Instead of just burning calories, why not use all that energy from exercising to power your MP3 player? The Dancepants Kinetic Music Player, a shortlisted entry in Designboom’s Green Life competition, lets you do just that by converting kinetic energy from running, hopping, jumping, etc. into electricity to power an iPod or other music player. According to the Dancepants designers, the product is a “100 percent interactive way to feel the value of energy on your own.”
The recent evolution of solar technology has been nothing short of amazing, and we are continuously impressed by all the products hitting the market that make it easier to integrate clean tech into our daily lives. One innovative company at the forefront of the solar energy bustle is Sulfurcell, the producer of a new kind of modular solar panel that add energy-generating capabilities to any building. The super-thin panels are entirely self contained, so they don’t require any substructure, and they can be applied to new buildings as well as retrofitted old buildings to provide a sleek look and plenty of power.
Think about how much trash goes into a bin in, say, New York City’s Times Square on a daily basis. What if all that garbage could be used to generate energy? That’s the thinking behind designer Haneum Lee’s Gaon Street Light – a lamppost powered by garbage!
The newest building concept to spring from the mind of eco-designer and artist Michael Jantzen is a testament to the power of renewable energy. His monumental Wind Farm Celebration Center is designed to serve as a visitor center and is very appropriately powered by an awe-inspiring 1.5 MW wind turbine that sprouts up from the structure like a blooming flower.
When it comes to teaching kids to conserve energy, positive reinforcement is the name of the game. Combine that with a cute and fun toy, and you really can’t go wrong. Case in point: Tio, an educational ghost pal and light-switch system for your tot that teaches them how cool turning off lights when we don’t need them can be. When lights are left …
Throughout India there are many rural villages that are completely removed from the grid. With no source of power for cooking, light, and heating they currently must rely on firewood, kerosene or diesel for fuel. Now green jobs are blossoming throughout these remote areas as the Orissa Tribal Empowerment & Livelihoods Programme trains women and youth to become barefoot solar engineers. This brilliant initiative provides a bright future for the semi-literate and illiterate rural poor by teaching them to harness the sun through the construction of photovoltaic systems and solar powered lanterns.
Instead of acting as one of the most bland parts of city landscapes, what if manholes served a purpose? That’s what designers Cheolyeon Jo and Youngsun Lee propose with their “Eco Sign“, an electronic manhole cover that gives directions to the closest train or bus stop.
The Birds and the Bees have inspired one startup to send forth a hovering turbine. Green Wavelength, “committed to finding ways of applying nature’s solutions to our man-made energy problems,” presented its xBee prototype to an entrepreneurial buzz at The Perfect Pitch 2009. This biomimetic windmill sports 19-ft. wings …
We’ll admit it: We’ve never totally understood Nascar’s appeal. I mean, come on, it’s just a bunch of cars going round and round a track like a zillion times! But the World Solar Challenge? Now that is one car race we can really get behind. The event, which started way back in 1987, features solar-powered vehicles created by some of the world’s top engineering colleges. Using the power of the sun instead of polluting fossil fuels, the cars race across thousands of miles in order to advance solar and electric vehicle technology — and to achieve the satisfaction of winning, of course.
Any one point on a busy street can receive up to 50,000 steps a day, so imagine if you could take all that foot traffic and turn it into something useful – like energy! A new product designed by Laurence Kemball-Cook, the director of Pavegen Systems Ltd., can do just that. With a minuscule flex of 5mm, the energy generating pavement is able to absorb the kinetic energy produced by every footstep, creating 2.1 watts of electricity per hour.
The problem with most built-in solar gadget chargers is that it just doesn’t make sense to stick your pricey phone in the sun for the whole day while you wait for it to charge. But the Regen ReNu modular solar panel takes care of that issue–the combination solar panel and battery pack attaches to the back of an iPod/iPhone dock or USB device for easy access to solar power. When you want to charge the panel, just remove it and place it near sunlight!
