Green News

[Mike]

This is a new post to contain all of the interesting 'Green Technology' news. There seems to be rather a lot of it running around at the moment from start up manufacturers to car manufacturers installing electricity generation devices on the exhausts of the car to take advantage of the 60% of heat that is wasted from the engine.

Austra gets $24 million of funding to build a couple of solar power generation stations in the US. Their operation will only be under threat if the Federal tax credits are not extended at the end of the year.

BMW and General Motors are looking at electricity generation from wasted engine heat. On a massive american car you can expect an improvement of 1 mile per gallon which does not seem much but you will get better performance from more efficient vehicles and everyone has to start small in then improve!

[Mike]

Cleanest Car in Beijing! part Mini Cooper (BMW) part rickshaw!

Hydrogen Powered Cars go on the road in the US. Partly to show that the technology is there and partly a protest about how few Hydrogen fuel stations there are in the country (62 - one opened on the morning of the article!). The protest is highlighted by the fact they need to be ferried by truck between the fueling stations when their Hydrogen tank is empty. This is despite Hydrogen being the most abundant element in the universe.

A Scientist is studying the environmental effects during Beijing's pollution turn off. It is probably one of the few times that the car, factory and emissions will be severely restricted for the effects to be studied. I wonder if they will notice a difference in the end?!

Finally - China is going to build a Green zero carbon city. That would be an interesting project to work on.

[Mike]

New cheaper process for the manufacture of solar photovoltaic (electricity generating) panels. It will hopefully bring the cost from £2k per panel down pretty quickly.

[Mike]

Scientist breaks world record for efficiency of solar cells and gain 0.1% efficiency over the world record. The panels can not achieve 40.8% conversion of sun energy to electrical energy. The nice thing about this research is that the solar cells are lighter and more flexible, perhaps more suitable for stitching into clothing so you can generate elec for your gadgets whilst out and about.

Two new solar generation plants are coming to California. They are set to generate 550mW/hour and 250mW/hour. Pretty cool, the shame is that by 2012 and 2013 (when they are due to be finished) the technology will have probably come on leaps and bounds making them relatively inefficient.

[mr_e]

The solar panel stuff is interesting, especially if you live in sunnier climes such as California. Unfortunately, California can't solar-power itself more water... those reservoirs were going down last time I read an article on the subject.

[Mike]

This is very clever as a team of scientists have managed to mimic photosynthesis to break sunlight down into Hydrogen and Water. It would be ace if your hydrogen car managed to photosynthesise its way around just using the power of the sunlight to produce hydrogen - you could also use the water for screenwash meaning even less waste. One of the major issues would be producing sufficient fuel from daytime to keep the car running at night, on and stopping the hydrogen tanks from over filling!

[Mike]

Nuclear Powered Ship! that was built in 1962 and operated for 10 years before being decommissioned in 1972. The nuclear plant was kept operational for a while longer but the nuclear fuel was removed but it is STILL being decontaminated of Nuclear waste They don't expect it to be 'clean' until 2011.

The time it has taken to clean the fuel away is frightening and was is worse we WANT to build more Nuclear power reactors in the UK?! WTF, forget asbestos Nuclear cleaning will be expensive clean up job of the 22nd century.

[Mike]

NanoSolar have raised another $300 million to boost production of their solar panel technology facilities. The article actually gives some insight into the technology behind solar panels too.

This company uses a photovoltaic-alternative known as copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), which purportedly convert more sunlight into energy than other types of thin-film materials.

I wonder what the 'other' version is? I am off to Wikipedia to find out!

[mr_e]

Providing the CIGS stuff is fairly environmentally friendly, more efficiency can only be a good thing. Especially if people are going to try to use them in the UK climate where there'll be a longer pay-back time than in California.

[Mike]

MIT have developed a virus based micro battery that can power anything from sensors to (potentially) cars! Very efficient and with a long life expectancy these cell sized batteries can be stamped on practically any surface. Cool!

[Mike]

Sharp have introduced a solar panel that is suitable to run a TV for 4.5 hours per day each year therefore making their LCD screen and Solar panel system carbon neutral. Woot. Since we don't generally watch 4.5 hours of TV a day it would be a great installation, if you wanted to fork out the £2000 per panel, plus installation, plus LCD tv purchase. . . .

I am still waiting for the day when the Government does something useful with their money and introduce incentives for 'selling' electricity to the grid like they do in Germany. In Germany they will actually buy elec for 10 cents a unit and sell it back at 5 cents a unit when required. This subsidy has lead to the biggest investment in solar technology in the world and is very successful.

[Mike]

Toyota are investing in green solar power to augment the diesel require to power cruise ships. In three to five years they are expecting to increase the efficiency of their diesel powered ships by 6.5%. This might not seem much but cargo ships burn 120 gallons of fuel per mile. That is shocking fuel efficiency. It will save an average of 48,000 gallons per trip from Japan to California! The Wired article also says German and Scandinavian tests have suggested that using sails the size of football pitches could improve efficiency by 35% and by slowing down 2 knots it would save about 6%.

[Mike]

Sort of an old story but unmanned ships roaming the earth spraying sea water into the atmosphere to combat global warming on a grand scale. Along with particle accelerator's and other such devices it does seem a little bit excessive. I wonder if that is what people thought about Railways when they were first invented. After all the horse and cart are a perfectly acceptable form of transportation!

[Mike]

Not had one of these for a while. How about a power generation system that could power 10,000 homes, would be 1.8 metres long, would only produce clean water as a by product and only need refueling every 10 years. Physorg is reporting that Hyperion is planning to produce 4000 of these devices every year from 2013. The best bit? (If the above is not enough) is that the cost is only $25 million or $2500 per home. I was pretty impressed. This is much better value for money compared with the other forms of nuclear power generation.

[Mike]

How to drive in a green and efficient manner

Main tips
- No sevre acceleration / breaking.
- Look ahead further so that you can let the gears gently slow the car and only break at the last minute.
- Don't ever coast in neutral.
- Keep the tires inflated at the correct pressure.
- Constant speed
- Imagine there is an egg on the accelerator and you don't want to break it! (Odd that one)