Thanks to the Wall Street Journal and Tree Hugger for some video clips and a great story on alternative energy ideas seen in the movies. Remember the Methane from Pig Poop in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?
Check out the Teaser click below and click the links above for the rest over at Treehugger or WSJ.
It is funny how there are no new ideas. Just good old ideas that were left by the wayside.
In October of 1934 Popular Science published this article on Solar Energy and the future that it would hold for us. Why does it seem today that we are just getting to the level of information that they had in 1934? Coal and Oil were cheap and easy for so long we forgot the better way.
While you may sound like you heard it earlier today, this was written in 1934
“SUNSHINE, our greatest source of potential power, is now largely wasted. It is highly probable, however, that a few years hence science will find a way to harness the mighty energy of the sun’s radiation. Solar engines and solar heating apparatus will then make it economically practicable for us to use at least a small portion of our now-wasted sunshine to run our factories, light our streets, cook our food, and warm our houses. In the United States we use, each year, something like a half billion tons of coal, a half billion barrels of oil, and fifty billion horsepower hours of water power for heat, light, and power.”
Source: blog.modernmechanix.com
I came across thison the web yesterday and I have fallen in love with it as a gardener, environmentalist and lover of the modern ascetic! So I emailed them and asked if I could blog about it and they said yes! Read on to learn more and please visit their website.
The product is GROW and has been developed by SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology).
GROW offers a new approach to solar and wind power that used small solar panels designed as leaves to both flutter in the wind to generate power and to garner power from the sun with solar panels placed on each leaf. It is amazing and beautiful. I see a ton of possibilities for the south wall of my detached alley garage.
Left Photo: GROW.1 on display at the Museum of Modern Art. Currently in the concept stage.
“GROW.1 is designed to utilize emerging technology of the photovoltaic and piezo industry. Based around a modular brick system, .1 is composed of a small number of different parts. Each brick has 5 solar leaves which have a very flexible piezo generator at their stem. The manufacturing of these bricks could happen in a roll to roll printing process where PV, conductive ink, and piezo generators can be layered quickly and efficiently. The rolls can then be stamped and formed to create leaves and connection points. Each brick is designed so that at the end of their life cycle the valuable components, i.e. photovoltaic and piezo, can be stamped out and up cycled while the reusable material, i.e plastic, can be up recycled back into the production stream.”
Right Photo: GROW.2 will be available soon and is a working model.
“GROW.2 is built on top of a stainless steel mesh system designed and manufactured by Carl Stahl Decorcable in Germany. Their system is designed to enable plants (such as ivy and other crawlers) to grow up the sides of buildings without causing damage to the buildings themselves, a typical problem of many vertical gardens.
Our leaves are made of 100% recyclable polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities. The solar cells are thin film flexible photovoltaic modules encapsulated in Tefzel, and are manufactured by PowerFilm Solar. GROW.2 is a flexible system that can adapt to most building types, sizes, orientations and latitudes. We have the ability to provide varying degrees of opacity to modulate heat gain, light transmission and view. Because of our modular design, future iterations of GROW.2 will be able to include more efficient and less expensive PV modules once those products are both available and cost effective. This modularity also makes GROW.2 easy to support and update: if one leaf should fail, we can replace it very easily.”
Source: SMIT
I stumbled upon this blog today when doing a search for photos of the dreaded inversion here in Salt Lake City and think it is very worthwhile to post a link on my blog.
If you want to understand my passion for environmental change take a look at this blog. You will see exactly what we are breathing here for most of the winter.
All I can so to the video below is wow! Turbines have a governor to keep them revolving at a slow pace during high winds. This one obviously failed. I can only imagine the damage something like this could cause in a large scale wind farm. By the way I am not posting this to in anyway devalue wind power. I feel it is a very important part of our sustainable future. It is just an interesting video.
