Posts tagged energy

Solar powered screen extends battery life by 20%.

French company SunPartner have developed a 300 micron thick transparent layer able to be added above or below a regular touchscreen which can harvest energy from sunlight.

The low cost panel uses stripes of standard thin-film solar cells alternating with transparent film. It then adds a layer of tiny lenses that spread the image coming from the screen to make the opaque stripes disappear and to concentrate rays coming in from the sun.

The company say the panel is currently being tested with a ‘number of manufacturers’ and they hope licensing deals to follow which will see phones using the technology come to market in 2014.

Energy harvesting pavement powers its own streetlights.

London-based startup Pavegen has developed tiling that can harvest kinetic energy from people’s footsteps, turning it into up to 8 watts of electricity per footstep.

The tiles are made of 95 percent recycled tyres, and use a proprietary wireless communications technology to transmit data about the number of footfalls and the energy generated via the Internet. A wireless network of the tiles could provide valuable information to city planners and nearby business owners about the number of pedestrians in the area at different times of the day.

At the last Summer Olympics in London, the tiles were installed outside a tube station where they generated enough energy to power lights in the area for five hours a night.

World’s largest concentrated solar power plant opens.

‘Shams 1’ has opened in Abu Dhabi, producing up to 100-megawatts as part of a greater plan to generate seven percent of the emirate’s energy by renewable means by 2020.

Instead of using photovoltaic cells to directly generate energy like a traditional solar power plant, concentrated solar power plants use parabolic mirrors or lenses to collect heat and drive turbines and create energy.

Energy-harvesting soccer ball on KickStarter.

The SOCCKET uses a pendulum-like mechanism inside a regular soccer ball to harvest kinetic energy gathered while the ball is in play. It stores it for later use, when the ball can be used as an off-grid power source to power an LED lamp for three hours, or to charge a cellphone, among other uses.

While the ball seems to be primarily designed for use in poorer areas, you can support the project and/or pick up your own SOCCKET at their KickStarter page, until March 28.

Power plant concept uses a tornado to drive turbines.

The Atmospheric Vortex Engine is a conceptual power plant developed by an engineer at Western University, and would generate a controlled tornado to power several turbines. A four metre high model has already been demonstrated, and now a larger prototype has been funded to demonstrate the feasibility and safety of the idea.

In his design, warm and humid air get pulled into a circular station, where it assumes the form of a rising and powerful vortex. The temperature difference between this heated air and the atmosphere above it supports and drives the turbines. It essentially works by “spinning” low-grade waste heat into a vortex which extends up into the atmosphere.

The controlled tornado can be shut down at any time by turning off the source of warm air.

Among its advantages, AVE power generation wouldn’t produce carbon emissions, nor would it require energy storage. Michaud estimates that the cost of the energy produced by AVE could be as low as 3 cents per kilowatt hour, which would make it one of the least expensive forms of energy production.

‘Sphelar textile’ could lead to energy-generating clothing.

A Japanese company has shown off a textile containing micro solar cells able to harvest energy from the sun. The textile contains 1.2mm spherical solar cells which are able to receive light from any direction, as opposed to traditional solar cells which need to be angled towards the light source.

While the company hasn’t announced plans to bring the product to market yet, if it was developed into a washable fabric it could potentially be used to make clothing able to power smartphones and portable devices, or curtains which could create energy for a house.

First nuclear space engine demonstrated.

A proof of concept device has found a way to harness nuclear energy in space to produce energy, for the first time since researchers started working on the technology in the US nearly 50 years ago. The technique combined two different technologies - a sealed heat pipe and a Stirling engine - to produce 24 watts of electricity in the demonstration device.

Heat pipe technology invented at Los Alamos in 1963 consists of a sealed tube with an internal fluid that can efficiently transfer heat produced by a reactor using no moving parts. A Stirling closed-loop engine converts heat energy into electrical power using a pressurized gas to move a piston. 

Current space missions are typically working off only a few hundred watts of solar power, so if this technology can be scaled up it will mean more instruments can be run onboard or more experiments could be conducted in space.

More power would also allow for faster communication to and from space. Last year the internet speed on the International Space Station was reported to be “about as slow as dial up”.

Photo: Orange battery.

The orange has a tiny light bulb inside, which is powered by a chemical reaction between citric acid and the zinc nails inserted into each wedge. The current was so weak that it required a 14 hour exposure to get this photo.

Check out more of the series by Caleb Charland here.