Archive for November, 2007
Google expands into alternative energy
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Google, which already gets some of its power from one of the largest solar power installations in the US, is going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a quest to lower the cost of producing electricity, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle. Their goal, according to Larry Page, Google [...]
Nanosolar update – winning awards and ramping up production
Sunday, November 25th, 2007It’s been awhile since I mentioned Nanosolar – the California based startup that is beginning to ramp up production of its thin film Powersheet at its two new plants in San Jose, California and Berlin, Germany. Nanosolar has just been awarded Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year and Greentech awards.
Nanosolar’s San [...]
Genetically altered trees may help create biofuel
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007The New York Times details how a researcher (Vincent L. Chiang) at North Carolina State University has developed a transgenic tree that contains only about 50% of the lignin of a normal tree. Less lignin is important to biofuel creation because lignin, which gives a tree its structural stiffness, also interferes with the [...]
Printing highly efficient organic solar cells
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007Its a very technical article, but if you can get past sentences like, “During the drying and subsequent annealing process, the solvent creates an optimum distance between the polymer and fullerene bulk heterojunction interfaces to achieve efficient charge separation of the formed exciton,” you’ll find that researchers at Konarka Technologies have been able to produce [...]
Google thinks green to power its business
Monday, November 12th, 2007Computerworld has a nice wrapup of all the different things that Google is doing to reach its goal of creating 50 megawatts of renewable generating capacity for its operations by 2012. From 9,212 solar panels covering eight rooftops at Google’s Mountain View, Calif headquarters to older flourescent bulbs with newer more energy efficient [...]
U.S. wind power installations to rise 63 pct in 2007
Sunday, November 11th, 2007The American Wind Energy Association says that the U.S. wind industry is on track to finish a total of 4,000 megawatts worth of installations in 2007. That’s enought to power about 1 million houses. The AWEA had previously said that they expected wind power growth to be about 33 percent.
Texas [...]
Camry: Head-turning hybrid has good performance
Friday, November 9th, 2007AOL Autos (by way of CNN) has a fairly indepth review of the new Totota Camry hybrid. They liked its looks – “Although not quite a Maserati Quattroporte, the Toyota Camry can do its fair share of head turning.”, its performance – “But as fetching as the Hybrid looks and as safe as it [...]
Up, up and away – the hydrogen car is here
Monday, November 5th, 2007The London TimesOnline reviews the Tokyo motor show that was held last week, with the announcement that Honda scooped them all by announcing it will be putting out the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell car into production next year – the FCX. The car will travel an estimated 270 miles at speeds [...]