THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for July, 2011

WiFi downloads can drain your laptop or smartphone battery more quickly when you’re in an area with heavy WiFi traffic. Here’s one solution.

WiFi downloads can drain a battery so fast it would put True Blood to shame, especially if you are using a smartphone or laptop in an area where other WiFi devices are lurking. Now a grad student at Duke University, Justin Manweiler, has developed software that enables your mobile device to sniff out other Wifi users nearby. Manweiler’s “SleepWell” system will put your device into a trance until your neighbors are finished downloading their latest episode of – well, True Blood or whatever, then arouse it whenever its turn comes up.

The WiFi Battery Drain Problem

Mobile devices run into WiFi problems when wireless traffic is heavy, because they have to take turns for downloads. While waiting for a turn, the devices stays in a waking mode. SleepWell simply enables the device to stay in a less power-hungry mode, until its turn comes up. The most obvious utility for the software is in urban areas, but it could also be a great help in rural and suburban college campuses, office parks, and other places where laptop users congregate.

Energy Conservation, Clean Energy and Cloud Computing

The era of the desktop plug-in is rapidly drawing to a close, at least as far as personal devices go, and with the advent of cloud computing the demands on WiFi services are going to continue to rise. With that in mind, software like SleepWell could have a significant impact on energy use patterns in the future. Extended battery life means more time between recharging, for one thing, and less use of electricity from centrally generated fossil fuel plants. It could also provide solar-powered laptops and other alternative energy forms with greater range and flexibility.

Image: Laptop keyboard by Baddog_ on flickr.com.

When we think of all the solar innovations, they seem relatively new, but some are older than many imagine. The solar cooker is one of these. In ancient times, the Romans used mirrors and glass that didn’t just give light to their homes and bathhouses, but also enabled them to create an oven. The major cities of Rome were often crowded and wood for fires was sometimes far away. The citizens still needed heat to make food, so they took a Greek idea of using glass to magnify heat and applied it to use as an oven. Our technology has progressed quite a bit since then, but the principle remains the same to use the energy of the sun.

Solar cookers are used worldwide. In parts of Africa, meals are prepared in them so people can enjoy a hot meal with no electricity. In the industrialized countries, ingenious engineering has made solar cookers even more interesting. With the prices of fossil fuels going up and seasonal weather making it wasteful to heat up the home, people are turning to the sun again to get their food cooked.

Using a microwave oven is more eco-friendly than a regular oven, but there are some concerns about the safety of the metals in the ovens. You don’t have this problem with solar cookers. There is also the matter of taste. Microwaves sometimes result in food tasting different than it would in a normal oven. Using a solar cooker allows food to taste nothing less than excellent. In fact, chefs are some of the solar cooker’s biggest fans. These are just a few of the reasons why solar cookers are a wonderful way to bring an ancient green practice into your life.

The energy saving potential of solar cookers shows. There are numerous ways to make one part of your lifestyle. Some can be made over the weekend for daily cooking or a summer cookout, such as the collapsible box one. Most homemade cookers are very inexpensive to make and last a long time. For those who can’t just open their garage door and find the space to store one, or simply do not have the time to make one, some of the leaders in green buildings manufacture solar cookers that can be used out of the home or even installed right in the home. The technology is very similar to that of a solar panel, such as the ones that Solatube make that are part of a regular kitchen. The technology continues to get better over time as well as more cost-efficient.

Green living is more than just green buildings, it is also about choices. When you make a good choice for sustainability, more options are opened. Solar cookers have lots of choices on what you can do. You can bake, steam, grill, and much more. You even have the choice of making your own cooker or getting one designed with state-of-the-art engineering. The solar cookers of our ancestors are able to be used in our own lives in these times too, so why not keep up the legacy and use them to make things better for us and our planet?

Image Source : EcoFriendlyDaily