U.S. Government Backs Concentrated Photovoltaics

A relatively new type of solar power called concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology is getting a $90.6 million boost in the form of a conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. The government backing will help with financing for a 30-megawatt facility near Alamosa, Colorado, which will be one of the largest concentrated-photovoltaics plants ever built.

The project is part of a surge in photovoltaic projects in the United States over the last few years. A total of 878 megawatts' worth of solar panels were installed last year, up from just 79 megawatts in 2005. This year total installation is expected to double 2010 levels, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. The industry is starting to approach the scale of the wind industry, which saw over 5,000 megawatts of capacity installed last year (down from over 10,000 the year before).
Concentrated photovoltaics is different from concentrated solar power, which is also known as solar thermal. In solar thermal plants, mirrors and lenses concentrate sunlight to generate the temperatures needed to produce steam that drives a turbine and generator.
In CPV, arrays of lenses are used to focus sunlight onto small solar cells. The concentrated light improves the efficiency of the cells and reduces the amount of expensive solar cell material needed to produce a given  amount of electricity. Amonix, the company that will be supplying the concentrated photovoltaic systems for the project, says its system can generate twice as much power per acre as conventional solar panel technology. It uses 23.5-meter-wide panels with more than 1,000 pairs of lenses and solar cells on each. The panels are mounted on tracking systems that keep the lenses pointed within 0.8 degrees of the angle of the sun throughout the day, to ensure that light falls on the system's 0.7-square-centimeter solar cells.
CPV accounts for a small part of the solar market now—just 0.1 percent. That's largely because it's newer than ordinary photovoltaic technology and has been more expensive; it's more complex, since the lenses have to precisely track the sun. Lowering the cost of CPV will require scaling up. The biggest CPV plants built so far have been in the range of one or two megawatts, while the largest flat-panel plants are 85 and 92 megawatts.
Some analysts expect the CPV market to more than double every year through 2015 as more companies scale up production. At least one other company, Soitec, is planning a 200-megawatt CPV plant in the next few years.

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The Eco-Friendly Toilet Tech at One World Trade Center

At the top of One World Trade Center (the Freedom Tower) in New York City, workers are quickly building one floor after another—they're now up to about 60 stories. When nature calls at 60 stories up, workers typically use the familiar portable toilet, with its blue deodorizing chemicals. But at the Freedom Tower, workers are going green: They're using composting toilets so that all that waste doesn't go to waste. PM dons a hard hat and steel-toe boots to show you how it works.

As workers build the Freedom Tower's skeleton, they work on a steel platform that moves up as the structure gets taller. And as the tower gets taller, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to shuffle toilets around. So instead of going with the standard Blue Bowl, the Freedom Tower has become the first major construction site to use composting toilets.

"What we're doing now [with portable toilets] is extremely unnatural," says Don Mills from Clivus Multrum, a company that wants to make toilets more eco-friendly. In nature, the nutrients and energy within human waste mix with soil and become plant food. But normal toilets don't capture those nutrients; instead, they dump sewage into oceans and waterways. Composting toilets get rid of waste in a more natural way, producing a rich soil in the process.

The biggest difference between a composting toilet and a normal one, as maintenance guy Dominick Venditti points out, is that before you sit down to use one, you have to hit a button that makes a foam ooze over the toilet bowl. "And when you're done, you flush it again," he says.

The foam comes from a computer at the back of the toilet, which mixes a soapy substance with about 1 tablespoon of water for each flush. It's a huge water-saver: By comparison, the average toilet uses 3 to 5 gallons per flush.

In a separate room below the restroom, the toilets empty into a green plastic tank that's about the size of a hot tub standing on end. The tank is halfway full of sawdust and worms. "And they're red wigglers, just like you would go fishing with," Venditti says. The worms wriggle through the sawdust, processing the waste. The urine collects at the bottom.

The urine gets pumped to a boiler, along with runoff from the hand-washing sinks. The boiler evaporates the water away, leaving nothing behind but a residue of salts, sugars and other gunk. Between the worms and the evaporator, the volume of the waste gets reduced by 90 percent. "We've only got about an inch of sludge in here, and it's been collecting for over a year," Venditti says. "So unless we start servicing Ringling Brothers, we should be fine."

And that's the way it'll remain until the Freedom Tower is finished in a few years. But for the men and women straddling the steel beams in rain, snow or sunshine, the composting toilets have another benefit. Says one worker: "It's wonderful that it's heated in the winter and cold in the summer. Just picture the worst situation imaginable and multiply it by five, and that's the normal situation. It's nice up there, and it helps the environment. I feel like I'm really doing my part by going to the bathroom."

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Brammo To Make Electric Motorcycles That Feel More Like Gas-Powered

Today, electric motorcycle makers Brammo revealed that the company will add new electronic transmission technology, and a redesigned motor, clutch and gear shift to its lineup, that will make its motorcycles perform more like their gas-powered predecessors.

The first incorporation of this technology into the company’s product lines will be into Brammo’s new, not-yet-in-production Engage and Encite dirt bikes and racing bikes.
The electric transmission was created by SMRE srl, an Italian engineering company, which agreed to give Brammo an exclusive, global license on this technology earlier in the week according to Brammo chief executive officer Craig Bramscher.

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Hybrid Solar Panel Generates Hot Water and Electricity

While solar-thermal flat panels are proficient at delivering hot showers, their ability to keep the lights on has been a little dim.
Currently, solar-thermal flat panels absorb sunlight to heat water and generate thermal energy, but they don't produce much electricity.
However, researchers from Boston College and MIT recently reported that, by introducing two innovations, they were able to increase the efficiency of solar-thermal flat panels by seven to eight times, as well as generate a sizable amount of electricity.

First, the team created a better light-absorbing surface made from a nanostructured material. Second, they placed the material within an energy-trapping, vacuum-sealed flat panel.
By combining the two innovations, the scientists were able to enhance the flat panel's electricity-generating capacity, said Boston College Professor of Physics Zhifeng Ren, co-author of a report published in the journal Nature Materials.
"We have developed a flat panel that is a hybrid capable of generating hot water and electricity in the same system," said Ren. "The ability to generate electricity by improving existing technology at minimal cost makes this type of power generation self-sustaining from a cost standpoint."
These new advances potentially promise more cost-effective solutions for converting solar energy into electricity. According to Ren, this should greatly impact the rapidly expanding residential and industrial clean energy markets.
"Existing solar-thermal technologies do a good job generating hot water. For the new product, this will produce both hot water and electricity," said Ren. "Because of the new ability to generate valuable electricity, the system promises to give users a quicker payback on their investment. This new technology can shorten the payback time by one third."

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Salty Solution for Energy Generation, Green Energy

The difference in salinity between freshwater and saltwater holds promise as a large source of renewable energy. Energy is required to desalinate water, and running the process in reverse can generate energy. Now a novel approach based on a conventional battery design that uses nanomaterials could provide a way to harvest that energy economically.

