14Feb

China Launches the World’s Largest Battery

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by Andrew Michler

China just took a massive step forward for renewable energy as it flipped the switch on the world’s largest battery, which will help integrate a solar project and a wind farm into a smart grid. Capable of storing 36 megawatt hours of power and taking up the area of a football field, the giant battery bank was built as a joint venture between solar and electric car company BYD and the State Grid Corporation of China to improve a large wind and solar electric installation’s efficiency by 5-10%. It looks like we have a race to see who will have the largest battery in world as utilities struggle to make solar and wind technologies usable for longer periods of time.

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14Feb

George Olah Develops World’s Cheapest CO2 Sponge

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by Andrew Michler

One of the holy grails of clean technology is now one step closer to reality as Noble Prize-winning chemist George Olah just developed a breakthrough low-cost plastic material than acts as one of the most effective CO2 absorbers ever created. Olah directed a team of researchers at the University of Southern California to take a common plastic which soaks up CO2 at moderate levels and fuse it to a silica substrate which vastly increases its surface area – and thus its effectiveness.

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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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10Feb

World’s largest offshore wind farm opens for business

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World's largest offshore wind farm opens for business

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Walney wind farm off the coast of Cumbria in the UK yesterday became the world’s largest offshore wind facility. One hundred and two turbines over 73 sq km (28 sq miles) provide a maximum output of 367.2 MW. It’s claimed the facility will provide enough power for about 320,000 homes – half as many again as the total number in Cumbria.

The project’s first phase, Walney 1, has been providing power since January 2011 from 51 137-meter-high (450-ft) turbines, each with a 107-m (350-ft) rotor diameter. The completed second phase, Walney 2, adds another 51 turbines of even greater size to the installation. These 150-m (492-ft) tall turbines have three 18-tonne (19.8-short ton) blades with a total diameter of 120 m (394 ft). Despite the differing dimensions, all turbines are Siemens-made 3.6 MW turbines. All told a single wind turbine weighs a hefty 550 tonnes (606 short tons). The Walney 2 installation was completed in an impressively tight six-month window.

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6Feb

Urban Landscape: A solar powered info station

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Urban Landscape A solar powered info station

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Solar power is one of the greenest sources of energy. We have seen solar powered gadgets, cars, houses etc. but this concept by Matteo Straforini is a solar powered info point where you can get information about a city. It is an urban design to make easy and ergonomic consulting. The solar panels are installed on the sail of the structure and it can rotate, following the sun’s inclination completing a rotation of 180°, just like a sunflower. A touch screen on the dashboard allows the user to access the menu, which contains different categories for browsing.

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4Feb

Why Google Invests in Clean Energy

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Why Google Invests in Clean Energy

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Last year, Google invested more than $915 million in clean energy projects — solar, wind and transmission.

That’s a lot of money, even for Google, which had $38 billion in revenues in 2011. The investments don’t appear to be core to the company’s mission of organizing information, and they have attracted criticism, as well as some careless reporting, implying that the Internet giant is exiting the alternative energy business.

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4Feb

Solar Powered Vehicle for a green ride in deserts

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Solar Powered Vehicle for a green ride in deserts

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Designer Omer Sagiv’s futuristic Solar Powered Vehicle (SPV) is an ideal vehicle for long rides in deserts or other open lands. The SPV is a typical solar vehicle design. The aluminum structure mounts plenty of flexible thin film modules, which can generate much energy for long rides. In form, the SPV almost resembles Nuon solar car, developed by Delft University.

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3Feb

Charge your phone using pedal power with the K-TOR Power Box

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Charge your phone using pedal power with the K-TOR Power Box

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K-TOR has added a new portable charging device to its lineup. The new Power Box puts your legs to work toward converting kinetic energy to electricity. Use it enough and you might just get your weekly workout. It is quite simply a pedal-powered generator equipped with a dual-pronged outlet so that you can plug in an AC adapter and charge your device directly from your leg power. The box works for devices rated 20W and below, including low-power netbooks, tablets, smartphones, video devices and portable game systems.

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3Feb

Intel, Kohl’s, Walmart Top List of US Green Power Purchasers

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Intel, Kohl's, Walmart Top List of US Green Power Purchasers

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Every year the EPA releases its list of top green power purchasers in the business world. We’ve dutifully reported on them for a while now on that annual schedule, but as it so happens these stats are updated on a quarterly basis. Relaying that info that frequently probably isn’t necessary, but the latest quarterly stats, just announced, do have some changes that are particularly notable.

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1Feb

Solar car hits U.S. in round-the-world jaunt

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Solar car hits U.S. in round-the-world jaunt

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Last October, the SolarWorld GT solar-powered car set out from Darwin, Australia on a drive around the world. It has since driven 3,001 kilometers (1,865 miles) across Australia, logged 1,947 km (1,210 miles) crossing New Zealand and been shipped across the Pacific Ocean. This Friday, it will embark on the U.S. leg of its journey, as it sets out across America from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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