Dell has just put the finishing touches on its latest green addition to the company’s corporate headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. Called a “solar grove”, the solar-powered parking lot not only produced carbon-free energy for the building, but is also ready to power plug-in vehicles — should any Dell employee currently be lucky enough to have one. From AutoBlogGreen,
The Solar Trees®, located in the Dell employee parking lot, will simultaneously shade 50 parking spaces and generate clean electricity directly from the sun. In an example of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology, the solar arrays also incorporate two Envision Solar CleanCharge™ solar charging stations utilizing Coulomb ChargPoint™ for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Photos can be viewed here. “Dell’s commitment to environmental sustainability is a beacon to organizations worldwide. We’re proud our Solar Trees® and CleanCharge™ solar charging stations can help serve as visible symbols of their environmental stewardship. The future of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles has arrived and our experience in solar innovation has allowed us to lead the market in the development of solar charging stations,” said Robert Noble, CEO & Chairman of Envision Solar.
The Solar Grove is expected to produce more than 130kW of clean energy. Check out the full press release here.
In what’s sure to give inane homeowner’s associations across suburbia hope, Dow Chemical on Monday announced a massive push into the solar shingle business – with a roll-out of their new integrated solar cells expected around 2011. Jetson Green delves into the benefits saying, “The POWERHOUSE Solar Shingle is made with CIGS photovoltaic cells in a proprietary shingle design. Roofing contractors won’t need any particular knowledge of solar array installations, and installations should be quick because conventional roofing shingles and Solar Shingles can be applied at the same time.”
Dow loaded their press release with some pie-in-the-sky numbers saying that they expect the solar shingle industry to potentially reach $5 billion by 2015, and $10 billion by 2020. Obviously, while not as efficient as their panel brethren, homeowners may find the aesthetics much more appealing. If costs can come down, perhaps Dow’s numbers might be on target. Then again, we’ve been dreaming about a solar suburbia for awhile now — and in the current economic shitstorm — such hopes might need to be delayed. Read up more on Dow’s announcement here.
Looking like something out of a science-fiction movie, the concept for a proposed algae farm and vertical garden on the outside of an old Boston historical building is drawing some big attention.
The pods, which are prefabricated and designed to be interlocking, contain algae-incubators on the inside and plants on the outside. The architects for the project would use the old Filene’s Basement site in Boston’s Downtown Crossing as a temporary home for research and biofuel production. The city planners, meanwhile, would have plenty of time to work through the red tape of zoning, financial, and legal webs for any permanent ideas. From the article,
The pods, which are used as incubators for growing algae for biofuel, can be configured in several ways depending on the needs of a given site. Individual pods can also be rented out by researchers for algae-based projects, according to Howeler Yoon. The spaces that form between the attached pods allow for planting and creating a vertical garden.
What do you think? Would you want something like this in your city? I think it’s a pretty wild project that might give us a glimpse of permanent vertical gardens in buildings years from now. For others, however, such a radical shift in architecture might be less than pleasing. Still, better to take advantage of something just sitting there, right?
We’ve seen plenty of solar-charger accessories for mobile phones and other gadgets, but this is the first one that appears to attach seamlessly. Created by product design firm MotionTouch for a company called Powcell, this solar-powered sleeve slides onto the back of a mobile phone handset and uses light to charge the unit. From the release,
The large solar panel provides the greatest surface area for light-capture and maximises the sleeve’s efficiency, including working in some ambient light conditions. And Powcell continues to charge its internal battery even when removed from the phone – so when reconnected it provides talk-time even if the device battery is exhausted.
Ahead of full production the sleeve has attracted considerable interest from major phone manufacturers, which have even approached Powcell about sleeves for future, yet-to-launch models of their phones.
Henry Powell, Client Director of MotionTouch says “Dispensing with the need for plug-in chargers makes Powcell a ground-breaking eco-product. And the ability to provide power for that crucial call, even when your phone is flat, makes it an essential accessory. We are very excited to have been so involved in this unique product that could change the future of mobile technology.”
We admit it’s a nice design — but some users will definitely be turned off by the added bulkiness; albeit minor compared to other options. The greatest leg-up here is the ability to have a backup battery source when you need it — and using clean energy to power your phone. It’s not for everyone, but it’s one of the best designed solar accessories we’ve seen yet.
Powcell expects to release the iPhone unit soon — with other phone models available shortly after.
If you’ve ever lived in or visited Ithaca, NY your probably familiar with the phrase “Ithaca is gorges”. It’s a funny little saying that gives a good indication of the region’s topography — hills, hills, and steeper hills. In fact, the inclines we have around here would make even Lance Armstrong break a sweat. So, it was with great expectation that I took advantage of an opportunity to review the IZIP Trekking Enlightened hybrid-electric bicycle from Currie Technologies. Could it be possible to bike to work and not immediately have to take another shower?
