Picture a wind turbine that uses an egg beater rather than stick-straight blades to produce energy, and you've got a fair sense of the Energy Ball, made by Home Energy, a company from The Netherlands.
Continue reading Energy ball spins new form of wind energy
Gold nano-antennas set this solar energy-collecting technology apart from the rest. Using cheap, flexible materials, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, hope to create mass-produced plastic sheets with billions of nano-scale antennas to collect energy.
Continue reading New solar tech collects energy at night
Photo courtesy of Zachstern/Flick
This spring, a company called Voltree Power plans to test a wireless sensor network that taps into electricity generated naturally by trees in order to provide an early warning system against wildfires. The humidity and temperature sensors will be distributed over a 100-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service. Based on the readings relayed by each sensor, the network can continually monitor forest conditions to predict fire hazard.
Continue reading Trees self-power a wildfire alert network
Ten northeast and mid-Atlantic states are participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first mandatory cap-and-trade program in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to its web site. The initiative will begin selling carbon credits this Thursday in the first of its planned quarterly auctions, and the proceeds are intended to support renewable-energy technologies, such as solar and wind.
Continue reading First U.S. greenhouse gas auction takes place this week
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