THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for January, 2010

Apple has filed for two patents using powerline networking and the HomePlug standard so that users can manage the energy consumption of their home electronics.

While other companies–Google and Microsoft–are focusing on a whole-home solution, Apple’s patent focuses on the consumption by gadgets and computers. The device would make every power outlet in your home a conduit for audio, video and data. Goodbye wifi dead-spots! Any device could have access to high speed internet.

A hardware device would control the amount of power used by the various electronics within a household. Using the HomePlug Powerline Alliance’s communications protocol, devices would share data over a building’s existing wiring. Outlets and junction boxes would also have power-enabled data ports.

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Hydrovolts, Inc. has been going at clean hydrokinetic power hammer and tongs with a mini-turbine called the Flipwing.  The company is specializing in drawing sustainable energy in the form of hydropower from existing canals and other waterways where the current is predictable.  The Flipwing is a self-contained device similar in concept to the paddlewheel on a steamboat, but it is submerged in the water and tethered to a site.  Depending on the site it can generate from one and 20 kilowatts, enough to fill small scale power needs.

The key to the Flipwing and other hydrokinetic turbines is simple.  Instead of relying on water pressure, hydrokinetic turbines operate on the energy of the available current.  That means no need to construct dams, weirs, or other infrastructure that disrupts waterways and habitat.  We’ve covered Hydrovolts before in this site before and now it seems the company is poised to explore new territory.

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The people who live in Detroit could really use some good news after taking the hardest landing as the Age of Oil clunkered to a close. A massive homesteading retrofit program to bring free energy from sunshine would be just perfect.

In 2007, Michigan’s Governor Granholm had instigated one of the most progressive climate targets of any state in the US, to achieve an EU Kyoto Accord level of greenhouse gas reduction of 20% below 1990 by 2020.

To get there, she set out a combination of renewable energy incentives that make solar roofs in the nearly abandoned city a slam dunk, and which could bring out-of-pocket costs down to as little as $6,000.

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Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven Laboratory are all abuzz over a new bit of evidence that could help the U.S. save a good chunk of the energy that is currently lost through power transmission lines.  The DOE estimates that the nation’s antiquated transmission and distribution systems together were losing about 9.5% as of 2001, and things haven’t gotten any better since then.

The Brookhaven breakthrough involved evidence that electronic liquid crystal states can exist within a high temperature superconductor.  In practical terms, that means that it may be practical to develop power lines that lose no power at all.  There’s a long way to go before the rubber hits the road on this one, though.  The next step is to see if the material maintains its capabilities in real conditions that can be applied to the Smart Grid of the future.

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All of this infrastructure could be out of commission in a century. Nearly all the infrastructure in Dubai could be underwater by 2100.

Up to 85% of the population and 90% of the infrastructure of coastal zones throughout the UAE is at risk from climate change, a new study by researchers from the Stockholm Environment Institute finds in: “Climate Change - Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation in UAE.”

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