Hasta La Gadget!

If all goes well, this 25-megawatt solar plant in Florida won’t be America’s largest for long, but it’s not like we’d pass up the opportunity to let this $150 million facility bask in its own glory (and the sun, if we’re being thorough) while it can. The Desoto facility is just one of three solar projects that Florida Power & Light is spearheading, and judging by the proximity of this one (in Arcadia) to the 75-megawatt facility planned for nearby Charlotte County, we’d surmise that the two are linked in some form or fashion. President Obama is expected to show up rocking a set of Kanye glasses underneath a welder’s mask when the plant is fired up this Tuesday, and while it’ll only provide power to “a fraction” of FP&L’s customer base, it’ll still generate around twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the US of A.

[Thanks, Yossi]

America’s (newest) largest solar plant set to go live in Florida originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First, the good news: that slide we saw back in August promising Blue Earth deliveries in October was spot on, seeing how Samsung just made an official announcement to that effect. Now, the bad: unless you’re in Sweden, that doesn’t mean much — at least, not yet. The HSDPA-equipped full touch handset with an integrated solar charger is set to launch in the Nordic nation this month, with France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal, and “other European and Asian countries” following on shortly; notably missing is the US, which wouldn’t benefit from the 900 / 2100MHz 3G radio anyhow. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but does it really matter when you’ll be saving all that cash on your power bill?

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung’s solar Blue Earth launching in Sweden this month, elsewhere soon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Funny thing going on in the marketplace right now: reading for pleasure is on a rapid decline yet the choice of e-reader devices grows weekly. That’s good news for those of us not spending our down-time in front of a television, mouth agape — awkward for manufacturers testing the waters of this unproven niche. LG’s showing off its Solar Cell e-Book reader anyway, in a bid to flex its thin-film solar muscle. The prototype features an energy conversion efficiency of about 9.6 percent giving it an extra day’s worth of power for that 6-inch TFT-LCD after about four to five hours in the sun. LG is working towards boosting its thin-film solar cell energy conversion efficiency rate to 12% by 2010 on up to 14% by 2012. We say bring it LG, if you can.

[Via OLED-Display]

Filed under: Handhelds

LG’s Solar Cell e-Book goes an extra day for every 5 hours of sunlight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gotta hand it to LG, it pulled out the big hitting hyperbole with the launch of its otherwise simplistic GD510 touchscreen phone. LG begins with a reminder that it launched “the world’s first full touchscreen phone” — the Prada — back in January 2007. A claim that Ericsson, Nokia, and others would rightfully dispute. LG then calls the brushed-aluminum GD510, or “Pop,” the “most compact 3-inch full touchscreen phone ever made,” while boasting of its simplicity. That latter claim is achieved by removing “unnecessary features” that apparently include burdensome WiFi and 3G radios since modern consumers want to browse the internet over GPRS/EDGE. Spec-wise, you get a WQVGA (note the “Q”) display, 3 megapixel camera, 8GB of internal memory, and a single home key that glows green to call or red to hang-up / cancel. They’ve also ditched the S-Class UI in favor of something that’s presumably less convoluted. There’s even an optional solar-panel battery cover which we hear is the number one requested feature on touchscreen phones… right. It does look pretty though, which is saying a lot for a phone packing a solar panel. Hitting Europe in mid October and the US at the end of October if the Bluetooth SIG entry is to be believed. Video promo after the break.

Read — Bluetooth SIG
Read — LG press release

Continue reading Video: LG GD510 touchscreen ‘Pop’ is heavy on hype, light on specs

Filed under: Cellphones

Video: LG GD510 touchscreen ‘Pop’ is heavy on hype, light on specs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen a few different approaches to printable, and occasionally paintable solar cells over the years, but it looks like JA Solar was particularly taken with Innovalight’s so-called silicon ink-based solar cells, and it’s now announced that its teaming up with the company to commercialize the technology. In addition to being “printable” and cheaper to manufacture than traditional solar cells, the company also claims that the silicon ink solar cells also boast an impressive 18 percent conversion efficiency, which has apparently just been backed up by both the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Details on the deal are otherwise a bit light, but JA Solar says that it’ll manufacture the new cells using its existing solar cell manufacturing lines, which should lower the cost even further and, if all goes as planned, allow for “initial commercialization” sometime in 2010.

[Via CNET News Green Tech]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

JA Solar and Innovalight team up to commercialize ‘silicon ink’ solar cells originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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