Rooftop solar panels are unlikely to elicit complaints from neighbors–they’re silent and relatively unobtrusive. But loud rooftop wind turbines? That’s where the virtually NIMBY-proof Ridgeblade turbine comes in. The turbine, designed by a former Rolls Royce turbine engineer at UK-based The Power Collective, boasts a sleek profile that is both powerful and visually pleasing.
Synch your workout with a little river detox, then rehydrate with a cup of the fresh water you just filtered. This people-powered water purification island, designed by Jakub Szczesny as part of the Synchronicity architecture and art festival in Warsaw, Poland, hooks up basic exercise machines to kinetically pump polluted water through four filters into overhead tanks …
Scientific American recently reported that Sweden uses a pretty strange source for some of its heating fuel: rabbits. Stockholm has an overabundance of the cotton-tailed critters, and the hungry bunnies are decimating city parks. To cut back on bunny populations and create a greener source of heating fuel for Swedes, city employees round up the rabbits, shoot them, freeze them and then ship them to a heating plant where they’re incinerated. And yes, the thought of it makes our soul hurt, too.
The serene back-and-forth movement of a rocking chair is nothing if not relaxing. It can also be useful and productive, according to Rochus Jacob. The designer’s Murakami Chair, a winner in designboom’s Green Life competition, uses the kinetic energy produced by rocking to power an attached OLED lamp.
Harvard scientists believe in the power of the good earth — literally. A team at the Boston-based college have created microbial fuel cell (MFC) batteries that derive energy from naturally occurring bacteria in soil. If the product takes off, the eco-friendly batteries could provide power for some of the 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to electricity.
At first glance, Graft Lab’s dazzling complex in Dubai may appear to have a cluster of sparkling geometric pools at its base. But upon further inspection, the web-like structures are actually something even more desirable than a place to take a dip in the hot desert – a means of collecting the scorching rays of the sun and transforming them into energy. Dubbed the Vertical Village, this multi-use building and accompanying massive array of solar collectors was designed to work smarter, not harder, which is expected to earn it a LEED Gold certification when it is completed.
Fall is here, and If you aren’t part of the lucky few to still be basking in the sun (ah, Italia!), don’t fret – we have some great news that will surely brighten your day and warm your house. Recently Boulder-based company Cool Energy, Inc. unveiled SolarHeart, a specialized engine that can convert low temperature solar power and waste energy into enough electricity to provide 80% of a home’s heat, all of its hot water, and 60% of its electricity!
The concept of harvesting energy from river waves to power New York City just got more enticing. Earlier this year we brought you GRO Architects notable concept, which stood out among the entries for Metropolis Magazine’s 2009 Next Generation Design Competition. Brian Novello, one of the partners in the project, also has a beautiful design to expand these modular docking stations in energy-collecting floating houses, and it looks so cool that we had to spread the news.
For most sustainability-minded architects, a net zero energy building is the holy grail. But Elithis Tower, located in Dijon, France, has surpassed the net zero energy ideal to become the first energy positive office building, meaning it creates more power than it uses. The building, which was designed by Arte Charpentier Architects, also produces six times fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional office structures.
While scientists work to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics, designers are striving to make them sleeker, more adaptive, and easier to install. Case in point: SRS Energy’s Solé Power Tile, a beautiful solar shingle that is designed to fit into standard Mission style roofs while generating electricity. We caught up with these ingenious modular solar panels at West Coast Green this year, where they stole the show alongside several other innovative solar designs.
The Pacific Ocean could soon be lighting up the beautiful city of San Francisco as a tidal-energy project planned for the waters near the Golden Gate Bride is now in the final stages of acquiring the necessary permits for implementation. The project, which has been in the works for over four years, will produce 10 to 30 megawatts of energy with the potential of up to 100 megawatts, and is anticipated to be the largest energy generator off the California Coast.
It’s easy enough to monitor home power consumption, but few people think about the energy impact of talking on cell phones for hours on end. After all, cell towers have to be powered by something, and in many cases that something is coal or other expensive on-the-grid sources. Enter Helix Wind Corporation, a wind turbine company that is aiming to both cut down on cell phone tower operating costs and lower the CO2 impact of cell phone use with wind-powered cell towers.
