Energy

Here’s how the natural energy cycle works: the sun creates energy when it causes the plants to grow, the plants create energy when they’re eaten by animals, the animals and the plants create energy when they’re consumed by people, and then the people create energy when they do things like open doors. That’s sort of the idea, anyway, and it’s one that New York architectural designers Carmen Trudell and Jenny Broutin have tried to express through their design firm, FLUXXlab. They have created several clever devices designed to convert human energy into electricity, and to educate people on their place within the energy cycle. Read More

Natural photosynthesis isn't as efficient as we would like it to be, and incorporating solar energy into useful products is the subject for much collective research. Engineering researchers from University of Cincinnati have found a way to artificially create a photosynthetic material from foam which uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes to produce sugars from sunlight and carbon dioxide. Read More

We recently looked at a breakthrough in using sunlight to create hydrogen but now scientists have found a way to use ambient noise to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel. The process harvests small amounts of otherwise-wasted energy such as noise or stray vibrations from the environment to break the chemical bonds in water and produce oxygen and hydrogen gas. Read More

If you’re a fan of the original Back to the Future movie, then you probably liked the scene at the end where Doc Brown used some random household waste to fuel his time-traveling deLorean. Well, we’re now getting a little bit closer to that being a reality... sort of. While practical flying cars, time travel and cold fusion are still a ways off, the ability to power your car with garbage isn’t. Canadian biofuels firm Enerkem is currently working with the city of Edmonton, Alberta, to convert that city’s municipal waste into ethanol. This will lower the city’s greenhouse gas output, keep much of its waste out of the landfill, and produce a “clean” fuel Doc Brown would be proud of. Read More

True to its word the formerly secretive Bloom Energy launched its Bloom “Box” (hereafter known as the Bloom Energy Server), today at eBay’s California HQ. Attended by Governor Schwarzenegger and Bloom Energy board member Colin Powell, the event revealed more concrete specifications for the fuel cell, as well as some of the corporate household names that are already customers. Read More

Few people would argue that having a rooftop wind turbine could help offset your power bills. Your neighbors, however, might not appreciate the sight of a windmill on your roof, nor would they like the sound of its blades whistling through the air. Don’t give up on the idea yet, though, because British inventor Rupert Sweet-Escott has come up with a product that he claims addresses those problems. His Secret Energy Turbine (SET) looks like an ordinary chimney stack and is boasts almost completely silent operation. Read More

Bloom Energy has definitely generated some buzz this week with a story on 60 Minutes ahead of the official launch this Wednesday of the Bloom Box – an electricity generating fuel cell box designed to sit in the back yard and provide enough power to reliably, more cleanly and cheaply power a house. Read More

Efforts to capture energy from the human body usually focus on harnessing the kinetic energy of the body’s movement. However the human body is also generating energy in the form of heat that could also be used to run low power electronic devices. New energy-scavenging systems under development at MIT could generate electricity just from differences in temperature between the body (or other warm object) and the surrounding air. Read More

The world’s biggest wind turbine will be constructed in Norway. The prototype turbine will stand 162 meters (533 feet) tall and feature a rotor diameter of 145 meters (475 feet). It is expected to be capable of generating 10-megawatts – enough to power 2,000 homes. The turbine will be tested on land in Øygarden in Hordaland County, Norway, for two years but is intended for offshore placement, where the winds are stronger and more consistent, and the concerns of ruined views and vibrations are removed. Read More