Energy and Alternatives
- We love molten salt and have two articles that will have you loving it too. Arizona plant & bringing down the cost of energy storage.
- Solar 100x more efficient coming out of Stanford? Could it be true?
- Exciting spinning solar panel. Will it become a reality?
- Oh, this? Just some teenage girls from Africa who invented a urine powered generator.
- Exciting Solar Thermal video.
- MIT is working on solar trough technologies.
- New Bladeless wind turbine has amazing potential.
- Candles are the most efficient way to turn fuel into light. Maybe this one that turns a tea light into a power source might be useful in some settings.
- Short article on Germany's solar program and success.
- One of the great things about renewable energy tech, is that there are huge gains to be made though simple technologies. A wind lens can increase the output of a wind turbine up to five times.
- Cool stuff: a company called Twin Creeks is gearing up to make cheap solar panels (half current costs) using an ion cannon.
Informative pages about the potential of biochar (hint: Its not a Pokemon character)- Good page explaining and demonstrating rocket mass heaters and rocket stoves.
- Earth "grows hairs" and generates as much electricity as wind turbines. If it pans out, I might actually get behind large scale wind power.
- New engine cuts emissions by 90%. I almost feel like I might be perpetuating a hoax. Lets hope its for real.
- In a consumption driven market, where you buy your gas is everything. Here is a web page that lists the best and the worst petroleum companies.
- Biogas is the darling I would bring to the Renewable Energy Ball. Here is a little article about why.
- Molten Salt Technology is something everyone who is interested in sustainable energy generation should know about. It has overcome many of the natural short falls in photovoltaic.
New Tech. A man in Japan has invented a machine to turn plastics back into oil. Although I think this could be a big trap as turning oil into plastic, plastic into oil, oil into plastic is a waist of energy & recourses, I think it could be a good answer for plastics that are otherwise not recyclable like plastic lids.- Biogas is a personal favorite. If you eat meat or use the bathroom, then you personally are a source of biogas (naturally occurring methane). Methane is 30 time more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. So why are we pulling natural gas out of the ground while our bodies are generating it? This article has some really fascinating facts about biogas.
- Here is a video on how to make your own anaerobic digester and produce your own biogas and fertilizer from things that arnt normally compostable like pet waist and meat scraps.
A city in Switzerland is run almost entirely on biogas as featured in the New York Times.- Driving is a reality for most of us. If you drive, then you there are two pages you should review. The first deals with car mods that can improve fuel efficacy and the second deals with driver modification (behaviors that waste gas). You cannot shop your way out of being a consumer. The best strategy for the average person is to improve what you have and change your habits.
On making your water heater as efficient as possible. Hot water is some thing we find it really hard to live without.- Reduction/Electricity LumiSmart is geared towards large institutional users of electricity. It modifies the form of the electrical current and can reduce the amount of electricity needed to illuminate florescent bulbs by 30% without making a noticeable reduction in the amount of light received.
- If gas prices are getting you down, maybe you'd like to buy your own MicroFueler that produces Ethanol for about $1/gallon. At $20k for a complete setup, this is perhaps a better deal for a small business.
- Sometimes, people just don't understand solar. If you've ever had any doubt about how hot you can get things with just a little concentration, check out the device that this teenager built: a 5,800 mirror device he calls a "solar death ray".
- For those who think it is impossible to escape from coal, fossil fuels and nuclear energy, researchers from Stanford have come up with a plan that could, if implemented, get the world on 100% clean energy sources within fourty years. Now if only human beings could cooperate with each other...