‘Absolute Black’ Solar Panels Absorb Almost All Sunlight Mar 29, 2012 7:00am A clean-room technician holds a black silicon solar-power wafer. Natcore Technology, Inc. Solar power is one of those technologies that have been promised to be just a few years from profitability for 30 years. Can that change? “One of the ways this matters,” said Chuck Provini, the company’s CEO, “is that there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the electricity you get on a sunny day vs. a cloudy day. The new panels, Provini said, will not require hazardous chemicals to produce and should help drive down the price of solar energy. “Black silicon will improve power output and reduce cost — the two things that matter most,” he said. “Solar has changed a lot in the last few years,” said Monique Hanis of the Solar Energy Industries Association in an email. The cost of solar power has kept edging downward at a time when the price of oil has been going up – something that makes it promising to its champions, but also makes it a political football.
Solar-Power iPad Case From Logitec Hits Best Buy Website Best Buy/via Mashable caught wind of a listing on Best Buy for a solar-powered iPad cover for $129, which features not only solar cells but a built-in keyboard. It says "coming soon" so we aren't sure exactly when you might be able to pick one of these up, but it's up on the site to add to your wishlist.
Live Green - Historic Cookbooks Shed Light On Sustainable Past As we study the ways past generations lived, farmed and ate, one thing is for sure... American has been blessed with clever and thoughtful cooks. And many beautiful, wonderful, educational cookbooks, too. Where would we be without the cookbook? From The Virginia Housewife, first published in 1838, to Julia Child’s recently rediscovered Mastering The Art Of French Cooking to Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook, our love of food and all things food related consumes us. But there is also much to be learned from studying the food prejudices and opinions of the past. Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project is a marvelous treasure trove of practical information, interesting recipes and an enlightening look at how America’s attitude toward food and agriculture has changed - and stayed the same - over the last 234 years. The cookbooks date back as far as 1798, and include descriptions and measurements that today’s reader probably wouldn’t even recognize. Share this with Your Friends
Improved Black Silicon Lets Conventional Solar Cells Harness Infrared Light © Fraunhofer HHI Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have been busy making improvements to an already exciting technology, black silicon. Black silicon solar cells are specifically designed to absorb nearly all of the sun's spectrum, including infrared radiation, and convert it into electricity. The Fraunhofer researchers believe that we're close to seeing that happen. The Fraunhofer Institute explains: This enabled the scientists to solve a key problem of black silicon: In normal silicon, infrared light does not have enough energy to excite the electrons into the conduction band and convert them into electricity, but the sulfur incorporated in black silicon forms a kind of intermediate level. “We used the laser pulses to alter the embedded sulfur in order to maximize the number of electrons that can climb up while minimizing the number that can go back down,” said Dr.
Cool DIY Hydropower Kits for Kids © Science Kit and Boreal Laboratories Kids these days: they can figure out how to take 3-D pictures on your iPhone, but all they know about electricity is that you're always going on about something called vampire power and nagging them to turn off the lights. It's time to put that tech smarts to work in getting a handle on renewable energy, is it not? The Hydropower Renewable Energy Science Kit aims to help your budding genius explore the power of water, literally, by building models and conducting experiments with them. But here's the clever bit: this kit will also help your kids assemble a hydroelectric power station and actually generate their electricity, lighting an LED. Water towers, communicating vessels and a water fountain further illustrate the scientific concepts of water pressure, while accompanying experiments demonstrate surface tension, adhesion and cohesion.
Story of Stuff The Story of Stuff, originally released in December 2007, is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the Stuff in your life forever. Download the Fact Sheet Credits The Story of Stuff was written by Annie Leonard, Louis Fox, and Jonah Sachs, directed by Louis Fox and produced by Free Range Studios. Show full list of credits
Solar cells made from black silicon - Research News October 2012 - Topic 2 The Sun blazes down from a deep blue sky – and rooftop solar cells convert this solar energy into electricity. Not all of it, however: Around a quarter of the Sun’s spectrum is made up of infrared radiation which cannot be converted by standard solar cells – so this heat radiation is lost. One way to overcome this is to use black silicon, a material that absorbs nearly all of the sunlight that hits it, including infrared radiation, and converts it into electricity. But how is this material produced? “Black silicon is produced by irradiating standard silicon with femtosecond laser pulses under a sulfur containing atmosphere,” explains Dr. Stefan Kontermann, who heads the Research group “Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion“ within the Fraunhofer Project Group for Fiber Optical Sensor Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, HHI. Prize-winning project
Greenpeace Pranks Apple at Flagship Stores, Calls for an End to the Coal-Powered Cloud Brian Merchant/CC BY 3.0 Greenpeace activists loosed black balloons inside two of the nation's flagship Apple stores today, protesting the company's reliance on coal to power the cloud. In New York City, San Francisco, and at another demonstration in Toronto, protesters drew attention to the fact that companies like Apple use electricity generated by coal plants to run their data centers—which power the cloud that is now sucking down a ballooning slice of the world's energy pie. As far as Greenpeace actions go, this one was pretty tame—I'd been tipped off by organizers, so I was already inside the Fifth Avenue Apple store when a small parade of activists barged through the front doors and released dozens of black balloons. Down below, a couple Apple staffers gathered to point up at the balloons, customers muttered about Occupy. Brian Merchant/CC BY 3.0 It's a smart strategy—each of these companies' reputations rest, to varying degrees, on their cutting edge-iness.
Building a Two-Can Bioreactor Purpose Two-can bioreactors are designed to be used as small-scall indoor composting units for families, and for composting as an educational tool in the classroom. Materials 32-gallon plastic garbage can 20-gallon plastic garbage can drill brick spigot (optional) duct tape (optional) insulation (optional) Construction Using a drill, make 15 to 20 holes (0.5" to 1" diameter) through the bottom of the 20-gallon can. Note: A system of 10-gallon plastic garbage cans that can fit inside 20-gallon cans can be substituted if space is a problem. The composting process in the cans will take from three to five weeks. Credits
Black silicon could boost efficiency of traditional solar cells Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications have developed a system that allows solar cells to effectively harvest energy from the infrared spectrum, tapping into a source of energy that in the past has mostly been out of reach. The new technology, which promises to work well with commercially available solar cells, has the potential of becoming a standard in the solar panels of tomorrow. When photons hit the surface of a solar cell, the energy they carry can be absorbed by a semiconductor. If the energy absorbed is higher than a set threshold – which is known as the energy gap, and depends on the semiconductor used – electrons are freed from the semiconductor and can be used to generate an electric current. The energy carried by a photon is proportional to its frequency. Over the past few years, researchers have produced solar cells that can absorb infrared and ultraviolet light more effectively. Source: Fraunhofer HHI
Amsterdam RAI Convention Centre Goes Greener © Amsterdam RAI Convention centers are huge consumers of energy, sell huge amounts of takeout food and disposable cups, and generate a huge amount of waste. Much of it is out of anyone's control; a convention centre can't tell a visitor or an exhibitor what to do. Having been in the terrible food courts of quite a few North American food courts, I find their restaurant appealing. An Exhibition and Convention Centre is not the first place you'd think to look for a hip, eco-friendly cafe. They even get some of their deliveries by electric barge. Quiet, clean and uninfluenced by traffic congestion, a completely loaded ship replaces between 5-6 trucks traveling through the city. Amsterdam RAI/Screen capture Going beyond the press release, the Amsterdam RAI produces an extensive Sustainability Report that makes interesting reading. Despite our hard work and investments, the total electricity consumption increased...RAI has little influence on the electricity consumption of exhibitors.