Hasta La Gadget!

The Middle East is known for their vast amounts of oil, and of course the money that comes from that oil. However, the region is also getting into renewable energy and alternative methods for providing electricity, most specifically the United Arab Emirates, which is now home to the world’s largest solar power plant, located in Abu Dhabi.

Shams Power Company has opened the new Shams 1 concentrated solar power station that has a capacity of 100 MW and can power up to 20,000 homes and save up to 175,000 tons of CO2 every year, which according to Shams, is the “equivalent to planting 1.5 million trees or taking approximately 15,000 cars off the road.”

The Shams 1 CSP plant uses over 258,000 parabolic mirrors that collect sunlight and concentrate it onto oil pipes that flow through the center of the mirrors. This heats the oil, and after being moved on to a heat exchanger, the heat creates steam that powers turbines that generate electricity. The entire plants covers just over 1.55 square miles.

Of course, this isn’t the first CSP plant to be built. These types of solar power plants date back to the 1980s where the first ones were built in California in the US. However, it wasn’t until today when the Shams 1 plant took the crown for the world’s largest CSP plant. Of course, we’ll most likely see larger ones being built in the future as green tech becomes more popular.

[via TreeHugger]

World’s largest solar power plant opens in Abu Dhabi is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Deserts, pristine beaches and endless amounts of oil and gas are not the only things Abu Dhabi is known for. It is known for its excruciating temperatures and sunshine. When you have so much sunshine, why not use it as a source of renewable energy? The Shams Power Company is doing just that, as it has now begun operating the world’s largest concentrated solar power station of 100 MW in Abu Dhabi, called Shams 1.

Shams 1 solar power station has 258,048 parabolic mirrors that absorb sunlight. At the center of these parabolic mirrors is tubing through which oil flows. The mirrors concentrate sunlight towards this tubing so as to heat up the oil, which then goes up to a heat exchanger. This heat exchanges makes steam which power turbines that produce electricity.

It is a good step from an oil and gas rich emirate like Abu Dhabi to invest heavily in renewable energy. Fossil fuels are a major contributor towards global warming and it is high time that the world comes to terms with the fact that renewable energy projects should no longer remain in research papers and presentations.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Volkswagen E-Up Concept Now Realized, Walgreens Building A Superstore That Runs Only On Renewable Energy,

On Earth, being able to view a solar eclipse is a very rare occurrence. In space, it’s not so rare to witness this event. Recently, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught a glimpse of two incredible eclipses in only a seven hour period. The first image below is one that SDO snapped of the Sun being blocked by the Earth.

The second image shows a much more defined photograph of the Sun that was taken a few hours later as the Moon moved in front of the SDO’s view of the sun. The reason the outline of the Moon is so much more crisp and clear is because it has no atmosphere. The SDO is able to see through some of the Earth’s atmosphere giving the Earth a jagged appearing edge during its eclipse.

This month marks the spacecraft’s entry into its biannual eclipse season. This season lasts three weeks, and during that time the Earth blocks the Solar Dynamics Observatory for a period of time each day. The Earth blocked the spacecraft’s view the Sun from about 10:15 PM to 11:45 PM this past Sunday night.

[via DailyMail]

Aside from providing clean energy from a practically infinite power source, solar power now has another advantage over traditional power sources: it can be generated on nearly any surface. It’s all thanks these new solar panels that are thin and flexible enough that they can be attached like stickers. Let’s see you make a stick-on gas tank.

The peel-and-stick solar panel was invented by a group of researchers from Stanford University’s Mechanical Engineering department, led by Phd candidate Chi Hwan Lee. The researchers were able to fabricate the panels via “a unique silicon, silicon dioxide and metal “sandwich.”  Solar cells are deposited on a thin film of nickel that is in turn deposited on the aforementioned silicon/silicon dioxide (Si/SiO2) wafer. The researchers separate the resulting solar film from the wafer using thermal release tape. Finally the solar film is peeled off of the tape using water. The resulting solar film can now be attached to a variety of surfaces using ordinary adhesive such as double-sided tape.

We may not understand that process in its entirety, but I’m sure you’ll find the group’s other findings to be exciting. Not only did they make stick-on solar panels, they did so using existing machines and materials. Even more exciting is the fact that Chi Hwan Lee and his colleagues believe that the process can also be applied to other components, including printed circuits, transistors and even LCDs. This could go a long way into ensuring that the next Google Glass will be Google Gontact Glens. You get the idea.

[via Nature & Stanford Engineering via Springwise via Electric Power]

Whether you like it or not, electric cars are part of our future, and I hope that my next one will be able to function without the need of any gas. Distance races are quite important, because they allow teams to showcase and iron out the faults in rapidly-developing electric vehicle technologies.

The tiny two-seat Evonik Wind Explorer electric car has traveled across Australia, which covers about 3,100 miles from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Coast. Incredibly, the trip used less than $15 in electricity. The EV was run by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which are capable of being juiced up by a mobile wind turbine, producing enough energy to travel 174 to 224 miles a day.

The Evonik car was constructed out of lightweight carbon fiber, and has a kite that gives it an added boost in the wind – but wouldn’t be very practical in the city.

I wonder when I’ll be able to use this kind of vehicle to travel around daily.

[via Wired via designboom]