Oct 17
Seattle is considering the idea of using waste heat from data centers to heat itself, funnelling energy from gigantic server rooms into a new district heating system to keep people warm.
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Oct 16
New York City’s iconic (and sometimes terrifying
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Oct 14
Solar power is fantastic, sure. But while the tech behind solar panels is zooming forward
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Oct 08
Nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun, could provide us with limitless cheap energy—but experiments to date have always used more power than they created. Now, though, researchers have apparently tipped that balance, making fusion a real possibility.
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Oct 05
If you’ve ever been in a grade school science class, you probably know that the electrolytes in potatoes generate a small amount of electricity when connected to zinc and copper electrodes. So is it possible that with enough potatoes wired together, you could provide enough energy to power your entire house?
Well, the guys over at Movoto don’t know the scientific answer, but at least they’ve done the math for us and put together this handy calculator which figures out how many spuds it would take to power your house, based on the average current produced by a single (boiled) potato, the square footage of your home, and how long you’d need the power:
I live in a pretty big house, so I’ll need about 10,000 potatoes, at a cost of over $3000 to power my house for one day. Guess that’s not particularly cost-effective, since my current electric bill works out to be about 5 bucks a day. In fact, powering most homes with potatoes for a year would cost more money than double the value of the home itself.
On the plus side, you’d never run out of mashed potatoes.
[via Movoto]
Oct 02
What if you are camping or find yourself in the wilderness and you need to use your phone? Chances are you will need a charge. Good luck finding a power outlet out there. But that’s okay. FlameStower has your back. This device uses the heat from fire to charge cell phones and other electronics via USB, making it perfect for camping or during emergencies due to power outages.
In the worst of situations, you can almost always start a fire. It will work over a cook stove, campfire or any fire source, and starts charging gadgets in seconds.
This project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter through October 24th, and it seems like a worthwhile investment. A pledge of at least $80(USD) will get you your own FlameStower when it starts shipping this December.
[via Laughing Squid]
Sep 26
After three years and $2.2 billion of construction, California has just flipped the switch for the planet’s largest solar thermal plant—the 392 megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.
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Sep 26
Back in 1985, Mickey Mouse and his old pal Goofy taught kids visiting Disney’s EPCOT Center
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Sep 17
Google’s goal of meeting its electrical needs with renewable sources got another big boost today. The Happy Hereford wind farm in Texas will produce 240 megawatts of juice, and all of that output has been bought by Big G. That power won’t flow directly from the turbines into Google’s data centers, instead it’ll be fed into the regional grid when Google sells the energy on the wholesale market. The 240 renewable energy certificates (REC) acquired in the deal will be retired in support of mother earth, and any additional REC’s created by the wind farm will be used to “reduce our [Google’s] carbon footprint elsewhere.” According to Google, this is similar to other green energy deals it’s done in Iowa and Oklahoma, so it’s highly likely we’ll be seeing more such deals in the not-so-distant future. Of course, no one will be receiving any of that Happy Hereford wind power just yet — the farm won’t be sending out any renewably-sourced electrons until late 2014.
Filed under: Misc, Alt, Google
Source: Google Official Blog
Sep 16
Compressed air batteries have long promised truly clean energy storage, but they haven’t scaled large enough in recent years to be viable companions to renewable power sources. That changes now that SustainX has switched on the first modern air battery large enough to join an electrical grid. The company’s new ICAES (Isothermal Compressed Air Energy Storage) system in Seabrook, New Hampshire can hold 1.5 megawatts of power versus the kilowatt-level capacities of its rivals. Despite its size, ICAES is sustainable; it doesn’t require ‘dirty’ energy for either compression or releasing air to its generator, and the supply won’t degrade like that of a chemical battery. The New Hampshire system is just a demonstrator to attract interest, but SustainX expects to have its first commercial battery running in China next year. If ICAES (and technology like it) proves successful, we could see more solar and wind farms that keep delivering electricity when they’re otherwise idle.
Via: GigaOM
Source: SustainX
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