited supply threaten to hamper the recovery for manufacturers. So it makes sense that Solar Techno Park, the first solar-power research facility focusing on multiple technologies in Japan, is operated not by the government but by a unit of the Tokyo-based JFE, the world’s fifth-largest steelmaker. Given the energy-intensive nature of steel production, reliable power will be key to the future of Japan’s steel industry. The facility, which opened in October last year, is developing advanced technology in solar light and thermal power generation that it aims to apply both in Japan and overseas. 

More Here

8bitfuture:

Electric car can be used to power homes.

A new system developed by Nissan allows the electric ‘Leaf’ car to be plugged into a house, providing it with energy. Leaf owners will have to buy a separate Power Control System (PCS) box, which is installed in their home.

According to Nissan, the Leaf’s 24kW per hour battery is enough to power a home’s lights, fan, television, fridge and other appliances for two days. 
In an ideal world, the technology would operate in a smart home fitted with solar panels and fuel cells, thus free from the electrical grid. 

However, until those types of homes are the norm, it could still be used to reduce a household’s electricity bills. The car would be charged at night through the electrical grid but homeowners might use the vehicle’s battery to power certain appliances and devices during peak times to save money. It could also be used to power the home during blackouts. 

The PCS box will go on sale at the end of March in Japan, where it will cost more than US$6,300.

(Source: metro.co.uk)

trendd:

Magnetic fields in roads could also power hover boards. (I wish)

“While we used AC and wires to build a massive electrical grid in the 20th century, wireless energy could be a game changer in the years to come. Researchers at Stanford just announced that they have developed a way to charge moving electric vehicles using a series of coils embedded in freeways. The system would power cars while they drive at full speed, effectively untethering the electric car from the plug and providing unlimited range at high efficiency.”

(via Stanford Develops Wireless Electric Car Charging System For Highways | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World)

Orbiting solar power plants might be possible in a decade

How’s this sound: giant solar arrays in orbit around the Earth, harvesting undiluted and virtually endless power from the sun and then beaming it straight down to the ground with lasers. Badass, right? And according to a three-year, ten-nation, peer-reviewed study by the International Academy of Astronautics, we could make it happen within ten years. Can you name solar power’s biggest downside? Sure you can! It doesn’t work when the sun isn’t out, which is the case most of the time when it’s cloudy and all the time at night. This is why satellites all rely on solar panels: unless something catastrophic happens (in which case eco-friendly power will be the least of your worries), it’s always sunny and never cloudy up in space. The obvious solution, then, is to move all of our solar power generating capacity into orbit, where we can rely on it 24/7. The International Academy of Astronautics has been researching a plan that would put a bunch of several-mile wide solar arrays into Earth orbit above the equator. These arrays would be able to collect as much as twice the amount of power as their earthbound kin, and using either microwaves or lasers, they could beam electricity to anywhere on Earth. While this all might seem a bit far-fetched, according to the IAA research, we’ll have the technology to do it within 10 years, and it’ll make economic sense to do it within 30. The up-front expense is a completely different issue, but if we’ve got a handy fleet of private launch vehicles all trying to undercut each other by then, a test project could be launched in about 20 years for just a few tens of billions of dollars. IAA, via Physorg

DVICE

Motherboard TV: The Thorium Dream

This is a great documentary on the element radioactive Thorium.  It was set aside in the early nuclear research days in order to produce uranium and plutonium for weapons.  I highly recommend you give it a watch and research this element and the new research on the subject.

…

In our case, it was the latter. While the idea of building small, thorium-based nuclear reactors – thought to be dramatically safer, cheaper, cleaner and terror-proof than our current catalog of reactors – can be shooed away as fringe by some, the germ of the idea began in the U.S. government’s major atomic lab, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the 1960s, only to be left by the wayside as the American nuclear industry plowed ahead with its development of the light water reactors and the uranium fuel cycle. It’s only in the past half-decade that the idea has picked up steam again on the Internet, thanks to enterprising enthusiasts who have chronicled the early experiments, distributed documents, and posted YouTube videos. But if thorium’s second life on the Internet has grown the flock of adherents exponentially, it’s also pulled in more than a few people whose nuclear expertise doesn’t extend far past Wikipedia, adding a sheen of hype to the proceedings.

