Apr 12
These Apartments Grow Their Own A/C
Posted in: Today's Chili
A newly completed 15-unit apartment building in Hamburg Germany is already turning heads. Though, with a facade covered in sun-tracking algae tanks, it’s hard not to stare. More »
Apr 10
Everybody knows about using oil as a fuel source, but London is putting a new spin on the concept. Soon the city will be mining its own sewers to bring up glorious globs of old cooking grease and melting them down into fuel. Delicious. More »
Apr 06
How much electricity do your electric curlers gobble up while they’re heating up? What about your iron or your food processor? In this day and age, it pays to know how much electricity your appliances and devices are consuming. The good news is that there’s now an easier way to do it: with Plug2Know.
Plug2Know looks like a surge suppressor outlet, only it’s not. Instead, it will show you the energy that each of your plugged devices consumes based on your current usage. It’ll help you with energy cost awareness and hopefully inspire you to live a life that requires less electricity to run it. A series of LEDs on the top of the device provides feedback as to energy usage. An included chart helps you identify the rough monthly cost for whatever is plugged into it.
Cymbrio, its creators, claim that earlier testers of Plug2Know were able to cut back on their electricity bills by up to 50% after using the device.
Whether you want to save money or are just curious about the energy consumption of your plugged devices, the Plug2Know can lend you a hand. It’s also extremely easy to use: just plug it into the socket, and plug in the appliance or power strip into it and you’re all set.
Plug2Know provides you with specific, personalized information about your projected energy use so you can take steps to eliminate waste, reduce consumption and save money.
Plug2Know is currently up for funding on Kickstarter, where $20(USD) will get you one of your very own.
Apr 04
Virginia Tech learns how to get hydrogen from any plant, might lower fuel cell costs
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Hydrogen fuel cell cars have any number of hurdles to overcome, whether it’s widespread adoption or the basic matter of locating a place to fill up. If a Virginia Tech discovery pans out, getting the fuel itself won’t be one of those challenges. The new combination of a polyphosphate with a special blend of enzymes lets researchers extract meaningful quantities of hydrogen from any biological element that includes xylose — in other words, the sugar that’s present in every plant to at least some degree. The process is potentially more eco-friendly than most, as well. While you’d expect it to be renewable given the main ingredients, it also reduces the need for metals and cuts back sharply on the volume of necessary greenhouse gases. Most importantly, the findings could reach the commercial world as soon as three years from now. If they do, they could lower the price of hydrogen fuel by making it more accessible, all the while avoiding much of the guilt trip that comes with using polluting technology to generate clean energy.
Filed under: Transportation, Science, Alt
Via: The Verge
Source: Virginia Tech, Wiley
Apr 02
After its third nuclear test in February drew a harsh rebuke from the international community and further tightened economic sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom, North Korea has once again doubled down on its nuclear rhetoric. The country announced today that it will soon restart the Yongbyon reactor, Pyongyang’s primary plutonium processing plant. More »
Mar 26
The Inland Empire’s cadre of water treatment plants clean millions of gallons of waste water every day. But what to do with all that left over poo? Normally it’s unceremoniously dumped in a local landfill but at Regional Water Recycling Plant No. 1, that massive pile of crap is put to a better use—making electricity with the largest biogas fuel cell generator in America. More »
Mar 21
Apple says it now gets 75 percent of its total energy from renewable sources
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Based on the latest reports, the company once chided for making too large an impact on Mother Earth is now claiming that a full 75 percent of its energy is being sourced from renewables. Apple’s chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, informed Reuters this week that all of its data centers — including the gargantuan facility in Maiden, North Carolina — are now fully powered by renewable energy from onsite and local sources, while three-fourths of the energy used by the whole company is pulled from green sources. For those wondering, that includes solar, wind, hydro and geothermal, and the 75 percent mark is a stark 40 percent uptick from just two years ago. As for what the future holds? According to Apple: “We won’t stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.” Alrighty then.
Source: Apple
Mar 18
The US government holds vast tracts of public lands—more than a 654 million acres, in fact—for public use such as national parks as well as for military use like test ranges and proving grounds. But most of the time, much of that land is left to rot when it could be producing clean solar energy for our ever-increasing power needs. More »
Mar 14
For years, lithium-ion batteries have been used in electric vehicles and some communications grid applications. Now, a battery technology startup, Fluidic Energy has developed rechargeable metal-air batteries that can potentially replace that. These batteries can store more energy than lithium-ion and are cheaper.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Electronic Billboard Hacked In Belgrade, Google I/O 2013 Tickets Sold Out,
Mar 05
[CeBIT 2013] I met with Yunasko‘s co-founders Natalia Stryzhakova (Ph.D.) and Andrii Buvailo at CeBIT in Hannover. Yunasko develops ultracapacitors, which are energy storage devices with extremely high power capacities and fast charge / discharge profiles. For example, high power is required when you start an electrical vehicle (not when you drive it) or when the power in your computer suddenly shuts down and you need an immediate burst of power to take over.
According to Andrii Buvailo, regular capacitors have less efficiency than Yunasko products when it comes to Kilowatts stored per Kilogram. The patent-pending component provides almost 3 times more power per kilogram than the competition. Basically, it means that Yunasko is able to provide more power in a smaller form factor, a feature that is highly in demand for small consumer electronic devices or even for electrical vehicles that need to save some space and weight. For instance the ELF shown at CeBIT could benefit from this ultracapacitor.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: ELF: Hybrid Solar / Pedal Vehicle by Organic Transit, Toyota i-Road Personal Mobility Concept ,
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.