The new device, developed by researchers at Stanford University, consists of an electrode that attracts positive sodium ions and one that attracts negative chlorine ions. When the electrodes are immersed in saltwater, they draw sodium and chlorine ions from the water, and the movement of the ions creates an electrical current. The electrodes are recharged by draining the saltwater, replacing it with freshwater, and applying a relatively low-voltage electrical current, which draws the ions back out of the electrodes. When the freshwater is drained, the electrodes are ready to attract more ions from the next batch of saltwater.
"It is the opposite process of water desalination, where you put in energy and try to generate freshwater and more concentrated saltwater," says Yi Cui, a materials science and engineering professor at Stanford University and the study's lead author. "Here you start with freshwater and concentrated saltwater, and then you generate energy."
Cui's group converted to electricity 74 percent of the potential energy that exists between saltwater and freshwater, with no decline in performance over 100 cycles. Placing the electrodes closer together, Cui says, could allow the battery to achieve 85 percent efficiency.
A power plant using this technology would be based near a river delta where freshwater meets the sea. Drawing 50 cubic meters of river water per second, Cui says, a power plant could produce up to 100 megawatts of power. He calculates that if all of the freshwater from all of the world's coastal rivers were harnessed, his salinity-gradient process could generate 2 terawatts, or approximately 13 percent of the energy currently used around the world.
Such wide-scale use, however, would seriously disturb sensitive aquatic environments. "I think you would only be able to utilize a very small fraction of this or it would be an ecological disaster," says Menachem Elimelech, director of the Environmental Engineering Program at Yale University. Elimelech says it would be necessary to pretreat the water to remove suspended material including living organisms. Such processing would require energy, add costs, and itself seriously disturb the ecosystem if done on a large scale.

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Pint Sized Energy Harvester Captures Big Vibrations

If good things come in small packages, then an energy harvesting device smaller than a penny must be really great.
Electrical engineers at the University of Michigan think so -- they've built a device that can harness energy from vibrations and convert it to electricity with five to ten times the efficiency and power of similar devices in its class. And it can fit on the end of your thumb.

One of the system's developers and chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalil Najafi said in a university press release, "In a tiny amount of space, we've been able to make a device that generates more power for a given input than anything else out there on the market."

Specifically designed to covert the cyclical motions of factory machines into energy, this new vibration energy harvester will be used to power wireless sensor networks that will, in turn, monitor machines' performance and alert operators about any malfunctions.
Sensors currently used to do this job, although they are considered "wireless" because they transmit information over a wireless network, are still tethered to a power source plug or battery, drastically increasing their installation and maintenance costs.
Researchers say the device's self-contained, truly wireless power system will help cut those costs and increase its longevity.
"To be able to use the energy you harvest you have to store it in a capacitor or battery. We've developed an integrated system with an ultracapacitor that does not need to start out charged," said Najafi.
The packaged system operates at a vibration frequency to that which you might feel if you placed your hand on top of microwave oven while warming-up leftovers. When exposed to those kinds of vibration, the new harvester can generate more than 200 microwatts of power.
These devices, in theory, could be left in place for 10 or 20 years without regular maintenance. "They have a limitless shelf time, since they do not require a pre-charged battery or an external power source," said Erkan Aktakka, one of the system's developers.

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lifetime costs and footprint of commercial frying

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for large vat commercial fryers. These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants— to make french fries, hush puppies and anything else Paula Deen would promote, in bulk.
Encouraging the industry to upgrade to more energy-efficient fryers could help reduce the overall environmental (if not health) impact of kitchens in the U.S. catering to the collective appetite for fried foods, an appetite that seems pervasive, and permanent here. One Texan cook, Mark Zable, has even invented a method to make deep-fried beer.

According to a press statement and calculations by the EPA:
” If every large vat fryer in the [country] met the new Energy Star requirements, energy cost savings would increase approximately $81 million per year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from nearly 95,000 cars.”
The lifetime costs and footprint of commercial frying goes beyond the electricity and gas that it takes to run kitchen equipment, of course. Certain vegetable oils are more sustainable than others. Spent grease, and even vegetable oil, can become a pollutant unless disposed of properly.
Many food businesses are opting to give or sell their spent grease to biofuel producers, these days, thankfully.
Bon Appétit Management Company — which provides sustainable food in cafes at SF Giants stadium, eBay, Oracle, Google and college campuses including U-Penn, Duke and MIT — has been doing this for years, in collaboration with local biofuel companies like Kelley Green Biofuel for example.
This month (as Tilde Herrera reported for Greenbiz.com) U.S. Foodservice went so far as to acquire a “grease diesel” company, WVO Industries. The foodservice business will begin to power its truck fleets with their own spent cooking oil, allowing them to avoid the rising costs of gasoline here.
Ultimately, foods that are sautéed, boiled, toasted, roasted or prepared raw will prove better for the body and planet than deep-fried with rare — no pun intended — exception.
There is no official carbon footprint label for food here, but a sustainability blogger and small business owner in Germany, Peter Graf (not to be confused with Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP) has shared some rough calculations via his blog Ecofriendly-Company.com. He wrote:
“The path from potato to french fry takes 9 steps.The potatoes are…
1. Steamed and peeled,
2. Cut
3. Blanched
4. Dried
5. Par-fried
6. Cooled
7. Frozen
8. Transported
9. Stored frozen
Then, they’re fried in hot oil in the canteen and served. All this transforms a single kilo of potatoes (140g CO2) into a real climate-killer (5700g CO2).”

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Rooftop Solar, more energy with less cost

A startup called TenKsolar, based in Minneapolis, says it can increase the amount of solar power generated on rooftops by 25 to 50 percent, and also reduce the overall cost of solar power by changing the way solar cells are wired together and adding inexpensive reflectors to gather more light.

The tenKsolar RAIS PV module with its ground-breaking Cell Optimizing technology is the only flat plate PV module capable of efficiently harvesting reflected light. Other solar panels depend on uniformly distributed light to balance the cells in the system. They can only make as much electricity as their least productive cell. This means that shading or adding extra light to a cell creates a problem for conventional panels. However, tenKsolar RAIS modules integrate the light across the entire module surface and turn it into power. Because of proprietary Cell Optimizing internal to the module, spots of shade, soiling, even physical damage to a portion of a module will have minimal impact on the individual module or array output.
In addition to the gains made by added light, a tenKsolar system operating in real-world conditions converts module power to grid electricity at about 92% efficiency, as compared to conventional solar at less than 80%. By decoupling internal cell dependencies to ensure cells are operating at their intrinsic MPPT under all environmental and lighting conditions (versus overall module MPPT), a tenKsolar system increases inverter efficiencies, tolerances to non-uniform soiling, improves system availability and reduces annual degradation. No other architecture including micro-inverters nor external DC optimizers – is competitive with the system level optimization of the RAIS architecture and Cell Optimizing design of the RAIS module.

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Renewable energy for computation

Researchers at Cambridge University want to put data centers in places so remote they aren't on any power grid. Their models indicate that moving data-hungry computation to places such as scorching deserts, windswept peaks, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean—all rich in sunlight and wind energy—could allow this otherwise unharvestable energy to do useful work.

In a paper to be delivered at the 13th annual HotOS conference in May, the authors offer an extreme model of how cloud services could incorporate remote data centers powered only by renewable energy. Their scenario sites one solar- and wind-powered data center in the desert of southwest Australia and a second one in Egypt, on other side of the planet. This placement is no accident: putting them in different hemispheres, on opposite sides of the earth, maximizes the solar and wind energy they can harvest.
One catalyst for such a radical rethinking of how data centers can be sited and powered is the increasing availability of advanced fiber-optic networks.  Connecting a remote renewable-energy plant to a power grid remains prohibitively expensive, reasoned the researchers working on this project—Sherif Akoush, Ripduman Sohan, Andrew Rice, Andrew W. Moore, and Andy Hopper—but running fiber-optic cable to such a plant would be relatively easy and cheap.
"We envisage data centers being put in places where renewable energy is being produced and you could never economically bring it back to heat a house," says Andy Hopper, senior author on the paper and head of Cambridge University's computer science department. "But you could lay a fiber and use energy that is otherwise lost, in that it's not economically transportable." One way to think of the underlying principle, he notes, is that it's easier to move bits (made up of photons) than electrons.
Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and consulting professor at Stanford, cautions that a number of real-world factors could render the Cambridge team's hypotheticals invalid. While data centers are costly, Koomey explains, the value they create is so far in excess of those costs that anything that reduces their effectiveness would reduce their net benefit to society.
"If the actions you take to save costs would also cut into the number of computations that you can then deliver, you'll reduce economic benefits from data centers, and that's presumably not what the authors had in mind," says Koomey.
Hopper, however, points out that the larger effort of which this paper is a part—the Computing for the Future of the Planet project—takes it as a given that more computing is always good, because the virtualization of goods and services displaces more energy-intensive activities in the physical world. He says that a system like the one he proposes would be implemented only at either "no cost to overall performance [of a cloud computing system] or at an attractive cost to performance."

