Thin Film Solar Panels Are Here
This past weekend, Prometheus Solar founder Jim Corning demonstrated his proof-of-concept electric motorcycle at the Santa Monica AltCar Expo. The motorcycle is a reconstructed Ninja 250 that uses four solar panels which provide 800 watts of power combined.
We’ve written about Livermore, CA-based company Cool Earth Solar before. Now the company, which develops inflatable balloon-like solar concentrators, has announced that it is constructing a prototype plant in Livermore. Last week, I spoke to Cool Earth Solar CEO Rob Lamkin to get some more information on the upcoming project.
I’m a huge fan of Traditional Medicinals tea, so I’m pleased to learn that the company has just completed the largest solar powered tea factory on the planet. Traditional Medicinals’ 70,000 square foot Sebastopol, CA headquarters will use 1450 solar panels that generate 430,000 KWh of power— that’s 75 percent of the company’s total energy needs. The rest of the factory’s energy use will be offset by wind energy credits.
Climate science is a little bit like me and books: I can never get enough of them, and appreciate lots and lots of them. For climate science though, it’s a case of getting more and more data, from as many possible sources as humanly possible.
And now, thanks to Virgin Galactic, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be getting a bit more data to continue their never ending quest to understand planet Earth.
Motorists are cruising around Atlanta or waiting in long lines looking for gasoline. Many fueling stations have run dry, while others have extremely long lines. The result is fewer cars on the road and more carpooling. Many have unsettling feeling and are concerned as gas prices soar.
Hurricanes Ike and Gustav and Ike caused many refineries to be closed, affecting north Georgia, parts of Tennessee, and west North Carolina. Metro Atlanta has been particularly hard hit because cleaner fuel standards prohibit gas being diverted from other areas where supplies are more robust.
Gas prices have soared as a result from $3.75 per gallon on average in the Southeast just two weeks ago to $4.14.
Last week, E.ON Climate and Renewables officially opened its massive new wind farm in Roscoe, Texas. The site is now capable of generating an impressive 335.5 MW of electricity, a figure set to rise to 781.5 MW when the farm is completed in mid-2009.
When finished, the Roscoe site will become one of the world’s largest wind farms, boasting a total of 627 wind turbines capable of powering more than 250,000 of the state’s homes.
GoodCleanTech reports that the Sony Ericsson Greenheart Concept phone was spotted at a Sony event last week in Copenhagen. The phone will be an amalgam of “green” factors, including a bio-plastic shell, HTML-based manuals, a recycled plastic keypad and an energy-efficient charger that uses only 3.5 MW of power during standby.
Last week, I took a trip down to San Jose for West Coast Green, an environmentally-focused conference with an emphasis on sustainable building. One booth stood out from the crowd—Magnetic Air Cars, Inc.. The San Jose-based company claims that it is working on the world’s first fuel-less car.
Ice cream lovers of the United States, rejoice. Greenpeace and Ben & Jerry’s have teamed up to bring the first climate-safe ice cream freezer to the USA. The Greenfreeze refrigerator eliminates the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has 1,400 times the global warming impact of CO2.