14Feb

ABB Announces Plans for Worldwide Electric Vehicle Charging Network

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by Andrew Michler

Switzerland-based industrial machine behemoth ABB just announced plans to throw its weight behind a massive network of electric vehicle charging stations across Europe, the US, and Asia. The company plans to integrate chargers into smart grid systems and allow drivers to juice up their electric vehicles while they are out and about. The announcement is a big nod that the nascent electric car market is set to boom – sources project that over 5 million EVs will be sold each year by 2017, and the charger market is valued at $1 billion.

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7Feb

Net-Zero-Energy Home Unveiled in Las Vegas

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Net-Zero-Energy Home Unveiled in Las Vegas

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A number of energy-efficient homes and communities are currently in the process of being tested, but a Los Angeles-based company is going one small step farther. KB Home presented its first net-zero-energy home in an event in Las Vegas, and it’s not just experimental. The home, called the ZeroHouse 2.0, is available to consumers (in certain areas, including Vegas).

ZeroHouse 2.0 is the natural extension of KB Home’s standard building practices, which all comply with the EPA Energy Star Standards. The company claims that the ZeroHouse 2.0 can eliminate the electric bill altogether; in the ridiculously hot weather of Nevada, that’s quite a feat.

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31Jan

17 Years Pakistani Student Invents World’s Cheapest Way to Produce Electricity

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17 Years Pakistani Student Invents World’s Cheapest Way to Produce Electricity

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17 Years Old Pakistani College Student Shahzaib Hussain from Quetta figures out a away to produce electricity with Earth’s Magnetic Field. He said that this is the world’s cheapest way to produce electric from earth’s magnetic field. Shahzaib Hussain also invited in the US in World’s 1500 Intelligent students competition. Shahzaib Hussain studying in Army Public School & College Quetta.

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28Jan

How EcoTricity’s Sea Raiser Project Harvests Water From the Sea

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How EcoTricity’s Sea Raiser Project Harvests Water From the Sea

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Electricity obtained from sea water is one of the most reliable clean sources of energy and now it’s set to become one of the most affordable ones. The proof lies in the SeaRaser project, belonging to the UK alternative energy company Ecotricity – more low-cost even than fossil fuels.

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26Jan

Developing Renewable Energy Resources of Landfill Gas

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Developing Renewable Energy Resources of Landfill Gas

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Landfills are a necessary component of contemporary life. According to the US EPA, the average person in the U.S. produces nearly 1,130 pounds (513 kilograms) of waste per year, and the vast majority of that ends up in landfills. Much of that trash decomposes, and releases methane and CO2, both of which are greenhouse gasses. However, methane is also a gas which can be used as a fuel, and increasingly, landfills are beginning to realize this is an energy resource and are making use of it.

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23Jan

‘Bicycle pump’ to turn wave power into clean energy

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'Bicycle pump' to turn wave power into clean energy

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An aquatic “bicycle pump” is set to take to the seas and turn wave power into clean electricity after being acquired by green energy company Ecotricity. The Searaser device, which pumps saltwater to an onshore generator, has been tested in prototype and praised by ministers.

Searaser uses the rise and fall of a large float to pressurise water, but unlike other wave power technologies does not generate the electricity in the hostile environment of the ocean. “If you put any device in the sea, it will get engulfed in storms, so it all has to be totally sealed,” said inventor Alvin Smith. “Water and electricity don’t mix – and sea water is particularly corrosive – so most other devices are very expensive to manufacture and maintain.” The technology means the salt water and electricity-generating equipment never meet, and is done routinely in Japan.

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19Jan

HydroSpin uses water flow inside the pipes to generate electricity

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HydroSpin uses water flow inside the pipes to generate electricity

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There is an exponentially increasing demand for clean water especially in those places, which do not have efficient electric supply like remote locations or big, crowded cities where water pipes are running under the ground. This urgent need of online monitoring is not met by the alternatives such as solar panels and other renewable energies. Although, hydroelectricity, i.e. energy production by water has been a successful accomplishment in the past, the markets are still void of efficient products. As a solution to this problem, an Israeli company HydroSpin Monitoring Solutions Ltd. has successfully developed a micro-generator known as Hydrospin that produces energy by monitoring the water flow inside the distribution pipes.

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16Jan

How New Self-Healing Circuit Restores Electricity in 20 Seconds

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As many of you know, a broken and then repaired thing won’t ever be as it was before, no matter how much we try. This truth applies as well to electronic circuits, that once broken are not very easy to fix. Despite these, a team of engineers at the University of Illinois managed to create self-healing circuits for electronics and batteries.

How many of you have not tried to open a TV or a laptop and when you had to put it back together it was already broken? I guess you know what I’m talking about, and I also guess you know this kind of question often asked by your not very happy parents: “You wanted to see why it worked, huh?”.

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9Jan

Powering insect cyborgs with an implantable biofuel cell

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Research into developing insect cyborgs for use as first responders or super stealthy spies has been going on for a while now. Most research has focused on using batteries, tiny solar cells or piezoelectric generators to harvest kinetic energy from the movement of an insect’s wings to power the electronics attached to the insects. Now a group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University have created a power supply that relies just on the insect’s normal feeding.

Recognizing that using a real insect is much easier than starting from scratch to create a device that works like an insect, Case Western Reserve chemistry professor teamed up with graduate student Michelle Rasmussen, biology professor Roy E. Ritzmann, chemistry professor Irene Lee and biology research assistant Alan J. Pollack to develop an implantable biofuel cell to provide usable power for the various sensors, recording devices, or electronics used to control an insect cyborg.

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21Dec

Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

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Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

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Among the world’s most developed countries, Germany seems to be on the right track concerning renewable energy production. The country’s renewable resources have been used more than the classic ones this year, reports BDEW, Germany’s Federal Association of Energy.

Therefore, nuclear power dropped to 17.4 percent after Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to show down the oldest eight reactors, as a reaction to the disaster at Fukushima, Japan. Plans are that by 2022 they’ll have phased out all of the nuclear power plants today in function.

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