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Greening the Fleet

ALTe Powertrain Technologies, the Michigan developer of a range extended electric powertrain, has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to form a joint venture with Inmatech, Inc., a leading developer of advanced supercapacitors, to produce and sell hybrid electric storage (HES) devices composed of batteries, supercapacitors and control electronics. The blend of supercapacitors with lithium ion battery cells will enable longer life for the battery cells while reducing cost by as much as 40% for an equivalent size battery composed exclusively of lithium ion cells. The applications will range from automotive batteries to stationary grid power leveling devices.

To assist in bringing the HEV devices to market, ALTe and Inmatech have submitted grant applications through various federal funding agencies including the Department of Energy. Initial feedback has been very positive and the projects are now being evaluated by government technical specialist teams. Should the grants receive final approval, the JV will be able to accelerate product development and production operations to facilitate sales in early 2014.
“We are very pleased to be entering into a relationship with Inmatech, as we will be able to provide the best battery solution for our customers while opening new opportunities to expand our business to further supply the automotive industry’s growing need for advanced electric powertrain equipment,” said ALTe Founder, Chairman and CEO, John D. Thomas. “We view this initial response from the Department of Energy as an important testament to the potential of this relationship and the value of the technology we are developing,” he said.
Stefan Heinemann, President & CEO of Inmatech, declared “ I am thrilled to launch into the JV with ALTe as it will accelerate our plans to bring this novel material based supercapacitor to market, offering dramatic cost savings to the industry with very high energy density.”
ALTe’s Range Extended Electric Powertrain will replace standard V-8 engines, retrofitting into existing fleet vehicles as well as in “glider” applications of new vehicles to increase their fuel economy by up to 200% and lower emissions. Most recently, ALTe announced a partnership with Manheim, the world’s leading automotive reselling service, to create installation centers for fleet conversions across the country.
The company will be announcing its first fleet customers in the coming months, and ALTe’s electric powertrain system will be installed in commercial and government fleets beginning next year.
About ALTe:
ALTe is the developer of a Range Extended Electric Powertrain used to repower light commercial vehicles up to 26,000 GVW. The system will retrofit into existing fleet vehicles as well as in “glider” applications of new vehicles to dramatically increase their fuel economy and lower emissions. Designed to replace a base V-8 internal combustion engine powertrain, the system’s patented technology improves fuel economy from 80% to 200%. Based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the company is headquartered in an 185,000 square foot facility where it will assemble its powertrain kit that will be shipped to installation locations across North America

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Lend To Carbon-Cutting Entrepreneurs With Kiva's New Green Loan Program

Chances are, you've at least heard of Kiva, the microfinancing nonprofit that allows users to give bite-sized loans to entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken regions. Because people like to feel good by offering cash to worthy causes (or so we've heard), Kiva has done exceptionally well, funding $200 million worth of microloans since its launch in 2004. And as of today, you can specifically fund what are, in our opinion, the smartest entrepreneurs--the ones who realize that efficiency is the key to becoming self-sufficient. It's called Kiva Green Loans.

There are two pieces of the new Green Loans category: lenders can now click on the Green Loans box on Kiva's "Lend" page to find entrepreneurs who want money for a myriad of efficiency-related efforts (i.e. creating organic fertilizer, buying renewable energy-generating devices, and converting vehicles to run on electricity or biofuels), and Kiva's field partners--the microfinancing institutions that partner with the site--will be allowed to raise more money on Kiva if they provide loans for energy-efficient technology.
"When we talk to people [about switching to energy-efficient technologies], one of the issues is financing.  More people might buy a Prius if the financing is 0% APR. It's the same kind of dynamic that plays out with low income households," explains Premal Shah, President of Kiva.org.
One of the 60 entrepreneurs that debuted in the Green Loans section today is Andrew Kipsang, a Kenyan businessman who leases Solio solar chargers to members of his rural community. He has been nicknamed "Bwana Stima," or Mr. Electricity. Another is Maylen Parisan, a Filipina food vendor who wants a solar lantern to cut fuel costs and extend her working hours.
There are a number of reasons why these kinds of loans make sense. "The Internet community is willing to channel money, it's just more patient, lower-cost, and risk-tolerant capital," says Shah. "If the Internet funds [Green Loans] quickly, it will send a signal that there is demand to fund loans in this category which will in turn change behavior around the world."
That's a good thing--pollutants from dirty fuels (i.e. charcoal and kerosene, which are commonly used indoors) are responsible for killing over a million people each year. On a more selfish note, encouraging entrepreneurs in the developing world to switch to clean fuels cuts down on carbon emissions, which is great news for carbon-hungry nations like the U.S. We can't afford other countries spewing emissions at the same rate as us.

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Battery Harvests the Energy of Estuaries

Renewable energy exists in the most unusual places. For example, in coastal estuaries, where fresh water rivers meet up with saltwater seas, the difference in salinty can represent about a kilowatt of free energy for every liter of water.
Scientists in Standford University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering have developed a new battery that taps into that electrochemical energy. The team says their "mixing entropy battery" could potentially supply 13 percent of the world's energy needs.

The battery itself is quite simple, consisting of one positive and one negative electrode. The idea is to alternately flush river water and sea water through the battery. Both kinds of water contain charged particles called ions, but seawater contains 60 to 100 times more ions than freshwater. When freshwater and its ions are flushed out and replaced with seawater, the battery produces a charge. The scientists estimate that a power plant built near an estuary could potentially produce up to 100 megawatts.
The scientists state the mixing entropy battery's simple fabrication offers a practical solution and shows potential as a future source of renewable energy. The process for generating electrical energy can also be reversed to remove salt from sea water to produce drinking water. Currently the team is modifying the battery for commercial use.

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MIT Researchers Use Viruses To Build More Efficient Solar Panels

Teams of viruses can help build better solar panels by ensuring nanoscale components behave properly, according to a new study. MIT researchers say their virus-assisted breakthrough could improve solar panels’ energy conversion efficiency by one-third.

