Hasta La Gadget!

Love clean teeth but hate the taste of toothpaste? Check out the solar-ionic Soladey-3 from Japan. Light is absorbed through the solar panel at the base of the brush, and as you brush electrons are transmitted through the water to your teeth via a titanium oxide semiconductor. You won’t feel the reaction, the site promises, but it will make plaque unstable and easy to remove.

You can pick up a Soladey-3 for $133 US, plus $19 in shipping. The head attachment is available in four styles: regular, superfine, hard, and children. For your money, you’ll get four base units (in four different colors), the head attachment of your choice, and instructions written in Japanese. The site is worth visiting just for the illustration of electrons busting up some unhappy plaque. (Via TechCrunch)

Hydrogen-powered cars, like Honda’s FCX Clarity, face a lot of hurdles, not the least of which being a fuel source requiring more energy to produce than it in turn gives out as energy. Honda is showing one way to mitigate that with its conceptual home-based recharging station. It relies on a six-kilowatt solar array to power an electrolyzer, splitting water molecules into hydrogen atoms. Eight hours of sunlight generates a half-kilogram of hydrogen, enough for the FCX to cover about 30 miles — your average commute. However, there are some obvious concerns, not the least of which being that massive solar array (shown on the right in the picture above), which is twice the size of car it’s powering. Then there’s the cost, and while Honda isn’t saying how much this might set you back if it ever did come to production, we’re guessing it’d make the JFE Engineering’s $60k quick charger look like something of a bargain.

Continue reading Honda shows off conceptual, solar-powered station to refill your conceptual, hydrogen-powered car (video)

Honda shows off conceptual, solar-powered station to refill your conceptual, hydrogen-powered car (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Avoid dead camera batteries by putting a strip of solar panels on your camera strap. Simple, and rather clever, right? That’s exactly what Weng Jie’s Solar Camera Strap does, although in coming up with the design he forgot an important point: you can’t charge batteries while they are in the camera.

While some cameras come with charging docks or have their chargers built in so you just have to plug in a cable, most require a separate charger into which you pop the battery: a far better solution which doesn’t put your camera out of action as it juices up. Weng’s device runs the power generated by the strap into the camera’s DC-in socket via cable. This would let you use the camera as long as the light is bright, but there’d be no buffer if the Sun were to dip behind a cloud (there are a pair of batteries within the strap, but that’s not really ideal).

Still, those are mere details. Give me a way to use my camera all day without having to worry about running out of power and you’d have my cash. If you ever sell this strap, Weng, get in touch. And please, please make it in a darker color so it doesn’t pick up my neck-dirt.

Power Around My Neck [Yanko]

Air conditioning that’s 90 percent more efficient? Pshaw. How about solar air conditioning that powers itself on the sunniest days? That’s a lovely concept, and rather sadly LG‘s solar hybrid air conditioner is not its realization. This PV-toting central unit is said to generate up to 70 watts of power per hour under what we’re assuming would be ideally sunny conditions. Meanwhile, residential central AC units suck down more than 2,000 watts when running — which they would probably be doing during those ideally sunny conditions. In other words, this panel is a step in the right direction, but a very, very tiny one. LG isn’t indicating how much that step will cost you, but we’re inclined to think it won’t be cheap.

LG’s solar hybrid AC unit probably won’t do much to cool your power bill originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Inhabitat showcased some of the world’s most stunning sun-powered homes as the European Solar Decathlon kicked off Friday in Madrid, Spain. We can’t wait to see the winner of this year’s competition, which challenged 17 teams from around the world to build the most efficient solar-powered house. Will it be the University of Nottingham’s hyper-efficient H.O.U.S.E, Florida’s Re:Focus prefab, or one of the other amazing contenders?

Speaking of solar power, the field of clean tech had a hot week as Sony unveiled the world’s most efficient solar module. We also saw solar power energize Africa’s largest slum as a photovoltaic television set allowed residents of Kibera, Nairobe to watch the World Cup. Several massive new geothermal projects rounded out our renewable energy news this week as the US Department of Energy unveiled plans to make Nevada the “Saudi Arabia of Geothermal Energy”.

In other news, two-wheeled transportation took the world by storm as Italy unveiled its first electric motorcycle and Switzerland showcased its Zerotracer Superbike, which is set to circle the globe in 80 days using only renewable energy. And if a peddle-powered ride is more your pace, then you won’t want to miss the world’s slowest Porsche.

If all that exciting transportation news has you overheating, then relax and cool off — here’s a futuristic refrigerator that keeps things cool with bio gel and an underarm clothing patch that eliminates body odor through nanotechnology. And finally, if you’re ready to relax and slip into some summer reading, we’re giving away an iPad complete with a bamboo DODOcase — hit the link to enter!

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: solar houses, geothermal power, and the world’s slowest Porsche originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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