Best Solar Energy

Some very nice wind turbines for homeowners

Vladan — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:36:46 +0000

New wind turbines designed by Philippe Starck

French designer Philippe Starck, creator of chic hotels, high-tech lamps and modern-style furniture, has turned his attention to energy with the design of two sleek micro wind-power turbines aimed at domestic use.

The devices because of the vertical axis design, they’re almost noiseless. That’s an advantage. I hate wind turbine devices making noise. I hate noise too…

Doit-yourself power generation is seen as a growing trend. The fact that it claims to save on carbon emissions gives the wind turbine added appeal.

Home owners the windmill is said to generate between 20%-60% of a single homes energy at around 400 euros.

The twin-blade WT400W is rated at 400 W and is expected to cost about 2,500 euros ($3,505*). The triple-blade WT1kW is rated at 1 kW and is expected to cost about 3,500 euros ($4,905*).

The turbine will be produced by pramac although stark stated that he is sick of designing because he creates useless things, this design could actually turn things around, if it lives up to its claims.

Source: JetsonGreen

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You can reduce your power bill by 80% or even eliminate it completely. With the ever increasing costs of living, there is no better time than right now to stop throwing money out the window and start generating our own electricity.

Technorati Tags: vertical axes wind turbine, wind power, wind turbine homeowners, wind turbine soho

Laboratory of french Electric vehicles

Vladan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:09:17 +0000

Reunion Island to became a Laboratory for mass testing French Electric cars.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that he intends to turn the French overseas territory of La Reunion (Fr) into the world’s first site for the mass use of electric automobiles. There will be a whole new infrastructure for charging Electric cars.

Renault and five other corporate partners signed a letter of intent yesterday for a new electric vehicle test in France (Reunion Island). The tests of 50 vehicles will be to make a prove that battery-powered vehicles which will be charged from renewable sources (photo-voltaic panels) have a lower overall life cycle CO2 impact than comparable internal combustion vehicles.

The program includes the deployment of a charging network to support the test fleet. There are other partners, like General Electric, Total and the utility EDF – New energy, which specializes in renewable electricity.

Read the official press release:

PRESS RELEASE

In the presence of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Renault, EDF, GBH (Groupe Bernard Hayot), Total Re?union, GE Money and the GERRI agency today signed a letter of intent on the experimentation of 50 electric vehicles in Reunion together with battery charge infrastructure powered mainly by renewable energies.

The letter of intent signed today in Reunion by the six partners mentioned above, under the patronage of Nicolas Sarkozy, marks their commitment to the VERT project (Electric Vehicle for a Technological Reunion), a principal component of the GERRI program (Grenelle Environment Forum in Reunion – Succeeding in Innovation).

The document establishes the framework of an experiment to test electric vehicles and the corresponding charge infrastructures powered by dedicated renewable energy sources (notably photovoltaic). The idea behind the project is to demonstrate that the overall CO2 performance of the electric vehicles in Reunion is superior to that of today’s thermal combustion and hybrid vehicles.

The purpose of the VERT program is to test the implementation of a network of charge infrastructures sized in number and charge technique (normal or fast) to meet the mobility needs of a territory with a limited geographical area.

VERT is also an opportunity to test specific electric mobility offers aimed at company or government vehicle fleets and at individual customers.

Lessons learnt from the project could be applied to countries or regions with similar electric systems.
The French Environment and Energy Management Agency, ADEME, will be submitting a file on the VERT project at an upcoming call for expression of interest (EOI).

Source: Autoblog

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Technorati Tags: electric cars, Renault Electric, Reunion Island

Nissan will be producing EV called Nissan Leaf

Vladan — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:57:51 +0000

The upcoming EV Nissan Leaf.

I really like this car. Nissan Leaf is a five-door car and more like designed for a family. It’s fully electric car, no hybrid. The new EV should have a top speed approaching 80 miles per hour and a range of at least 100 miles.

There is an official website for Nissan Leaf. The car should be powered with advanced lithium-ion batteries.

The car power’s is taken from unique array of thin, laminated lithium ion cells.