Scientists already knew that carbon nanotubes, rolled-up sheets of graphene, could improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Ideally, the nanotubes would gather more electrons that are kicked up from the surface of a PV cell, allowing a greater number of electrons to be used to produce a current.
But there are complications — carbon nanotubes come in two varieties, functioning either as semiconductors or wires, and they each behave differently. They also tend to clump together, which makes them less effective at gathering up their own electrons. MIT researchers found that a certain bacteria-attacking virus called M13 can be used to make things go more smoothly.
M13 has peptides that bind to the carbon nanotubes, keeping them in place, MIT News explains. Each virus can grip about five to 10 nanotubes each, using roughly 300 of the protein molecules. The viruses were also genetically engineered to produce a layer of titanium dioxide, which happens to be the key ingredient in Grätzel cells, a.k.a. dye-sensitized solar cells. (These cells use TiO2 instead of silicon, and their inventor, Michael Grätzel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, won the Millenium Technology Prize for them last year.) This close contact between TiO2 nanoparticles helps transport the electrons more efficiently.
The viruses also make the nanotubes water-soluble, which could make them easier to incorporate into PV cells at room temperature, lowering manufacturing costs.
Graduate students Xiangnan Dang and Hyunjung Yi, MIT professor Angela Belcher and colleagues tested this method with Grätzel cells, but they say the technique could be used to build other virus-augmented solar cells, including quantum-dot and organic solar cells.
They also learned that the two flavors of nanotubes have different effects on solar cell efficiency — something that had not been demonstrated before. Semiconducting nanotubes can enhance solar cells’ performance, but the continuously conducting wires had the opposite effect. This knowledge could be useful for designing more efficient nanoscale batteries, piezoelectrics or other power-related materials.
The virus-built structures enhanced the solar cells’ power conversion efficiency to 10.6 percent from 8 percent, according to MIT News. That’s about a one-third improvement, using a viral system that makes up just 0.1 percent of the cells’ weight.

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Earth Day organizers call for "a billion acts of green"

The annual effort to raise public awareness about the environment and inspire actions to clean it up marks its 41st anniversary on Friday, coinciding with the Christian Good Friday and Judaism's celebration of Passover.
In an effort dubbed "A Billion Acts of Green," organizers are encouraging people to observe Earth Day 2011 by pledging online at act.earthday.org/ to do something small but sustainable in their own lives to improve the planet's health -- from switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs to reducing the use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals.

"Millions of people doing small, individual acts can add up to real change," said Chad Chitwood, a spokesman for the umbrella group coordinating efforts.
There will be hundreds of rallies, workshops and other events around the United States, where Earth Day was born, and hundreds more overseas, where it is now celebrated in 192 countries.
In the United States the activities range from the premiere of the new film from the director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (it's called "Revenge of the Electric Car") at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to a discussion about creating a green economy in 12 cities along the Gulf Coast, where this time last year residents were reeling from the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the years since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 the environmentalist movement made great strides with passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other groundbreaking laws.
But the bipartisanship that marked the birth of Earth Day -- it was sponsored in Congress by a Wisconsin Democrat named Gaylord Nelson and a California Republican named Pete McCloskey -- is often missing in discussions about environmental policy today.
Efforts to fight climate change by regulating greenhouse gases, for instance, face fierce resistance from many Republicans and members of the business community, who dispute the science supporting global warming and warn new rules to regulate emissions will kill jobs and raise energy costs.

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Study Finds Solar Panels Increase Home Values

All those homeowners who have been installing residential solar panels over the last decade may find it was a more practical decision than they thought. The electricity generated may have cost more than that coming from the local power company (half of which, nationwide, comes from burning coal), but if they choose to sell their homes, the price premium they will get for the solar system should let them recoup much of their original capital investment.
That is the conclusion of three researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who looked at home sales — both homes with photovoltaic systems and homes without — in California over an eight-and-a-half-year period ending in mid-2009. The abstract of their study states, “the analysis finds strong evidence that California homes with PV systems have sold for a premium over comparable homes without PV systems.”
The premium ranged from $3.90 to $6.40 per watt of capacity, but tended most often to be about $5.50 per watt. This, the study said, “corresponds to a home sales price premium of approximately $17,000 for a relatively new 3,100-watt PV system (the average size of PV systems in the study).”
And the bottom line: “These average sales price premiums appear to be comparable to the investment that homeowners have made to install PV systems in California, which from 2001 through 2009 averaged approximately $5/watt.”

If the California findings can be extrapolated nationally, it would mean that the owners of 139,000 homes can collect a premium at resale time. For those who promote photovoltaic systems, it is a second line of defense against the argument (and reality) that the initial cost of installing the solar means using it for many years before the savings on electricity are enough to pay back the investment.
But there is a caveat. Homeowners who install solar on existing houses get nearly three times the premium of homeowners whose house came with solar panels. The study speculates about the reasons, suggesting that “new home builders may also gain value from PV as a market differentiator, and have therefore often tended to sell PV as a standard (as opposed to an optional) product on their homes and perhaps been willing to accept a lower premium in return for faster sales velocity.”

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Green Materials: Plastic, Heal Thyself

Scientists on Thursday unveiled a new kind of plastic that can repair itself when exposed to ordinary light.
The miracle material could extend the lifetime and improve the durability of dozens of polymer-based products, ranging from common household items such a bags and storage bins to inner tires and expensive medical equipment, the researchers said.

A polymer is a large molecule, or macromolecule, made up of identical structural units linked through chemical bonds forged when atoms share electrons.
Tough, rubbery plastics are today found in thousands of consumer goods, but the materials used are highly vulnerable to damage caused by scratches, cuts and punctures.
Landfills are full of plastic objects discarded because they broke, cracked or leaked, sometimes causing safety hazards.
Most approaches to healable polymer-based materials require heating damaged areas and applying patches.
Scientists led by Christoph Weder of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio took another tack, creating a self-healing rubbery material containing metal that absorbs ultraviolet light and converts it into localized heat.
"What we have developed is essentially a new plastic material composed of very small chains that stick together and assemble into much larger chains," said co-author Stuart Rowan, also of Case Western.
"But what we have designed into the molecule is the ability to disassemble on exposure to light. When it disassembles the material flows into the crag and the system gets healed."
The study, published in Nature, shows that using light in this way has advantages over direct heating, such as pinpoint targeting of the damaged area, and repairing objects that are still carrying a stress load.
Smart materials with an in-built ability to repair damage caused by normal wear-and-tear could prove useful in transportation, construction, packaging and many other applications, the researchers said.
"Healable polymers offer an alternative to the damage-and-discard cycle, and represent a first step in the development of polymeric materials that have much greater lifespans than currently available," Nancy Sottos and Jeffrey Moore, researchers at the University of Illinois, said in a companion commentary.
But several hurdles remain before the proof-of-concept study can be translated into industrial-scale production, they said.
Many polymers are plastics, but other natural and synthetic materials also fall into the same category.
Synthetic polymers include artificial rubber, neoprene, nylon, PVC, polystyrene, polyethylene and silicone.

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Thin-film solid-oxide fuel cells suitable for practical devices

Startup company SiEnergy Systems has overcome a major barrier to commercializing solid-oxide fuel cells with a prototype that operates at temperatures hundreds of degrees lower than those on the market today. Working with Harvard materials science professor Shriram Ramanathan, SiEnergy Systems, based in Boston, has demonstrated a solid-oxide fuel cell that can operate at 500 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the 800 to 1,000 degrees required by existing devices. This allows the cell, which uses a thin-film electrolyte mechanically supported by a metal grid, to be much larger than similar devices fabricated before—on the order of centimeters in area, the size needed for practical applications, rather than micrometers.

