energy

Because solar intensity increases as you get closer to the equator, the same solar cell normally can't be equally effective in any given location. The UK firm Quantasol has devised a way of allowing solar cells to be fine-tuned according to their positional latitude, providing a substantial bump in efficiency.

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It fits into a wheel hub and can double a car's fuel economy. That's the claim of Dr. Charles Perry, who says his plug-in hybrid retrofit kit can save America 120 million gallons of fuel per day. Big talk. But then, inventors betting on revolutionary uphevals need to talk as big as they think. The former IBM electrical engineer designed the kit to transform existing automobiles into hybrids by placing an electric motor inside each wheel. Perry recently took first prize for his invention at a green energy competition at the Tennessee Technology Development Corp.

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A team of physicists at The University of Western Australia has invented a new type of amplifier which is powered by light rather than electricity and could be used on spacecraft to help locate magnetic asteroids. The research team, led by Professor David Blair, invented the device while trying to find a better way to detect black holes across the universe. Their breakthrough in amplification technology could eventually help open the doors for a slew of more down-to-Earth applications that may drastically lower our electricity consumption.

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With the US granting wind power plant leases off the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware, the UK planning to overtake nuclear power with wind in five years, and even coal loving China getting in on the act, all the talk about wind power these days has focused on offshore wind farms.

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Using one of the most clever names in tech history, Microsoft has announced Hohm (which telescopes home into ohm), a new Web-based service for keeping an eye on your smart grid. The beta for the service goes live next week; users can sign up to access the service at microsoft-hohm.com.

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General Fusion, the Canadian duo who hope to produce a cold fusion power plant for perhaps a tenth the cost of other such promised projects, just got a $12 million shot in the arm.

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The American electric grid is an engineering marvel, arguably the single largest and most complex machine in the world. It's also 40 years old and so rickety that power interruptions and blackouts cost the economy some $150 billion a year. The idea of building a connected "smart" grid that can route power intelligently is beyond daunting, no matter how much stimulus money gets thrown at it. But if we want to cut carbon, we have no choice. Today's grid simply cannot handle a large-scale rollout of the clean-energy sources outlined in this series.

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Solar power is an exciting source of renewable energy, but has so far mostly been used to power little things like homes, cars and small villages. But what if solar energy was used on a scale that would power the majority of Europe?

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You'll save some energy turning your computer off for an hour, but those modest energy gains might come at the expense of your computer's longevity. To figure out just how much energy an average computer consumes during its various states of use, we asked Harvard University physicist Wolfgang Rueckner to run a few tests on his 2005 iMac G5.

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The taking a closer look

at something about which we are "inimitably uncurious," due in large part to its secrecy--the unseen architecture of the data centers powering the Web. [ Read Full Story ]

Of all the futuristic technologies scientists have sworn would change our lives forever, none is more promising, and more elusive, than fusion power. After decades of tangential research, false starts and downright hoaxes, the two most advanced fusion projects at present are America's National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the multinationally funded International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

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The frustrations that come from the limited battery life of mobile phones, and laptops could become a thing of the past thanks to a new battery developed at the University of St Andrews in the UK. Researchers believe they can boost the power supply by a factor of as much as ten, and the technology can even be applied to electric cars.

Made from porous carbon, the STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell boosts power by drawing oxygen from the air through the surface of the battery during discharge. The oxygen reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery.

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The next frontier in traditional solar panels is concentrators - devices, usually lenses, that concentrate solar power onto the most expensive part of a solar panel - the silicon. Skyline Solar's "solar trough" design concentrates sunlight without using expensive lenses or complicated robotic armatures for tracking the sun as it crosses the sky.

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Gas hydrates could produce more energy than all other fossil fuels combined. Alaska's got a giant stash of this alternative energy source beneath its north slope. Check out this comic to get the inside scoop.

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