Technical Specifications:

capable of delivering over 90 kW of power
The motor is in the front and delivers 80 kW (107 horsepower) and a healthy 280 Nm of torque (208 pound-feet)
Top speed of over 140 km/h (87 mph).
48 lithium ion modules
To have a full charge, a 200-volt, single-phase AC charger takes less than eight hours (100 volt single-phase would take a double)

The launch will be in late 2010 in Japan, the United States, and Europe, Nissan LEAF ushers in a new era of mobility – the zero-emission era

Source: Autoblog

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Technorati Tags: Electric car, Li-Ion, Nissan EV

Printable solar cells and battery

Vladan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:07:41 +0000

The printable solar cells are not new.

I already reported several times that Nanosolar has build the most advanced printing process for making solar thin film panels and that there had been some big investment made by french group EDF. This time I’ll show you that there is a Japanese research group has just begun developing lithium polymer batteries that can be mass manufactured by using roll-to-roll printing technology.

The research group responsible for the discovery is lead by the Japan-based Advanced Materials Innovation Center (AMIC) of Mie Industry and Enterprise Support Center (MIESC).

They showed a prototypes of two types of batteries:

One has an output voltage of about 4V at a room temperature
The other has an output voltage of about 2V.

The thickness of the battery is about 500?m, but there was no information about the capacity.

The sheet-shaped battery is expected to be used with a flexible solar battery or display and to be attached to a curved surface. If the battery is integrated with a solar battery formed on a flexible substrate, it is possible to realize a sheet that can be used both as a power generator and a power storage, AMIC said

The printed battery sheet is very thin and flexible (can be attached to curved surfaces) and designed for use with a flexible solar battery, a combination that could be both a power generator and power storage unit.

Source: Treehugger and TechOn

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Technorati Tags: Solar thin batterie, thin solar battery, thin-film

Harwesting power from Wifi spots?

Vladan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:05:40 +0000

This is what I call an great invention.

This little box can harvests an enerfy from WiFi signals out there in the air and then converts it into electricity. Airnergy is able to collect this electricity with a high efficiency.

Apparently, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.

What’s inside the box? The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. The big advantage over for example a solar chargers, even the most efficient, it is, that it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket.

Well, you need to have a Wifi signal close, but in the city centers there is not to worry about that. At home you for sure are having your little home network with wireless router, so just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.

The incredible is that RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after.

This could be a revolution for how we charge the gadgets we all carrying around.

And see the video if you don’t beleive:

Source: OhGizmo

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Technorati Tags: charge from Wifi, Energy from Wifi

Morgan Solar raised more funds

Vladan — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:13:24 +0000

The future of concentrated solar is Morgansolar’s

We already wrote about Morgan Solar’s new inovating technology here on this Website. You can see some more photos in this article too. It’s only with great satisfaction that we want to share some good news from Morgan Solar. Morgan Solar have increased their first-round investment to USD $8.2 million from the USD $4.7 million announced in October 2009.

Early manufacturing for testing and certification has already started at Morgan Solar’s facility in Toronto last year (2009). The first commercials products should be delivered to the customers during early 2010.

In the latest press release, Nic Morgan said that there has been other investors to go and rise funds. There had been some “Strategic investors participating in Morgan Solar’s first round are Iberdrola, the world’s largest renewable energy provider, and Nypro Inc., a global leader in injection molding and contract manufacturing with operations in 16 countries.”

Morgan Solar develops Solar Technologies since 2007.

The Sun Simba HCPV is a low cost, high efficiency solar panel designed for utility scale solar farms and distributed generation. “The most important goal for solar energy is to become competitive with other electrical generation technologies. Our view is that this can only be achieved with low cost, scalable, high efficiency solar panels,” said Nicolas Morgan, VP Business Development & Marketing at Morgan Solar. “The Sun Simba HCPV is our answer to this challenge. We’re bringing to market a next generation solar panel.”

This high efficiency, low cost concentrated photovoltaic solar panel uses a completely new type of optical concentration system – the Light-Guide Solar Optic (LSO).

Source: Morgan Solar

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Technorati Tags: Concentrated solar, Morgan Solar, solar concentrated, Sun Simba HCPV

Tiny Solar pannels developed and uses 100 times less silicion

Vladan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:37:22 +0000

Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed very small, tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could be the next revolution in the solar industry.

“So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity,” said Okandan. “Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term.”

