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http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/solar.htm
We've used the Sun for drying clothes and food for thousands of years, but only recently have we been able to use it for generating power. The Sun is 150
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million kilometres away, and amazingly powerful. Just the tiny fraction of the Sun's energy that hits the Earth (around a hundredth of a millionth of a percent) is enough to meet all our power needs many times over. In fact, every minute, enough energy arrives at the Earth to meet our demands for a whole year - if only we could harness it properly. Solar Cells ( really called "photovoltaic" or "photoelectric" cells) that convert light directly into electricity. In a sunny climate, you can get enough power to run a 100W light bulb from just one square metre of solar panel. Solar water heating , where heat from the Sun is used to heat water in glass panels on your roof. This means you don't need to use so much gas or electricity to heat your water at home. Water is pumped through pipes in the panel. The pipes are painted black, so they
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http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2007/11/23/a-ray-of-hope-for-developing-countries-91466-20148515/
A COMPANY making next-generation solar technology used to charge mobile phones yesterday announced its first order. Cardiff-based G24 Innovations – G24i
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– said a deal for its mobile phone chargers, centred around its revolutionary solar technology known as Dye Sensitised Thin Film (DST), has been made with a company in Kenya. G24i has a strategy to first target markets in the developing world, where people in remote areas have little access to reliable power sources. Company chairman Bob Hertzberg – a former speaker of the California State Assembly – has formulised the plan because of the massive need for communications technology, coupled with dependable power, in the developing world. G24i’s chargers will be pioneered by Master IT in Kenya. Last month G24i, which is headquartered in Wentloog on the outskirts of the Welsh capital, announced the world’s first production of commercial grade DST solar cells, marking the commercialisation of 18 years of research and development in the tec
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http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=5868.php
( Nanowerk News ) University of Queensland researchers have made a ground-breaking discovery that produces highly efficient miniature crystals which could
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revolutionise the way we harvest and use solar energy. Professor Max Lu, from UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), said they were one step closer to the holy grail of cost-effective solar energy with their discovery. Professor Lu, who was recently awarded a second prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship, said it wasn't just renewable energy where this research could be applied. Professor Lu said it would be about five years for the water and air pollution applications to be commercially available, and about 5 to 10 years for the solar energy conversion using such crystals. He said the breakthrough technology was a great example of cross-discipline collaborations with work by Professor Sean Smith's Computational Molecular Science group at AIBN, who conducted key computational st
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http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/green/item_59.html
Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can
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picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic technology has been around for decades, but this year, Silicon Valley–based Nanosolar created the manufacturing technology that could make that promise a reality. The company produces its PowerSheet solar cells with printing-press-style machines that set down a layer of solar-absorbing nano-ink onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil, so the panels can be made for about a tenth of what current panels cost and at
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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=1FC8E87E-E7F2-99DF-3253ADDFDBEC8D41&ref=rss
STEAM AND MIRRORS: A compact linear Fresnel reflector, like Ausra's plant in Australia pictured here, uses lines of mirrors to focus the sun's rays on
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an overhead trough, turning water into steam to generate electricity.
In the often cloudless American Southwest, the sun pours more than eight kilowatt-hours* per square meter of its energy onto the landscape. Vast parabolic mirrors in the heart of California's Mojave Desert concentrate this solar energy to heat special oil to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). This hot oil transfers its heat to water, vaporizing it, and then that steam turns a turbine to produce electricity. All told, nine such mirror fields, known as concentrating solar power plants, supply 350 megawatts of electricity yearly.
In the face of mounting concern about climate change, alternatives to coal and natural gas combustion such as these never seemed more attractive. And with the bounty of the sun waiting to be captured near fast-growing major ce
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http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/eu-eyes-supergrid-harness-saharan-sun/article-174508
Massive solar power installations in the Sahara desert could feed the EU's growing energy demand via a new supergrid. The idea is backed by France and
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the UK, which is simultaneously trying to limit priority access for renewables to domestic grids. The EU is trying to piece together a new energy policy that would make the bloc less dependent on foreign fossil fuel supplies while decreasing the CO2 output of its economy to address growing concerns over climate change. A main part of the policy push is a new proposal to boost the EU's share of renewable energies in final energy consumption to 20% by 2020, a considerable increase from the current 8%. The proposals, put forward by the Commission on 23 January, are currently being debated between Council and Parliament and could be adopted in a first reading agreement as early as October 2008. While there is no mention in the plans of a 'supergrid' that would bring solar energy from the Sahara to EU markets, Brussels is encouraging research
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/29/research1
Gordon Brown will unveil tax breaks for households generating their own green energy as he uses his eleventh budget to challenge the environmental credentials
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of David Cameron's Conservatives by proposing incentives to tackle climate change. A village in Cheshire is aiming to become the first carbon-neutral community in Britain after a host of energy-saving measures by residents, the local school and even the landlord. 8.45am: Tesco's new distribution centre in California will include what is claimed to be the world's biggest solar-panel roof, at a cost of $13m (£6.6m) to the supermarket group. By Fiona Walsh .
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http://idesignawards.com/winner/07/zoom.php?eid=1007-08&uid=3072
Design team : peter richardson Firm : zmarchitecture Project Name : lillies
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http://www.apgtf-uk.com/
The Advanced Power Technology Forum (APGTF) is an industry led stakeholder group that provides the focus for the UK power generation sector on research
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and development and demonstration activities for fossil fuels, biomass and associated technologies including carbon capture and storage. The objectives of the APGTF are to provide the strategic focus in the UK on near-to-zero and zero emission technologies from fossil fuel, biomass and associated technologies so as to ensure that Strategies are developed and implemented within the UK and globally that support the UK's climate change goal of reducing CO 2 emissions both within the UK and abroad The UK has secure, clean, affordable energy as we become increasingly dependent on imported fuels UK industry has the technologies to allow it to take advantage of the UK and global market opportunities that will arise in the power generation sector There is a significant contribution to UK wealth creation
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Tags:
carbon,
coal,
conversion,
energy,
nuclear
,
power,
power generation,
power storage,
renewable,
solar,
utilisation,
wind,
power plants
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http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19402/
Solar-powered laser: Two Fresnel lenses focus sunlight on a ceramic crystal to produce laser light. The hope is to use such powerful lasers to generate
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heat and hydrogen from magnesium and water.
Credit: Tokyo Institute of Technology/ Applied Physics Letters
A new kind of efficient, solar-powered laser has been developed by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in Japan. They hope to use the laser to help them realize their goal of developing a magnesium combustion engine. The researchers described the new laser in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters .
The idea, says Takashi Yabe , a professor of mechanical engineering and science at the Tokyo Institute, is to make a powerful laser capable of combusting the magnesium content of seawater. In the process, large amounts of heat and hydrogen are given off.
Magnesium has great potential as an energy source because it has an energy storage density about 10 times higher than that of hydrogen, says Yabe. It is also highly
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