Read more »
Enjoy solar showers, but really want to be completely naked in the process? Unless you’re in a nudist colony, that option might be not available on a public beach. However, this innovative (and stylish) pop-up privacy tent from Guide Gear will hide your bits and bops while giving you a clean, hot rinse. The 6.5 lb tent is quick to setup and includes a 5-gallon PVC Solar Shower. Said one recent reviewer on Amazon:
Our family has always been more on the “minimal” side for car camping trips, but with my 23 year old daughter and her friends along on our recent trip, we needed a shower. We bought a Zodi water heater and this pop up shower tent. Great decision! The tent pops up in a second, nothing to put together and added almost no weight or bulk to our gear. The olive green material provided total coverage, blended nicely with the outdoor terrain, and had plenty of room for big guys. The 3 adjustments we made were adding a clip/clothespin to attach the shower head to the top, a chair right outside to hang towel and clothes (it cannot support much weight), and a large plastic pan to stand on. With those items, we had eight of us showering daily with no hitch.
That being said, you could also just go and jump in the nearest river. While this item is indeed handy, it may just be another piece of “baggage” that’s rather unnecessary when camping. To each their own, however — you be the judge.
Amazon via Ecofriend
Environmental Research Web recently posted “Calculating the real carbon footprint of vehicles“, an article by Mikhail V Chester and Arpad Horvath of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, which looks at the environmental impact of various forms of transportation (Planes, Trains, Buses and Automobiles) over their entire lifetime, to determine overall greenhouse gasses and energy used. The study includes vehicle manufacture, infrastructure, fuel, delivery of fuel and operation of the vehicle.
The energy usage numbers were simplified into MJ/PKT, mega-joules per passenger-kilometer-traveled. When looked at this way, many passengers riding a single vehicle, even if relatively inefficient, actually use less fuel each. 2 people riding an SUV (.9 MJ/PKT) can use less energy, per passenger, than 5 riders in a standard city bus (4 MJ/PKT); however, the numbers change once the bus is full (.5 MJ/PKT). Large Jet aircraft (1.4 MJ/PKT) compare quite favorably, simply because of how many passengers they can carry.
Energy consumption and GHG emissions per PKT (image from study)
My take-away from the article is that finding ways to share rides, rather than simply focusing on miles-per-gallon, can go along way toward conservation.
A PDF of the complete report can be downloaded from IOP Electronic Journals here. What’s your take?
I just came across this “Solar Tree” design from Gurdeep Sandhu and thought it to be a creative take on energy generation. As he explains,
With a little space in your backyard, installing this solar tree will not be a problem. During the day just wing-out the panels and let them absorb the glory of the sun; and in the evening fold them back. If you need to move house, just uproot it and take it along with you. Else if technology changes, you can even upgrade the panels for maximum benefit. Silent, efficient, cost effective are some of the virtues that sound music to my ears. What’s more you can either directly hook it up to appliance during the day or store the energy for later use. The sturdy metallic silver aluminum frame looks neat and tidy when packed up.
I’d love to see some big wheels on this thing to make it truly portable. I could see construction crews rolling these suckers off of trucks and using them to power machinery. Having them fold up easily and tuck away somewherer is definitely a plus — though I wonder how many people could benefit from a setup like this instead of one on their roofs.
More details available here.
I’m sure many environmentalists have passed power line towers while cruising in vehicles and wondered aloud, “Why can’t we just throw some wind turbines up there?” In fact, earlier last year, Ericsson unveiled the first-ever cell phone tower with a vertical-axis wind turbine integrated. If we can do it in cell phone towers, why not transmission towers?
That’s the question two architects and an engineer from France used as the starting point for their “Wind-It” concept — a a design to place wind turbines inside existing high-voltage electricity pylons. They’re also the winners of the 2009 Metropolis Magazine Next Generation Prize Challenge: “FIX OUR ENERGY ADDICTION.” $10K was given to the team to take their idea to the next level. From the article,
The team estimates that if a third of France’s high-voltage electricity towers were renovated with turbines, they could rival the power generation of two nuclear reactors, or about 5 percent of the country’s energy needs. “The genius of the proposal is that it solved probably the biggest issue of wind production,” says Alexandros Washburn, New York’s chief urban designer and a judge for the Next Generation competition, “which is where to locate these very large structures. By incorporating them into transmission towers, which are already located and of the same scale as wind towers, the idea of how it looks on the landscape is very cleverly integrated.”
Of course, there are some severe hurdles to conquer before such a project could even prove feasible.
The general consensus was that the adaptive-reuse model would be tricky to justify financially. Electricity towers aren’t built to accommodate wind turbines, so they would likely require structural reinforcement, which could be either simple or prohibitively complex. The turbines would generate nom-inal energy—enough to power anywhere from one room in a house to 20 houses a year depending on size and wind speeds. They’re also more expensive up-front than their propeller counterparts, in large part because there isn’t much of a market for them.
Still, the winners feel confident that integration could one day be possible — and we’re excited to hear of others pushing this idea to the next level. To read more on the winning design, jump here.
Remember that picture we had a few months back of a helicopter taking off of an enormous wind turbine? Yea, that 3.6MW behemoth today looks normal compared to this 6MW monster being installed in Germany. Apparently, it’s one of the two currently going up in the city of Hamburg. Huge — just huge.
via Gizmodo
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