Archive for February, 2008
« Previous EntriesForbes: The LED Illumination Revolution
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Forbes magazine lays out all the reasons why LED lighting may be here sooner than you think. While the current push is on for Compact Flourescent Lights (CFLs), the current state of LED lights provide much greater efficiency and durability, and don’t contain any mercury. While LEDs are now way too expensive for consumer use, [...]
Toyota unveils hot new hybrid sports car, the FT-HS
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Moth eyes may hold key to more efficient solar cells
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Physorg.com is reporting on a new process from Peng Jiang, an assistant professor at the University of Florida that looks to the structure of moth eyes for increased solar cell efficiency. Jiang method increases the amount of sunlight absorbed by reducing the amount of sunlight reflected. Jiang says that the current [...]
IBM measures the force needed to move individual atoms
Friday, February 22nd, 2008This isn’t specifically related to alternative energy, but I found it pretty cool. It potentially could have big ramifications for the nanotech field and might also lead to future semiconductors that use way less power than current chips. IBM researchers, in a press release, have announced that they are the first to measure the force it takes to move individual [...]
Solar Cell Directly Splits Water To Produce Recoverable Hydrogen
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008From Science Daily: While its only in the proof of concept stage, researchers at Penn State have developed a device that uses sunlight to split water and produce recoverable hydrogen. Right now its extremely inefficient, but the researcher team thinks they can get up to 10-15 percent efficiency. At higher efficiencies, it’s [...]
Suntech targets 1 gigawatt solar cell capacity by end of 2008
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008The solar cell manufacturer Suntech, said that they increased their PV solar cell manufacturing capability to 540 MW in 2007, and they expect to hit 1 GW of production capacity by the end of 2008. Suntech also expects to improve their gross margins and revenues during 2008 because they expect lower priced silicon to [...]
Utah to help property owners evaluate wind power
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Here’s what sounds like a good and useful thing that states can do to encourage alternative energy use. The Utah Geological Survey will lend wind-measuring anemometer towers to residents to help determine if their property can become a reliable source of wind power. Utah says that they will install either a [...]
UK trees spark wind turbine wrangle
Thursday, February 14th, 2008We all know we’re going to see many more of these stories – I told you about Neighbors in conflict over solar panels about a month ago. Now we have a couple of neighbors over in the UK fighting it out over a wind turbine and, as the wind turbine owner puts it, [...]
AutoblogGreen – Indian carmaker Mahindra to offer diesel-hybrid pickup/SUV in US in 2010
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008According to AutoblogGreen, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Indian carmaker plans to offer a diesel hybrid pickup truck in the US in 2010. If Mahindra does make that date, they will probably be the first production diesel hybrid pickup / SUV in the US. While there are some diesel hybrid buses [...]
Spire Corp wins patent to make better solar cells using nanotech
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008Spire Corp, a solar cell equipment maker, has just been awarded a U.S. patent for a nanophotonics technology that could result in more efficient low cost solar cells.
Spire’s method is a better way to design and synthesize quantum dot nanoparticles that are more consistent than those made with other methods. Quantum dots are nanometer [...]