Recent postsSource: Guardian
With regions blessed by Europe’s highest solar radiation, Portugal is not leaving its energy issues to chance. Already having the currently largest photovoltaic energy farm in the world, another PV farm that is currently under construction in the Moura region will reach 45MW to power 30,000 homes.
But things are not stopping there, Portugal is [...]
There is plenty of green energy projects going on at the moment. Large scale wind energy production has proven itself in North Europe, on the other side of the Atlantic there is predictions that by 2030 it could power up to 20% of the US grid.
Solar and wind technologies are at the moment the only [...]
Source: Ooms Avenhorn
Think of this system as a massive heat exchanger. Pipes underneath the asphalt carry water that is heated during the day from solar energy and then stored underground for later use. When the weather turns cold, this very same heated water forms the basis for the heating of buildings.
You think it’s a joke? [...]
According to a post in Treehugger and the Earth Policy Institute, global energy generation from wind is growing in leaps and will very soon -estimated within a month- reach 100 GW! This considerable amount covers the needs of 150 million people!
Although certainly not solving global energy problems, it is a great start and holds even [...]
The world is not short of plans for large zero emission energy production projects. ElectronRun has so far covered several solar projects or proposals worldwide -see links below. The Southwest states of the US are blessed with lots of sunshine, a fact that has recently led to several large solar project plans in this corner [...]
In part 1 of the series I discussed the practical difficulties for widespread energy harvesting adoption. In this second and last part, I will go through some ways that I believe would make widespread adoption easier and faster. The number of applications is huge and I would say that it is wise to divide them [...]
A few days back I wrote about the Fluxxlab design proposal to harvest energy from revolving doors. Managing to install standalone energy producing devices is a significant event, much like when the first solar panels hit the market in the past. Therefore, I have decided to write a two part series, the first part is [...]
Source: Telegraph
Big problems require large scale innovative solutions. ElectronRun has so far covered solar proposals for the energy needs of the EU and the US. Now OTEC artificial energy islands come as another large scale idea whose main energy source is water temperature differences. The idea is that when we have a difference of about [...]
Source: Fluxxlab
Remember the Matrix movie and the way humans became grown heat-producing plants to provide for their machine lords? The word “harvesting” gives me the crawls, but luckily harvesting in this world is for our own benefit and energy dependence. Interesting ideas so far are the energy harvesting from gym users or vibrations from trains [...]
Source: Idaho National Laboratory
There is all sorts of ways to produce clean energy, but the smartest and cleanest of all is definitely solar panels. There is absolutely no moving parts, noise or intermediate materials. Just beautiful clean energy. The catch? Low efficiency that in reality is far from the theoretical 20%, high manufacturing costs and [...]
Hong Kong leads the way to link the pollution that its energy plants produce to the prices they charge. It is a very simple idea. If pollution is reduced below agreed levels, Hong Kong’s two power companies can charge higher prices. In the opposite case, charged prices will be lower because the environment is harmed, [...]
We have already written about Desertec and how it could change the energy scene in Europe. Now the January issue of Scientific American describes a project that aims even higher, by using solar energy to produce up to 3 terawatts of energy and cover 69% of US electricity and 35% of its total energy by [...]
We want to finish 2007 in a really positive note. It has been a year of black predictions for the environment but new forward looking people and technologies are promising to reverse that trend. The Tindo is such a wonderful project. It marries two clean technologies:
Electric motors driven by 11 onboard batteries.
Photovoltaic panels at the [...]
Desertec is one of those huge projects that could have instant positive environmental impact. It is a proposal by TREC (Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation) an initiative between the EU, North Africa and the Middle East. The target is to provide Europe with about one sixth of its energy needs and the countries where production takes [...]
The public electricity producing company of Greece announced that it will construct a 5oo MW photovoltaic park, the second largest in Europe. A large proportion of energy production in Greece is lignite based, resulting in Greek plants in the list of 10 most polluting stations of Europe and high levels of polution in the areas [...]