Solid-oxide fuel cells, which can run a variety of fuels including diesel or natural gas, bring in oxygen from the air to be reduced at the cathode, and then pass the oxygen ions through a solid-oxide electrolye membrane to the anode, where the fuel is oxidized to produce electrons that are drawn out of the device. Their high operating temperatures are dictated by the fact that the ions move more quickly through the electrolyte at higher temperatures.
If the electrolyte is very thin—just a few hundred nanometers thick—a solid-oxide fuel cell can operate at lower temperatures. Such electrolytes can power very small demonstration devices, but until SiEnergy and Ramanathan's work, no one had been able to make an ultrathin solid-oxide membrane large enough for practical devices, says Harry Tuller, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. "The challenge has been that the films, being so thin, are fragile and easily tear during processing or during heating and cooling cycles," says Tuller. When heated and cooled, the different materials of which they are made expand and contract at different rates, damaging the delicate film. "We and others have tried to support the films by one or more structural supports," he says, "but have not succeeded in doing so over as large an area."
In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers describe making an electrolyte membrane that is more stable both thermally and mechanically. They started with a 100-nanometer-thick electrolyte membrane made up of zirconia and yttrium. They deposited a supportive metallic grid on top of it, to hold the membrane in place while it was heated and cooled and, since the grid was made of conductive material, to act as the anode. They combined this with a dense, high-performance cathode previously developed by Ramanathan. In their published work, SiEnergy has demonstrated arrays of fuel cells each about five millimeters square. Ramanathan says the method can be scaled up to the centimeter-scale areas needed for devices.
SiEnergy's general manager, Vincent Chun, says this is just a first demonstration and the company is now working on integrating the thin fuel cells into full systems and testing fuels. Chun hopes the company's fuel cells will save on materials costs because they are so thin.Chun says the company plans to offer replacements for diesel generators and home heating and power-generation systems.

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New discovery could lead to cheaper and more efficient solar power

A new discovery about the magnetic fields of light by University of Michigan researchers could lead to a new way of producing solar power that doesn’t require the use of semiconductor solar cells.
The discovery, which overturns a hundred years of scientific theory that assumed the effects of light’s magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored, could result in a cheaper way to produce solar energy.

Traditional solar energy requires manufacturing solar cells that need extensive semiconductor processing. In contrast, this new process would eliminate that expense by using glass, which is already made in bulk and wouldn’t require nearly as much processing.
The glass would be fitted into lenses that focus light into higher intensities not produced naturally and would use fiber to guide it, according to a report from the university.
Researchers said the new technique could achieve 10 percent efficiency in converting solar power to usable energy, which is equivalent to today’s commercial-grade solar cells.

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Want to Save Fuel? Fly a Kite

The blue-hulled vessel would slip by unnoticed on most seas if not for the white kite, high above her prow, towing her to what its creators hope will be a bright, wind-efficient future.
The enormous kite, which looks like a paraglider, works in tandem with the ship's engines, cutting back on fuel consumption, costs, and carbon footprint.
"Using kites you can harness more energy than with any other type of wind-powered equipment," said German inventor Stephan Wrage, whose company http://www.skysails.info/ SkySails is looking for lift-off on the back of worldwide efforts to boost renewable energy.

The 524-square-foot (160-square-meter) kite, tethered to a yellow rope, can sail 1,640 feet (500 meters) into the skies where winds are both stronger and more stable, according to the 38-year-old Wrage.
The secret to the kite's efficiency lies in its speed and computer-controlled flight pattern.
The idea is for the kite to describe figures of eight, which increases airspeed, said Wrage, who has been working on the new technology for 10 years and who still enjoys flying kites on the beach for fun.
"If you double the airspeed you multiply the energy by four. That's the secret of the system," he added.
A new 3,229-square-feet (320-square-meter) kite, recently produced, "has a towing force of 32 tons, which is more than what two engines on an A320 Airbus (aircraft) can produce. So we're not talking toys," he said.
The kite towing the 285-foot-long (87-meter-long) ship Theseus would produce a maximum of 16 tons of thrust in perfect wind conditions.
Retailing at U.S. $715,000 to $1.3 million (half a million to one million Euros), the kites allow fuel savings of 15 to 25 percent depending on wind and shipping routes, said Wrage.
The strongly built kites are best suited for slow moving ships, such as bulk carriers and tankers, which do not exceed 15 to 16 knots and which ply windy trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific routes, according to SkySail engineers.
Customers could recoup their money within two to six years, depending on bunker fuel prices, shipping routes, and types of carrier, they added.
But the company, with funding of U.S. $68 million (47 million Euros) mostly from venture capital investors, has struggled to stay afloat.
"When I started SkySails, the oil price was at 21 dollars (a barrel) so everyone thought I was totally nuts. We were laughed at a lot," explained Wrage.
Then the economic downturn badly hit shipping.
To date, only five kites are in commercial use around the world.
"It has been a tough time for us," Wrage acknowledged.
But the economic recovery -- along with rising oil prices -- is fuelling new interest in this new "green" technology, not only from ship-owners, but from large trading companies eager to advertise efforts to reduce carbon footprints.
But not everyone in the shipping industry is convinced.
The system "isn't suitable for most fast-going container ships," said Max Johns, a spokesman for the Association of German Ship-owners.
"The system works but has proved difficult to use, with expensive kites being torn, and all this at a time when the industry is suffering a severe downturn," added Johns.
The kite, he suggested, will likely be just one of many systems introduced over the coming years to help slash fuel expenditure, which currently accounts for 60 percent of shipping costs.
Uwe Hollenbuch, an expert on resistance and propulsion at the Hamburg center for ship research agreed, saying wind propulsion "won't play much of a role for now."
Ship-owners believe "they can achieve savings by using larger ships travelling more slowly" rather than banking on the right wind blowing, said Hollenbuch.
"I don't think we'll be going back to wind power," said Uwe Bruemmer, a sea captain now in charge of inspection at the German heavy lifting shipping company SAL, which operates a 16-strong fleet.
"We've looked at the kite, but it wouldn't be worth it," he added.
"To use this sail you need at least six to seven knots of tail wind and you only find this rarely, and only on certain routes," the captain said.
The sail could be used in regions where monsoons winds blow regularly "for example in the Indian Ocean or off the Somali coast where pirates are now active.
"But in such places we can't allow ourselves to go slower. You have to get through as fast as possible.”
For now, "we are concentrating on reducing fuel consumption by reducing engine power to 90 or 80 percent", says Bruemmer, who is pinning his hopes on the development of gas-powered turbines.

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The Greenest Car You Never Heard Of

The greenest car you've likely never heard of will soon be hitting Honda showrooms across the United States as the Japanese automaker expands sales of its compressed natural gas-powered Civic.
Honda has been quietly winning green car awards for more than a decade as it cautiously introduced the Civic GX first to government and business fleet owners and then retail customers in a handful of test markets.
The nationwide retail launch set for this fall comes as U.S. President Barack Obama pushes for wider adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles -- including mandating that all federal cars will need to run on alternative, hybrid or electric power by 2015.

