Anyone who’s on the road a lot for work, school, or pleasure knows it can be a challenge keeping your gadgets charged up and ready to use away from an outlet. If your travels take you outdoors a lot, keeping your gadgets charged and keeping you in touch can be particularly troublesome. A company called […]
The primary complaint against solar power—that it, you know, requires the sun—is perfectly valid. But Arizona’s new Solana Generating Station, the largest capacity solar thermal plant on the face of the Earth, has just provided a $1.4 billion counterpoint. Thanks to its massive molten salt reserves, this plant keeps producing power even after lights out.
     |
Solar power is fantastic, sure. But while the tech behind solar panels is zooming forward
| |
Though they’ve made clear that the decision to sell solar panels to the masses on a market-by-market basis, the results are already clear: IKEA is aiming to make solar energy mainstream. If there’s one company that can take this green push to the market in a way that’s not-quite-cheap but certainly not overpriced, it’s IKEA. […]
…Because when you think of Britain, you think of sunny skies. Ikea has started selling solar panels for residential rooftops at its stores in the United Kingdom. The furniture outfit’s move into home solar systems (as opposed to sun-powered lighting) was apparently made attractive due to the drop in cost of solar panels, and Ikea’s initial offering will set you back £5,700 (about $9,300). For your money, you get a 3.36 kW system, in-store consultation, installation, maintenance and energy monitoring service. Ikea’s got plans to sell solar panels in other locales, but according to Ikea Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard, such expansion will be done market by market (so don’t expect a worldwide rollout). Hey Steve, might we suggest your next store to start selling solar be someplace with more than two weeks of sunshine per year?
Filed under: Household
Source: Business Insider
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.
| |
The teams behind the world’s previous record-holding solar cell for efficiency, which was unveiled back in May, has trumped its own achievement, announcing that they’ve boosted that cell’s efficiency even higher to 44.7-percent. The latest solar cell works by utilizing four solar subcells, allowing it to achieve nearly a 50-percent efficiency rate, and was developed […]
Could solar technology power our iPhones or iPads in the future? Or perhaps even Apple’s Mac computers? While that question remains unanswered for now, it seems that at the very least Apple is interested in the technology, thanks to a recent job listing on Apple’s website which calls for a “thin films” engineer who has experience in the solar industry to join Apple’s Mobile Devices group, with the job description reading, “assist in the development and refinement of thin films technologies applicable to electronics systems.”
Given that the job was for a position in the Mobile Devices division, it has been speculated that perhaps it could be used on future iPhone or iPad products, although others have suggested that maybe it could see integration in display and touch technology as well, maybe for future iWatch devices, perhaps? Solar technology is not new to Apple as the company has in the past used the technology with its data centers, so to see Apple trying to find a way to incorporate the technology into their other products would not be a stretch of the imagination.
Apple Job Listing Hints At Plans With Solar Technology original content from Ubergizmo. 
| |
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
When it comes to public transportation, taking the bus is the least sexy option. Buses are slow; they make frequent stops; and because they share the road with cars, they get stuck in traffic. But a new proposal for a giant lane-straddling bus would eliminate traffic congestion by letting cars pass right through the middle of it. The futuristic bus is just one of several stories about innovations in green transportation on Inhabitat this week. Mercedes-Benz just completed the first cross-country trip for a self-driving car with its S500 Intelligent Drive research vehicle, and BMW unveiled the official production model of its 2015 i8 plug-in hybrid sports car at the Frankfurt Motor Show. In other green car news, Nissan announced that it is in the final stages of developing its second electric vehicle — the e-NV200 compact van. In an effort to make flat tires a thing of the past, Korean manufacturer Hankook has produced a puncture-proof, airless tire that is made from 95 percent recyclable materials. And in more good news for green cars, August was the best month ever for US sales of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and conventional hybrids.
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Tesla has been on a tear this year, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Silicon Valley-based electric car maker is using up the world’s supply of lithium-ion batteries, spurring manufacturers to ramp up global production. In other green transportation news, Smart has unveiled the Fourjoy electric concept car in advance of the Frankfurt Motor Show. Barcelona launched the world’s first public electric scooter-sharing scheme, which promises to help users save money and decrease fuel consumption. In Buffalo, a man built himself a 16-foot geodesic houseboat in just a few weeks for less than $2,000. And if you want to have your mind blown, check out the photos from this year’s Bloemencorso Zundert flower parade in the Netherlands, which features floats made from thousands of flowers.
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.
