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Solar Energy
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 21:53 |
In the future, a swarm of autonomous robots might be able to handle oil spill cleanup.
That's the idea behind a new solar-powered robot prototype equipped with nanotechnology designed by researchers at MIT. They say that a giant swarm of these robots could be able to clean a Gulf of Mexico size area in one month.
The robots, dubbed "Seaswarm," are being developed at MIT's Senseable City Lab, an initiative that focuses on sensors and handheld electronics in the built environment.
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Solar Energy
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 21:50 |
Move over solar, wind and wave power — there's a new renewable on the block. Researchers are experimenting with devices that can pull electricity from the air.
For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the idea of harnessing the power of thunderstorms. Nikola Tesla experimented extensively with the topic, but significant understanding of the field of atmospheric electrodynamics has until recently proved elusive.
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Solar Energy
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Monday, 23 August 2010 18:38 |
The best places to collect solar energy are also some of the dustiest on Earth and beyond, a quandary that leads to inefficiencies in how well the cells are able to convert strong sunlight into renewable electricity. The solution, according to new research, is to coat solar cells with material that enables them to chase away dirt particles on their own with the help of dust-repelling electrical charges.
A dust layer of 4 grams per square meter can decrease solar power conversion by 40 percent, says Malay Mazumder, a research professor in Boston University's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. To put this in perspective, dust deposition in Arizona is about 17 grams per square meter per month, and the situation is worse in many other solar-friendly sites, including the Middle East, Australia and India. Mazumder, who led the study, presented the results Sunday at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
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Solar Energy
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Monday, 23 August 2010 18:35 |
Australia has plans to build the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere by 2013, part of its scramble to fight climate change and harness its abundance of clean energy sources — wind, solar, waves, geothermal energy and bioenergy.
Renewable energy now supplies just 6 percent of power in Australia because the country has historically lacked the political and commercial will to pursue big renewable energy projects. And the very sources of Australia's clean energy — its vast outback and nearly 60,000 kilometers, or 37,000 miles, of coast — are major obstacles to linking new, remote power sources into the grid.
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Solar Energy
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Tuesday, 10 August 2010 21:49 |
Every day, national and local officials, municipal utilities, corporations, homeowners and consumers are weighing the risks and rewards of adopting renewable energy. The up-front costs can be daunting.
Sure, putting solar panels on my house might be good for Mother Earth and could save me money in the long term, but what if they break in two years and I'm out $5,000 before I have recouped my investment?
Unfortunately, good karma points are not going to pay the power bill. But insurance might.
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Solar Energy
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Tuesday, 10 August 2010 21:46 |
According to news aggregator Energy Collective, a historic era is upon us because solar power has become affordable. More specifically, solar power has become cheaper than nuclear power.
The article sites researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, who found that the cost of "producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years ... at the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned." Thus, it's cheaper to put solar panels on houses than to build a new nuclear power plant to service them.
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Solar Energy
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Tuesday, 10 August 2010 21:43 |
Xcel Energy Inc., the owner of utilities that operate in eight U.S. states, will buy the power from a solar plant in southern Colorado that's being developed by Cogentrix Energy LLC.
The 30-megawatt solar field will concentrate the sun's rays onto photovoltaic panels that generate electricity, providing enough power for about 6,500 homes, Charlotte, North Carolina- based Cogentrix said today in a statement. Cogentrix is a unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
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Solar Energy
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Sunday, 18 July 2010 21:45 |
Tesla Motors Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp. have announced plans to develop a new version of the popular RAV4 electric vehicle that Toyota briefly sold to the public about 2002.
The two companies said they have "signed an agreement to initiate the development of an electric version of the RAV4 as announced in May of this year by Elon Musk and Akio Toyoda," the companies' chief executives.
The vehicles will combine the RAV4 body with a Tesla electric powertrain. The aim is to market the electric RAV4 in the United States in 2012, a year when many automakers are planning to introduce new EVs or to ramp up production of vehicles first rolled out in late 2010 and 2011.
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Solar Energy
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Sunday, 18 July 2010 21:40 |
An unmanned solar aircraft has smashed the world record for continuous flight.
The "Zephyr" plane, developed by UK defense technology company, QinetiQ, took off from the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona on July 9. Seven days on, it was still flying high.
Zephyr program director, Jon Saltmarsh told CNN: "It's extremely exciting. What we now have is an eternal plane. It has the same amount of fuel at the start of one day as it does at the start of another."
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Solar Energy
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Sunday, 18 July 2010 21:37 |
A major solar provider has plans to move into Tucson in the coming week.
SolarCity, which already installed the sun-soaking panels on hundreds of rooftops in the Soaring Heights Communities at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, is now offering its services to all local homeowners and businesses, said Lyndon Rive, the company's CEO.
"When we move into an area, we really have to invest in that area, so it's a big decision," Rive said.
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