The technology for harnessing solar energy to generate heat or thermal energy is called solar thermal energy (STE). The US Energy Information Administration has classified the solar thermal collectors as low, medium, or high temperature collectors. Low-temperature collectors are used to heat swimming pools, while medium-temperature collectors can be used to heat water or air for private or commercial purposes.
Please forgive us the journalistic conceit of collecting these year-end trends — it’s a necessary evil we all put ourselves through. In solar, this year is a bit more nerve-wracking than last. Here are ten trends in a particularly dynamic and pivotal year that will echo into 2012.
The current scenario
Transportation technologies have got a new form over all these years and have made traveling comfortable and convenient. There are a variety of transportation modes that help us travel all around the globe in no time. But, the saddest part being that the world is still ruled by gas-guzzling beasts that are threat to the environment. Efforts are being made to give the world environmentally-friendly vehicles that will be effective, energy efficient as well as clean. Public transportation systems, like buses, trains, airplanes, etc. are also getting an eco friendly streak as they run using solar energy and electricity. Such vehicles not only save precious resources but are also superior to gasoline driven vehicles as they are harmless for the surroundings.
The company today announced it raised $14 million in series C funding to commercialize a product that will draw electricity from solar hot water collectors. It will also make small chips able to convert heat from car exhaust pipes and industrial machines into electricity.
GMZ Energy, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College in 2008, has created an improved material for converting the energy in heat into electric power. The process works in reverse so an electric current will produce heat.
Thermoelectric materials have been used for years in a few applications, such as heated seats in cars and portable coolers. Now a number of companies are trying to make them less expensive and more efficient at the heat-to-electric power conversion.
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.
While Germany and Japan are backing away from nuclear power, the United Kingdom is looking in completely the opposite direction – 8 new nuclear plants are scheduled to be built. As a close neighbor, Germany has a number of words on the topic (all of them polite, but not particularly flattering).
Germany’s announcement of zero nuclear was prompted by the Sendai quake and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown last spring, as Clean Technica readers may remember, but those phase-out plans were already in place. The announcement gave rise to fears of insufficient power feeding into the grid anyway. However, Jochen Flasbarth, president of Germany’s EPA, pretty much thinks the entire idea is ridiculous, and furthermore that nuclear power is not the answer to a stable power supply:
Imagine if nuclear power was safe, terror-proof, and fueled by a plentiful, ubiquitous element. Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe it is. Maybe not.
A couple nights ago, I dropped by the Vice magazine offices in Brooklyn to check out a new documentary on thorium put together by Motherboard.tv. (Full disclosure: the video was produced by Alex Pasternack, a former contributor here at TH.) The film, The Thorium Dream, examines the history of an alternative kind of nuclear power, one tested decades ago but never embraced.
On October 22nd, just a day after the first manned flight of an electric multicopter took place in Germany, California’s JP Aerospace achieved an aeronautical feat of its own – it broke the record for the world’s highest airship flight. Remotely controlled from the ground, the all-volunteer group’s Tandem twin-balloon airship reportedly ascended to an altitude of 95,085 feet (28,982 meters). That’s almost four miles (6.4 km) higher than any airship has gone before.
JP Aerospace’s Tandem class of airships are fairly spartan, consisting of two balloons mounted at either end of a central keel frame, and two six foot (1.8 meter) -long propellers, each driven by a separate electric motor – those propellers are specifically designed to work in the thin air present at high altitudes.
By now, most readers are probably pretty familiar with quadracopters – small hovering unmanned electric aircraft, which get their lift from a set of four propellers. Well, make the whole thing larger, boost the number of propellers (and accompanying motors) to 16, and you get what German aircraft developer e-volo calls a multicopter. While the company has previously demonstrated unmanned drones, in late October it accomplished what it claims is a world first – a manned flight.
The flight took place at an airstrip in southwest Germany, and lasted one and a half minutes. Thomas Senkel, a physicist and designer/builder of the multicopter, piloted the aircraft from a center-mounted seat, using a handheld wireless control unit. The flight consisted mainly of maneuvering the multicopter around within a fairly small area – no sense in getting cocky.