energy

The Wireless Power Consortium, made up of Sanyo, Texas Instruments, Philips, Olympus, and Samsung, are making headway towards making their Qi wireless charging spec the industry standard. In their ideal world, any third-party, Qi-branded product will work on their line of charging pads, which function via magnetic induction. I happen to think it's just the boost wireless power technology needs.

The spec can deliver power of up to 5 watts, which is good for many small consumer electronics, and prototype gadgets using Qi will be revealed in the middle of September.

By 2013, San Francisco is planning to construct 360 new Municipal bus stops that’ll further the causes of both solar power and blanketed Wi-Fi at the same time.

The stops, which should cost around $US30,000, may seem expensive, but they’ll be pretty energy-efficient. The energy not used by the stops will be fed into the city’s power grid, and the stops themselves will use LED lighting, nearly four and a half times more efficient than the current fluorescent. Is it shameful to admit that I’m way more excited about blanketed Wi-Fi coverage than energy efficiency?

Moving computing from the desktop to the 24/7 data centers of the "cloud" may be the way forward (just ask Google), but it will come with a hefty energy price. Teams at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, however, are developing a smart algorithm that could reroute Internet traffic to where energy is cheapest at any given moment, potentially saving millions of dollars in energy usage.

A team of gearheads at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an engine that can handle a blend of gasoline and diesel fuel. It outputs low emissions, and offers up to 20 percent greater fuel efficiency.

Geobacter, a microbe that generates electricity when placed in mud and wastewater, has been evolved into a far more productive strain, as part of a new University of Massachusetts breakthrough that has researchers thinking of new fuel cell designs.

Science Daily says that Geobacter is about 3-5 nanometers in diameter, which is about 20,000 times finer than a human hair. Geobacter is known for its ability to transfer electrons, which enables it to "extract" energy from biomass.

We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge.

And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months.

Going green makes military sense to the U.S. Army. Self-sufficient vehicles and base camps require fewer supply convoy runs that stretch logistics lines thin across hostile territory. The Army's new "zero-footprint" concept for a camp includes a package of very cool technologies.

Soldiers could eventually obtain their drinking water from vehicle exhaust, based on water-purification technologies being developed by the U.S. Army's TARDEC and DARPA labs. Garbage and waste produced by camps could also become new sources of energy.

Texas company Baryonyx has plans to build a 28,000-square-foot data center in Stratford, Texas, which will be powered by 38,000 acres of offshore wind turbines, and another 8,000 acres of onshore turbines.

Tapping geothermal sources for power has proven a tricky proposition, because of costs and hazards associated with deep drilling. But researchers may have stumbled on a way to boost the power-producing potential of low-temperature hot springs close to the Earth's surface, using nanotechnology.

A team at Harvard decided to reinvestigate the potential for windpower around the globe, and found their new results to be significantly different than previous studies. According to the new study, we're capable of someday producing 40 times more power via wind than we currently consume overall.

By 2015, if General Electric has their way, all our homes will be running on smart grids with mini-turbines and solar panels to produce electricity, consuming zero net energy in the process.

GE says that their smart energy system, dubbed the Net Zero Home project, will center around a $250 central management hub that will allow all of a home's networked appliances and on-site power-producing equipment talk to each other, as well as to the smart grid outside the home..

It's one of those ideas that just sounds wrong: a barge-like floating nuclear plant in the middle of the ocean. But despite its somewhat unconventional approach, a Russian firm we first reported on in 2006 is forging ahead with plans to have the first model ready to begin service in 2012.

Because it’s the universe’s most abundant element, hydrogen is a good candidate for a renewable energy source. But there’s a problem: the finicky element is difficult to manage. Storing it in its pure form is a hassle that requires high pressure and low temperature, and unbinding it from paired elements used to stabilize it comes with significant secondary energy costs.

Fortunately, though, there’s urine to the rescue.

The M/V Auriga Leader is the world's first solar powered cargo ship, which uses solar panels to provide up to 10 percent of the ship's power. Working alongside Toyota and NYK Line, the ship will be used to transport 6,400 cars while using less diesel fuel.