Blogging The Green

So after years of worrying that every window in your house was costing you in energy lost someone has finally figured out how to truly make them earn their keep.  Scientists have developed a way take all the light striking a glass surface and concentrate it to the edges where it can be converted to energy.  This means instead of a window sized solar panel you can have a much cheaper and smaller panel set up only covering the edges of the the glass.   As an addition al bonus it simple to manufacture and increases the energy captured by each solar cell by 40x.

The plan apparently isn’t to actually use your windows for this but install them just like solar panels but at far lower costs

Check out the full story at Physorg.com

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Is there nothing environmentally safe any more….

Perpendium article

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As I’ve mentioned a number of times in my blog, solar power is one of those great dreams of free energy that has just never quite made it.  For decades we have seen uncountable reports of technologies just over the horizon that will deliver us cheap electricity goodness.   Admittedly with gas prices climbing and global warming fears, the reports have certainly picked up steam lately.  It seems every company under the *cough* sun is hoping to make the next sliced bread of solar panels.  Well here’s another company called Sungri.

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One of the biggest power wasters in any home is phantom loads.  This is the power that electrical appliances use while in standby mode.  Every thing in your house that has a digital clock or a little red light that is always on is a phantom load.  If you add them all up it can be scary just how much power is being used to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Well thankfully it looks like someone has put some thought into the problem.  Japanese company Rohm Co has created an integrated circuit that doesn’t consume any electricity when in stand by mode.  Rohm believe that 15 billion kilowatts of power could be saved in japan alone using this new circuit.

Japan Today Article

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Just when you thought nothing useful could ever come from learning to whistle with a blade of grass clenched in your hands.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you are definitely all city)  Here is a video that shows how wind vibrating a flexible material can generate electricity.  Seems incredibly simple.  Usually the coolest ideas are.

Link to the Video

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