Potential customers could also be lured by substantial cost savings as oil prices climb amid tensions in the Middle East and natural gas prices fall in the wake of major new discoveries in the United States.
But the Civic GX enters a crowded field where new plug-in hybrid and fully electric cars -- the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf -- are grabbing headlines and zippy new compact cars offer competitive fuel economy.
Honda's goals are relatively modest -- doubling sales to around 4,000 vehicles in the first year of national sales while Nissan is hoping to hit annual U.S. sales of 20,000 Leafs -- but it still thinks the GX can compete.
"We're asking the GX purchaser to make far fewer sacrifices than any other alternative fuel vehicle," Eric Rosenberg, who heads Honda's alternative fuel vehicle program in the United States.
"When you compare it to the Volt or Leaf, it's the most affordable, it has the best range and it has the quickest refill."
The GX can drive up to 250 miles (403 kilometers) on a single tank and only takes a few minutes to fill at public or home fueling station.
The Leaf has a range of 62 to 138 miles (100 to 222 kilometers) depending on road conditions and takes 30 minutes to partially charge at a quick-charge station and seven to 20 hours using a standard 220 or 110 volt outlet.
GM's Volt can drive 25 to 50 miles (40 to 80 kilometers) on its battery before switching over to a gasoline-powered engine and takes four to ten hours to charge.
Honda's GX is also the cleanest car on the U.S. market, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy which looks at a vehicle's total environmental impact.
That's because natural gas is a clean-burning fuel. It consists primarily of methane and emits about 30 percent less carbon dioxide and 70 to 90 percent less smog-forming particulates than gasoline.
Electric cars may emit nothing from the tailpipe, but they have a significant carbon footprint because 45 percent of US electricity is generated by coal. Their batteries also carry a heavy environmental toll.
Realtor and property manager Irma Vargas bought her first Civic GX in 2006 to save on fuel costs and get access to carpool lanes -- a perk that can cut a 90-minute commute in half in congested Los Angeles.
"Me and my business partner bought it and were going to take turns with it because it was a new idea," Vargas said in a telephone interview.
"We found that we were fighting over it, so he ended up getting the next year's model."
Vargas sold the GX to an employee so she could upgrade to a new model in 2008 and has convinced four of her friends and customers to buy one as well.
She figures she's saved thousands of dollars on fuel costs -- she can fill her GX at home for about a dollar a gallon while it costs nearly four dollars a gallon to fill her Lexus hybrid, which she saves for long trips and big shopping excursions.
But it will be years before the GX or electric cars are sold in sufficient numbers to make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions, cautioned Lonnie Miller, an analyst at auto research firm R. L. Polk.
"If you look at the traditional batch of gas-electric hybrids, it's 2.6 percent of all U.S. new vehicle registrations," he told AFP.
"CNG (compressed natural gas) and electric, they're not even registering."
It took six years for U.S. consumers to embrace hybrids, which require only a few tradeoffs like a higher initial price tag and limited trunk space.
Like fully-electric cars, the Civic GX requires a much bigger trade off.
While owners can fuel up at home with relatively cheap unit called "Phil," long-range trips are essentially out of the question because there are only about 870 public fueling stations in the entire country.
The cost and environmental advantages of compressed natural gas will nonetheless help boost global sales by 9.1 percent a year to 3.2 million vehicles in 2016, according to a recent report by green tech consulting firm Pike Research.
The biggest growth -- 25 percent a year -- is forecast in the United States, fueled primarily by sales to corporate and government fleets which typically operate their own fueling stations.

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Digital Lumens Closes $10 Million To Bring Smart, LED-Lighting To The Industrial Market

Digital Lumens, leading developer of LED-based Intelligent Lighting Systems, today announced that it has secured $10 million in Series B funding and a new working capital line of credit.  The round has full participation from the Company’s current investors — Black Coral Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Stata Venture Partners — bringing total funds raised to $25 million since the Company’s inception.  Silicon Valley Bank is providing the working capital line of credit.
“We are delighted to support Digital Lumens as it enters this next stage of growth,” said Jon Karlen, General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners.  “The Company has rapidly taken a leadership position in the intelligent lighting market with an innovative, systems-based approach and superior products that are meeting customers’ needs, while revolutionizing the economics of industrial lighting.  We see such compelling opportunities for Digital Lumens that, while outside interest was strong, the existing investors opted to expand our commitment instead.”
Digital Lumens will use this latest round of capital to expand sales and distribution internationally, further product development, and strengthen its position as the leader in LED-based intelligent lighting for industrial customers.
“The rapid adoption of the Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System by large industrial customers is the best evidence of our products’ value,” said Tom Pincince, President and CEO of Digital Lumens.  “Customers are locking in major energy savings and reducing load on their utility partners — all because of the Digital Lumens approach to energy-efficient lighting.  We look forward to bringing intelligent lighting into new markets, and are very pleased that our investors are actively supporting our expansion.”
Proven to reduce industrial facilities’ lighting energy use by up to 90% and improve light levels, the Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System is redefining the industrial lighting market with LEDs and an intelligent, systems-based approach to lighting.  Customers to-date, which include Americold, United States Cold Storage, Maines Paper and Food Service and others, are lighting millions of square feet of new and upgraded space with the Digital Lumens system

The Intelligent Lighting System
Designed for large warehouses, manufacturing and other industrial facilities, the Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System integrates LEDs, controls, networking and reporting into a single solution that leverages system-wide intelligence to reduce customers’ energy costs.  The system includes:
•Intelligent Light Engines (ILEs), high-performance, LED-based fixtures for highbay and midbay applications that feature a broad range of control and dimming capabilities, and form a wireless mesh network to communicate with LightRules.
•LightRules lighting management software is an intuitive, web-based interface for managing the lighting system.  It collects detailed energy consumption and occupancy details from the ILEs, which it presents in standard and customizable charts so that facilities managers and engineers can understand a facility’s lighting patterns and optimize lighting delivery.
The ILEs have been named ‘recognized winners’ in the 2010 and 2011 Department of Energy’s Next Generation Luminaire competition, and are listed on the DesignLights Consortium’s Qualified Products List (QPL).
Source: digitallumens

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Concrete source: MIT scientists turn the concrete jungle green

The word "concrete" is not much fun to say out loud. It actually sounds like a cold, hard, grey word.
The substance itself is even dull. Not even its assured place in the history books of the Roman Empire make it a less than sexy subject from the bystander's point of view.
Let's face it - concrete is boring. Most of us recognise it instantly, when we see hideous flats and offices from the 1960s and 1970s, that for a brief moment were the cutting edge of architecture.
So, with our expectations completely lowered, it's time to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known better as MIT.
"Concrete is a relatively inexpensive. It's a forgiving material - it can be mixed by ordinary labourers, and used in climates ranging from the South Pole to the tropical mid part of the Earth. It can also get hard under water."

Environmental impactBut all that comes at a price to the environment. Thirty billion tons of concrete are manufactured globally each year.
The way that concrete is mixed is very simple says Professor Ulm.
"It's made out of cement. Cement is basically limestone and clay. Cement is then mixed with water to form this ubiquitous material which shapes our landscapes and cities."
This process of combining of water, cement paste, sand and rock creates an awful lot of ozone-depleting CO2 gases - about five to 10% of the world's total emissions.
MIT wanted to see whether this could be lowered. After all, it has a habit of making giant steps from the tiniest of changes - so tiny in this case, it was invisible to the human eye.
Despite its availability all over the world and its ease of use, the molecular structure of concrete had remained elusive for decades. In particular one part of it - calcium silicate hydrate - refused all attempts to be analysed under an electron microscope or by nano-indentation.
"Calcium silicate hydrate does not reveal its secrets easily." says Professor Hamlin Jennings.
"It's partly amorphous; it contains a lot of water, which evaporates, and the structure changes. So what you see in an electron microscope, which requires a vacuum, is substantially different from what is naturally there."
So the scientists turned to their laptops, and using cutting-edge computational mathematics, modelled the concrete on the screen at a molecular level.
In 2009, after three years of almost constant hard-drive rotation, all the atoms fell into place in a nice colourful stable pattern on the monitor.