The photovoltaic cells are efficient only about 14-15%, which is still a good average, but they use 100 times less silicon to be make so the economy is really great.

The cells are fabricated using microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques common to today’s electronic foundries.

Source: SNL

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Technorati Tags: Economic solar cells, Tiny solar cells

Mitsubishi i-Miev will be cloned and named Citroën C-Zero and Peugeot iOn

Vladan — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:18:03 +0000

Mitsubishi i-Miev is already in production and already in sales in Japan, but in Europe it will hit the shops only at the end of 2010. The small Japanese electric car will have a “clone” in Europe. Peugeot and Citroen had joined their forces and they are developing another motorization – hybrid – with diesel engine.

A great future.

At this moment those 2 companies are building ultra modern production plant in Russia. The japanese engineers are actualy working on different motorisation gasoline/electric. Peugeot and Citroen’s engineers are developing their hybrid solution based on diesel engine.

So there might be 2 solutions for a small hybrid car which will share the same chassis, but the engines will be different. It only depends of the customer in a different part of the worlds. In Europe and Asia or in North America.

With a cooperation like this it will be the customer who will benefit, because there will be more autonomy in a hybrid model than in only electric. So in this case it would be Mitsubishi which would provide the Li-ion batteries to the French companies and the on another hands the French companies would provide a little ECO diesel engine with ultra low consumption to complete the hybrid’s motorization.

Source: Le guide de l’auto

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SR Motor downscaled by Japanese profesor

Vladan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:36:45 +0000

Future electric motors build will be SR Motors.

The small-size SR motor was developed by Akira Chiba, professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Science.

The prototyped SR motor has the same size as the 50kW synchronous motor equipped in the second-generation Toyota Prius. Curently all produced Electric cars are equipped with a synchronous motor whose rotor is embedded with a permanent magnet.

But as the permanent magnets are getting more and more pricey (the price has doubled or trippled) because of higher demand, the future of SR Motors is now imminent.

Specifications:

Maximum torque of 403N·m
Efficiency of 86%
The torque density of the SR motor is 45N·m/L.

SR motors have a significant torque ripple, especially when operated in single-pulse voltage control mode. This is the price to pay for high efficiency. For many applications where the machine is operating at fairly high speeds, this is not a problem since the mechanical time-constant is far longer than the fast rates of change of instantaneous torque produced by the motor.

A four-phase 8/6 switched-reluctance motor is shown in cross section. In order to produce continuous shaft rotation, each of the four stator phases is energized and then de-energized in succession at specific positions of the rotor as illustrated.

There is some literature, if you want to get further….

Image source: here

Post source: Tech-On

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Technorati Tags: downscalled SR Motor, EV motor, Motor for EV, SR Motor

Nanoantennas to collect up to 92 percent of infrared wavelengths energy

Vladan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:48:14 +0000

The nanoantennas.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory believe that plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources could dramatically improve the use of a type of energy we are all aware of, but have no use for so far – heat.

The researchers studied the behavior of various materials — including gold, manganese and copper — under infrared rays and used the resulting data to build computer models of nanoantennas.

They found that with the right materials, shape and size, the simulated nanoantennas could harvest up to 92 percent of the energy at infrared wavelengths.

They said that infrared rays create alternating currents in the nanoantennas that oscillate trillions of times per second, requiring a component called a rectifier to convert the alternating current to direct current and today’s rectifiers can’t handle such high frequencies.

A nanoscale rectifier suited for this application in fact would need to be about 1,000 times smaller than current commercial devices and will require new manufacturing methods, according to the scientists.

“At this point, these antennas are good at capturing energy, but they’re not very good at converting it,” says INL engineer Dale Kotter, “but we have very promising exploratory research under way.” Kotter and Novack are also exploring ways to transform the high-frequency alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) that can be stored in batteries.

“Every process in our industrial world creates waste heat,” says INL physicist Steven Novack. “It’s energy that we just throw away.” Novack led the research team, which included INL engineer Dale Kotter, W. Dennis Slafer of MicroContinuum, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) and Patrick Pinhero, now at the University of Missouri.

Source: TGDaily

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Technorati Tags: nanoantennas, nanoscale rectifier, solar energy