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).

I’d like this one a lot better if the US Department of Defense weren’t promoting this power generation solution as useful for supporting troops in, or rather near, combat zones….

Scientists are saying that within 40-some years the cost of launching gear into space will have dropped enough for it to be feasible to build giant solar collectors in geosyncronous orbit that beam energy back to earth via lasers or microwaves. Ground stations convert the beams back to electricity for the grid.

A company called Living Power System has developed a process whereby electricity — at this stage, enough to run relatively low-power devices like LED lights — is generated from soil. In sort of a living fuel cell, microbes growing across an electrode planted in the earth generate an electron flow as they metabolize nutrients in the soil.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9809164-7.html

It’s another example of a biotech energy generation mechanism besides the more familiar microbes-digesting-switchgrass to generate ethanol.

The “@Home” supplement to the September 29th, 2007 Seattle Post Intelligencer contained this article

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/333242_backuppower29.html

about setting up a solar-fed battery system as a backup to municipal power in the event an emergency — like the windstorms that deprived thousands of Seattle-area homes of power for several days last year.

Doesn’t this also make sense in the U.S. Midwest, where ice storms down power lines, in California, where earthquakes down power lines, in all regions where power is intermittant or is expected to be in short supply, etc.?

Ocean tides flowing in and out on a coastline can be converted into power using turbines just as windmills turn air currents into power and hyrdro-electric dams turn river flows into power.

The Puget Sound (Seattle) area has been undergoing a bit of a land rush when it comes to tidal power, with various entities and agencies working quickly to begin commercial tidal power operations (”Puget Sound area leads the charge to tidal energy“). And now, according to an article in last Thursday’s Seattle Post Intelligencer, expensive sensors are being deployed all over the region to map tidal flows so that appropriate generators can be constructed, deployed, and hooked into the local power grid.

Buried deep between the waves, it will be difficult for most people to argue that they are ruining their views (unlike wind power turbines). However, I haven’t heard much yet about the potential impact on sea creatures — what provisions will be made for when a whale meets a turbine, one wonders?

These puppies have incredible potential — both for efficiently powering engines, like car / truck / train / boat / plane motors, etc., which tend to rely on relatively inefficient and high-in-pollutants power sources, AND for storing micro-power from personal-scale solar, wind, motion-driven-backpacks (something for another post), or other power collection technology — check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEstor

For you electronics geeks, the key is that these are “capacitors” not “batteries,” using a microsandwich architecture increasingly popular in other engineering functions (like electronic memory).

For everybody: These suckers charge fast, hold a lot of charge, and provide lots of juice when you need it.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite perfected yet…. I’ll give it one thumb up for SIs (”Speculative Investors”), though.

Where will future power come from?

• The cost of energy is rising, and by cost I’m referring to both money and human suffering.

• Demand for energy is skyrocketing, as billions of consumer race towards U.S.-inspired levels of personal consumption.

• The damage to the planet’s ecology from power generation may, within your lifetime and mine, bring about a whole new planet surface, swapping water for dry land, water for ice, desert for farm land, causing massive migration and termination of existing supply chains, business sites, and habitable space across the planet.

It’s time for change. Ready to make some hard choices?