Test subject But don't look for green concrete at the local hardware shop quite yet.
Optimistically, the first structures to use the new technology are five years away from construction. MIT's job is done, but that job is only to provide a "proof of concept".
It's up to the worldwide building industry to take the new concrete and pour it through its paces.
The compound will be pulled, pushed, squeezed, frozen, flattened and smashed until it begs for mercy from government regulators and industry panels.
Only when it can prove itself in the real world will it be allowed to claim the title of "most used material anywhere in the world" from its very close cousin.
How our world could change is also not something that MIT really ponders too much.
Their inventive phase will undoubtedly lead to a compelling innovative phase far from the Cambridge-based campus. But it's not hard to imagine all the possibilities, good and bad.
Fewer potholes on the roads? Fewer road works and traffic jams? Huge real-estate savings by companies and governments? And what will happen to the number of construction workers?
Longer-lasting buildings mean fewer workers, but higher buildings and longer bridges made with the new tougher cement paste might mean more jobs.
Nothing, as they say, is written in stone - or concrete.

Source: BBC

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Google Invests in World’s Largest Solar Power Tower Plant

Google has just sealed a deal to invest $168 million in a Mojave Desert solar energy plant.
The investment is going to BrightSource Energy, a company that developes and operates large-scale solar power plants, specifically to fund its Ivanpah project.
Ivanpah is a solar electric generating system that uses solar thermal technology and “an environmentally responsible design,” according to the project’s website, to deliver reliable, clean and low-cost power to Californians.
The plant will generate energy with a technology called power towers. Mirrors, called heliostats, are arranged in an array and aim the sun’s rays at a receiver atop a tower. The receiver generates steam; the steam causes a turbine to rotate; the rotation causes a generator to generate electricity. Because such large quantities of solar energy are being directed to such a small area, the power towers are very efficient.
The power tower at Ivanpah will be around 450 feet tall. The plant will use 173,000 heliostats, and each heliostat will have two mirrors, making Ivanpah the largest project of its kind.
Construction at Ivanpah should be completed in 2013. Here’s a video from the plant’s groundbreaking ceremony:


Google’s been on something of a clean energy investment kick over the past year or so. The company was granted the ability to buy and sell energy as a public utility last February, ostensibly to find better ways to power its own massive data centers.
A short time later, Google began making significant investments in green energy technologies. The company sealed a $38 million wind farm investment in May, bought 20 years’ worth of wind farm energy in July, and provided a substantial investment for a huge offshore wind farm in October.
Rick Needham is Google’s Director of Green Business Operations. On the company blog, writes, “We hope that investing in Ivanpah spurs continued development and deployment of this promising technology while encouraging other companies to make similar investments in renewable energy.”

Source: Mashables

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New Car Engine Sends Shock Waves Through Auto Industry

Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine.
However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines.
The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.
Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems.
Last week, the prototype was presented to the energy division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is backing the Michigan State University Engine Research Laboratory with $2.5 million in funding.
Michigan State's team of engineers hope to have a car-sized 25-kilowatt version of the prototype ready by the end of the year.
Source: Discovert Tech

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Batteries that Recharge in Seconds

A new way of making battery electrodes based on nanostructured metal foams has been used to make a lithium-ion battery that can be 90 percent charged in two minutes. If the method can be commercialized, it could lead to laptops that charge in a few minutes or cell phones that charge in 30 seconds.
The methods used to make the ultrafast-charging electrodes are compatible with a range of battery chemistries; the researchers have also used them to make nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the kind commonly used in hybrid and electric vehicles.

How fast a battery can charge up and then release that power is primarily limited by the movement of electrons and ions into and out of the cathode, the electrode that is negative during recharging. Researchers have been trying to use nanostructured materials to improve the process, but there's usually a trade-off between total energy storage capacity (which determines how long a battery can run before needing a recharge) and charge rates. "People solved half the problem," says Paul Braun, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Braun's group has made highly porous metal foams coated with a large amount of active battery materials. The metal provides high electrical conductivity, and even though it's porous, the structure holds enough active material to store a sufficient amount of energy. The pores allow for ions to move about unimpeded.
The first step in making the cathodes is to create a slurry of polymer spheres on the surface of a conductive substrate. Because of their shape and surface charge, the spheres self-assemble into a regular pattern. The Illinois researchers then use a common technique called electroplating to fill the space between the spheres with nickel. Next, they dissolve the polymer spheres, and most of the metal, to leave a nickel sponge that's about 90 percent open space. Finally, they grow the active material on top of the sponge.
"It's some distance to a product, but we have pretty good lab demos" with nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion batteries, says Braun. The Illinois group has made lithium-ion batteries that charge almost entirely in about two minutes. The method should be applicable to the cell sizes needed for laptops and electric cars, though the researchers have not made them yet.
Braun acknowledges: "There are lots of people coming up with elegant [electrode] structures, but manufacturing them is tricky." He says, however, that his fabrication process combines existing methods that are currently widely used to make other products, if not to make batteries, and that it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt them. The process would add extra steps to making a battery, but these steps aren't particularly expensive or complex, Braun says.
Braun's group will next test the electrode structure with a wider range of battery chemistries and work on improving batteries' other half, the anode—a trickier project.
Source: TechnologyReview

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Google to invest in German solar power plant

Today, we agreed to make our first clean energy project investment in Europe - a €3.5 million (ca. $ 5 million) investment in a solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Germany. The transaction still requires the formal approval of the German competition authorities and is subject to other customary closing conditions.
The recently completed facility is located on 47 hectares (116 acres) in Brandenburg an der Havel, near Berlin. The power plant has a peak capacity of 18.65MWp, which puts it among the largest in Germany.
Google is always looking for new ways to encourage development and deployment of renewable energy across the world. This facility will provide clean energy to more than 5,000 households in the area surrounding Brandenburg. Until the early 90’s, the site was used as a training ground by the Russian military.
We’re glad it has found a new use!

We agreed to jointly invest in this project with the German private equity company Capital Stage, which brings strong experience in the German photovoltaic and renewable energy market. Germany has a strong framework for renewable energy and is home to many leading-edge technology companies in the sector. More than 70% of the solar modules installed in Brandenburg are provided by German manufacturers.
After investing in clean energy projects in the U.S., we’re excited about making our first investment outside of the U.S. in Germany, a country that has long been a global leader in clean energy development.
Source: googlepolicyeurope

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Quantum Dots as Solar Cells

The key to using silicon in electronic devices such as transistors and solar cells lies in doping, or adding in small quantities of other elements, to create an excess of electrons (n-type) or positively charged holes (p-type) that change the material's conductivity. N-type and p-type silicon are butted together to form p-n junctions, the basic building blocks of electronic devices such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and transistors.

For years, researchers have tried to do something similar with quantum dots, tiny semiconductor crystals a few nanometers in diameter. Now, a team of Israeli researchers has reported success. They have doped indium arsenide quantum dots to create n-type and p-type materials. The advance, published in the journal Science, could lead to new types of efficient, cheap, and printable thin-film solar cells.
Quantum dots hold promise for low-cost solar cells because they can be made using simple, inexpensive chemical reactions. Scientists have calculated that quantum dots could be used to make thin-film photovoltaics that are at least as efficient as conventional silicon cells, and possibly more efficient. The higher possible efficiency is because nanocrystals made of certain semiconductors can emit more than one electron for every photon absorbed. Plus, tweaking their size and shape changes the colors of light they absorb.  "We could tune the nanocrystal absorption to match the solar spectrum," says Uri Banin, a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who led the new work.
Source: TechnologyTeview

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Device Harnesses Wind Power from Passing Trains

When you think of wind power, you think of giant turbines harnessing big breezes. But industrial designers in China have developed a device that can capture the wind created by trains as they whoosh down the track. The "T-Box" device is installed between railroad ties and buried half-underground so as to not interfere with normal train operation. As the train passes overhead, the whooshing wind spins a turbine inside the T-Box to generate electricity.