Still, the idea has legs, if new research programs by India and China are any indication. The former has just announced a prototype thorium-based advanced heavy water reactor, while the latter is researching a liquid fuel reactor based on the 1960s design. In the U.S., the race is being advanced not by the government but by some of the central movers and shakers of the Internet movement.

…

Gizmodo

Motherboard

Today’s Solar Power Is a Lot Like the Old Solar Power

We may’ve put a man on the moon since, but why has solar power technology remained virtually unchanged for decades now? Is it because there’s no better way to harness energy from the sun? Or are scientists just unimaginative?

Life.com has explored how little solar tech has changed in the last century, with an 18-picture gallery of various sun-capturing inventions. Seen above is the designer Charles Eames (him of the chair-making fame), who came up with the “Do Nothing Machine” in 1958, a little gizmo that creates enough energy to instigate a whirl of color and activity behind him.

gizmodo

Google Investing Heavily in $5 Billion Atlantic Wind Power Line

Google is positioned to be a major investor in a proposed transmission line for offshore wind farms on the Atlantic seaboard, a bold plan that could radically reshape the electrical grid in the region.

The proposed Atlantic Wind Connection, which would cost $5 billion in all, would run from New Jersey to Norfolk, VA, collecting energy from offshore windfarms and redistributing it among mid-Atlantic states. The bold plan has been praised by regulators who say it could service many smaller wind projects dotting the coast, and the mid-Atlantic wind farms it would engender would be less likely to raise aesthetic objections than similar projects in Cape Cod and other areas.

Google has agreed to take a 37.5 percent stake in the 350 mile transmission line, along with Good Energies (also 37.5%) and Japanese trading company Marubeni, which has committed to a 15 percent stake.

gizmodo

Tiny Solar Cells Can Rebuild Themselves

Minuscule solar cells that can fix themselves using the same building blocks as plant cells have been demonstrated, with our old friend the carbon nanotube one of the key components that holds these self-healing power units together.

The photoelectrochemical cells, built from proteins, nanotubes and plant lipids, are clever enough technology to begin with, but there’s another crucial twist. The solar cells can be broken down into their component parts by the addition of a surfactant, which, when removed from the solar soup, lets the cells rebuild themselves.

gizmodo

The Next Alternative Energy Source: Electricity Out of Thin Air

It’s been coined “hygroelectricity”, which means “humidity electricity”, and scientists are already in the early stages of developing devices to harness it. What is “it” exactly? “It” is electrically charged water droplets hanging in the atmosphere.

Recent experiments have shown that moisture in the air is not electrically neutral, as previously thought. Water in the atmosphere can actually accumulate electrical charge and transfer that charge to other things it comes in contact with.

This means that in the future, in areas with high humidity, hygroelectricity could be captured similarly to the way sunlight is collected in photovoltaic cells. And a similar device could even be used to help prevent lightning from striking and forming, which would help save millions in property damage, death, and injuries. But would thunderstorms still thunder?

[Physorg]

gizmodo

Living Batteries Will Perform Better After Three Snickers Bars and a Coke

Researchers have shown off a prototype of a new biological battery cell, which produces energy in the same way we do—by breaking down sugars and fats into something a little more useful.

The prototype biofuel batteries are powered by mitochondria, the tiny biological components that digest our food and power the cells of our bodies. A layer of these, sandwiched between two layers electrodes, resulted in usable power being generated after the brave little mitochondria were fed with sugar or waste cooking oil.

Shelley Minteer, Ph.D., said of the new cells “When further developed, these devices have the potential for replacing disposable and rechargeable batteries in a wide variety of consumer electronics and other products. It is the first such device based on one of the microscopic parts of the billions upon billions of cells that make up the body.”

[Newswire viaInhabitat]

gizmodo