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Entries Tagged as 'Future Power'

Cheap non-polluting electricity — this could be the big one

August 7th, 2008 · No Comments

The biggest energy news of the decade, of the century, or the millenium?
MIT researchers have figured out how to use inexpensive ingredients, cobalt, potassium, and phosphate, rather than pricey platinum, to create anodes for electrolysis — the process whereby electricity can be used to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. This could bring about the [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Power storage surges ahead

January 13th, 2008 · No Comments

Interesting news about about power storage: first, Li-ion (Lithium-ion) batteries like those used in laptop computers are on the verge of drastic improvement, like batteries that wear out after 10 years instead of the current 3, and charge to 90% in 5 minutes instead of taking hours. Could be a game-changer for making electric vehicles, [...]

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Tags: Future Power

The end, or just the beginning? Our new roles in the new planetary climate.

December 11th, 2007 · No Comments

First the good news: I’ve discovered my new favorite blog (besides this one, of course), at Grist.org: http://gristmill.grist.org.
The bad new (hard to call it good news) is that published there I found the best commentary yet written on climate change, Beyond the point of no return, written by Ross Gelbspan. Ross is a journalist whose [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Wind farms may be practical offshore in Northern California

December 11th, 2007 · No Comments

A new Stanford University study concludes that wind farms off the coast of California would ultimately produce between 25 and 100% of California’s energy needs.
http://www.physorg.com/news116519900.html
However, little power transmission capacity currently exists in the parts of Northern California where the winds are most suitable (where the population is less dense), and a number of hurdles [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Imagine a mile-square grid of buoys bobbing in the waves, generating energy — the wave farm cometh

December 9th, 2007 · No Comments

Wave farms are being prototyped off the Oregon coast. The motion of the waves can be converted via turbines into electricity and piped back on shore.

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Tags: Future Power

A new financial model for green energy production

December 4th, 2007 · No Comments

Capital markets financed the industrial revolution and the technological revolution (not to mention a few wars — read the House Of Morgan if you want to find out who wound up financing BOTH sides of the arms build up in WWI and WWII).
Now capital markets are funding the green revolution in energy production. MMA [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Google and HP invest heavily in solar power generation

November 27th, 2007 · No Comments

HP has just joined Google (although on a smaller scale) on the solar power bandwagon. Both companies are turningĀ  corporate campuses into 1-megawatt + solar power installations, saving money while reducing greenhouse gas emissions — which is appropriate considering each consumes massive amounts of electricity during the ordinary course of business.
Now how do we get [...]

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Tags: Future Power

How does 300 miles per gallon sound?

November 20th, 2007 · No Comments

The Aptera Typ-1, which looks sort of like a Cessna without the wings, is a hybrid gasoline electric vehicle that its makers claim gets 300 miles to the gallon. It has a tricycle design that gets listed as a motorcycle when you register with the department of motor vehicles, apparently. I’d like to see the [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Solar trough power generation

November 14th, 2007 · No Comments

I’m amazed to realize that we don’t see more of such simple solutions as solar trough power, which essentially involves setting up a back-yard scale set of parabolic troughs which use focused sunlight to heat liquid that spins a turbine and generates power. At present these are simple and effective for generating small quantities of [...]

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Tags: Future Power

Hydrogen from cellulose via bacteria

November 13th, 2007 · No Comments

Penn State researchers are claiming 68% efficiency with fuel cells that generate hydrogen from cellulose. Or more importantly, more energy is released from biomass in the system than is expended assembling the system in the first place (which apparently isn’t always the case with biofuels).

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Tags: Future Power