Creators Qian Jiang and Alessandro Leonetti Luparini say that 150 T-Boxes could be installed along a kilometer (0.62 miles) of railway or subway track to take advantage of the otherwise wasted wind resource.
A train travelling approximately 125 mph would produce a wind speed equivalent to almost 50 feet/second. The T-Box would capture this wind, it's turbines producing about 3,500 Watts of power. If the train was about 656 feet long, travelling around 187 mph and passing over that 1 km (.062 miles) stretch, the T-Box could produce about 2.6 kilowatts of power.
The device could potentially provide electricity to remote and underserved areas or to facilities along the railway.
Designers say the turbine in based on models manufactured by Hetronix, with blades rotating about a central axis inside the T-Box's cylinder housing. Much of the device would be below ground, with only the vents exposed to let in the wind
The T-Box's design won a silver medal in last year's Lite-On Awards and was exhibited last summer at the Xue Xue Institute in Taipei, Taiwan.

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Solar Power Brings Night-Time Soccer to Kenya Slum

Solar lighting donated by China-based Yingli Green Energy is helping Nairobian youths play soccer after the sun goes down.
It is eight in the evening and amateur teams of youngsters drawn from one of Nairobi's toughest slums are locked in a five-a-side soccer match.
Normally they would have gone home long before dark to avoid the unsafe night-time streets of Mathare. But that was before the stadium became the first in Kenya to get solar-powered floodlighting, an incentive to stay on.

"We have already begun to see the changes. There is a big turn-out of teams who want to use the pitch for training in the evenings," said Stephen Muchoki, manager of the Mathare Football for Hope Center.
The development is a direct legacy of the first football World Cup in Africa held in South Africa last year: governing body FIFA afterward chose 20 African groups to house a Football for Hope Center to promote the sport, as well as health and education.
One was the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) to which the new solar lighting system was donated by China's Yingli Green Energy Holding Company, quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
On top of the extra four hours of light a night provided by the new system, football players welcome the chance to practice away from the glare of the powerful equatorial sun.
"During the day, the sun is too direct but at night it is (now) easy to see the ball without straining," said 16-year-old Edwin Ivusa, a Kenya under-17 international who aims to enter the national team in five years.
"Training at night is good for our fitness," added striker Kevin Irungu, a former ball boy. "We run a lot -- always on the ball -- and we don't get tired."
"I didn't think I would ever have a chance to play in a field like this. But the center has made us believe in ourselves and think we can do even better and that good things will come," he said.
Muchoki expects the newly flood-lit pitch to attract more players, and also to be rented out for events to raise funds for the association.
"We are targeting kids between the ages of eight to 18 and also the retired former players who are too busy in the offices during the day and want to train at night," he said.
MYSA was founded in 1987 and prides itself on having transformed the lives of more than 20,000 Kenyan youths living in the slums through training drills and courses ranging from football coaching to life-saving.
"These drills are very educative because they touch on every aspect of the daily life in the slum areas. They require a lot of concentration and skills from the participants," said games coordinator Robert Chege.
Programs are based on those of Streetfootballworld, a non-profit Berlin-based organization which uses the sport to promote development and gender and social equality in disadvantaged areas.
The Mathare association has a strong showing in ranks of street football -- a low-budget version of the game that can be played barefoot in the street without referees -- and dominated the previous two street football World Cup competitions in Germany in 2006 and South Africa in 2010.
Alongside its sport training, it runs programs on HIV/AIDS education and organizes clean-up groups to help prevent the spread of disease in Mathare, which is a collection of mud and corrugated iron shacks without sanitation or infrastructure.
Its pick as one of FIFA's "20 Centers for 2010" was a boost for its years of work. This center as well as ones in South Africa, Mali and Namibia have progressed well and are already hosting young sportspeople.
The Mathare stadium is the only sports facility in Kenya with a floodlighting system outside the two stadia in Nairobi -- Nyayo National Stadium and the Moi International Sports Center, Kasarani -- which are powered by the national grid.
Source: Discovery

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Coulomb and Nissan Europe Complete Compatibility Testing for New European ChargePoint Station and LEAF Interoperability

Coulomb Technologies is the leader in electric vehicle charging systems and application services, with the ChargePoint Network now operating in 14 countries, and Network Operations Centers in the U.S., London, and Hong Kong. The ChargePoint Network first went live in January of 2009. Coulomb provides a vehicle-charging infrastructure, with an open system driver network: the ChargePoint Network provides multiple web-based portals for Hosts, Fleet Managers, Drivers, and Utilities, and ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations ranging in capability from 120 Volt to 240 Volt AC charging and up to 500 Volt DC charging.

Coulomb Technologies, the leading electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions provider, announced the expansion of the ChargePoint® Network with advanced networking features specifically designed for the European market. The ChargePoint Network now supports the popular MIFARE-based transportation card that facilitates interoperability amongst different European energy supplier charging networks, making driver roaming possible. The family of ChargePoint Network compatible charging stations also now includes the ChargePoint CT2500, one of the first Mode3/Type 2 electric vehicle charging stations awarded the KEMA-KEUR safety certification mark for compliance with IEC 61851.
Coulomb’s ChargePoint Network is the world’s largest charging network supporting thousands of charging stations and EV drivers. The ChargePoint Network comprises stations installed throughout Europe including Ireland, England and the Netherlands, with more than 100 stations currently in use in the City of Amsterdam. Station owners, including energy suppliers and municipal governments, can now offer drivers: faster charging, flexible billing, email and text message alerts, 24/7 driver assistance, and compatibility with all new electric vehicles.
Additionally, Coulomb announced it has completed compatibility testing with the Nissan LEAF at the Nissan Technical Centre in England. The Nissan LEAF is expected to be on the streets of Portugal, Ireland, UK and The Netherlands in early 2011 and will be able to charge at any ChargePoint charging station in Europe. Coulomb’s CT2500 was one of the first public Mode 3/Type 2 charging stations to successfully test charging compatibility with the Nissan LEAF at the Nissan Technical Center in November 2010.
“We are proud to expand ChargePoint Network’s reach further into the European market,” said Bret Sewell, Executive Vice President at Coulomb. “The introduction of these new stations helps support EV adoption in Europe, and the ChargePoint Network enables energy suppliers to deliver EV charging services to drivers, bill customers, and provide driver support, while cost effectively and remotely managing their charging infrastructure.”
Source: coulombtech

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OpenStudio Visualizes Energy Use in Buildings

Look around you. Odds are, you are indoors reading this story using a computer or mobile device, perhaps sipping on a favorite cup of coffee. If you are indoors at this moment, you're draining energy from one of the largest consumers of energy in the U.S. — a building. Together, residential and commercial buildings account for a staggering 40 percent of energy use in the United States. However, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is developing a suite of tools to tame this energy beast — and it is free to anyone who wants to use it.

Whether retrofitting existing buildings or designing new buildings, energy modeling is a core component to changing a building from an energy guzzler to an energy sipper. "It's much cheaper to run an energy model than it is to build the wrong building or do the wrong retrofit," said NREL Senior Engineer Nicholas Long.
DOE's EnergyPlus is a powerful simulation engine that provides comprehensive building energy modeling. NREL is working to add tools to EnergyPlus, via its OpenStudio Application Suite, to improve overall functionality and make EnergyPlus easier to use.
"OpenStudio uses open source code so if someone wants a feature that we don't have the time or the funds to write, there are two options," Goldwasser said. "First, they can write that code and submit it to us. We look at it and decide if it gets accepted and works with what we want. Another option is for them is to use an API [application programming interface] and 'plug-in' to our software and write applications without changing our code."
Source: NERL

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