Dangerous bacteria — is there anything it can’t do? First we learned that scientists at Birmingham University are using E.Coli to clean up nuclear waste, and now comes word that MIT researchers have figured out a way to make biofuels from a bacteria that is related to the strain that produces tuberculosis.
I have to admit that when I saw the title of Christopher Steiner’s new book, I scoffed a bit. Twenty Dollars per Gallon of gas seems like an outrageous, unfathomable price, even when you’re a believer in peak oil. But part of the beauty of Steiners’ book is its ability to track the effects of ever-more-scarce oil in believable detail. Whether the author’s predictions of local food, high-speed trains and alternative plastics are correct, they are excellent illustrations of the pervasiveness of petroleum.
Many environmentalists argue that it’s important to focus our attention on Earth’s problems before venturing off into space, but the recent discovery of water on the moon means that exploring other planets could be easier than ever. Now that an Indian mission has discovered hydrogen and oxygen molecules on the lunar surface, the planet can be used as an outer space “service station”, prepping astronauts for their journeys into deep space.
We often just assume that energy to power our TVs, computers, cell phones, and other electronics will always be readily available. But the earth’s resources are scarce – a reality that designer Mike Thompson wants to illustrate (somewhat painfully) with his blood-powered lamp. The single-use lamp forces users to think about where every drop of their energy is coming from–literally.
Creating the perfect solar cell (i.e. a cell that’s both efficient and cheaply produced) is certainly a work in progress. Researchers across the world have attempted to create cells from silicon, plastic and even human hair! Now, researchers at Cornell University came up with another concept: crafting solar cells from carbon nanotubes. Though still in the very early stages of development, if perfected, carbon nanotube-based cells could provide a more efficient method of converting light to electricity.
What if we could turn all the plastic waste we create on a daily basis into fuel to power our cars? A Washington, DC-based company called Envion claims it can do just that with a process that turns plastic into an oil-like fuel for just $10 per barrel. According to Envion, the resulting fuel can be blended with other components and used as either gasoline or diesel.
Wind power is the fastest growing source of renewable energy in Europe, so it’s no surprise to learn that Denmark is launching the world’s biggest offshore wind farm this week. Using 91 turbines scattered across 35 square kilometers, the Horns Rev 2 farm, built by Danish utility company Dong Energy, will be able to produce 209 megawatts of power – enough for a staggering 200,000 homes.
Michael Jackson will live on forever in our hearts through his music, but he also deserves a thriller of a memorial fit for a true king! In the wake of his untimely death, our friends at Bustler held a competition to design the Baddest memorial ever. Live Forever: The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition yielded some impressive designs. Some were gaudy and a little ostentatious, and others even bordered on the line of inappropriate, but our absolute favorite was a blinged-out, gold-plated, and renewable energy-fueled disco dancefloor in a undisclosed remote desert location. What better way to immortalize the King of Pop?!
GRID Alternatives will lead 200+ community and industry volunteers to install sixteen 1.8-kilowatt solar electric systems in their annual Solarthon this Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at Habitat for Humanity East Bay’s Edes Avenue development in Oakland, California. These systems should generate over $270,000 worth of clean, renewable power over their lifespans and eliminate over 800 tons of greenhouse …
Trees provide us with oxygen, shade, timber, and…power? That’s what researchers at the University of Washington proved recently when they ran a circuit off energy generated by a tree. The experiment was inspired by a MIT study from 2008 that discovered plants’ ability to generate tiny amounts of voltage when one sensor is attached to a plant and the other to the soil. The MIT study, however, never experimented with trees, and no one is entirely sure how trees produce power in the first place.
Did you know that melanin, the pigment in hair, is light sensitive and can be used as a conductor? Well, that’s what an 18 year old in Nepal recently discovered, and is now using human hair to replace silicon in solar panels. Since the price of hair is considerably cheaper than silicon, this enterprising youth may have just found a breakthrough technology to help bring down the cost of solar and give thousands of people in developing nations access to affordable renewable energy.
Arizona-based First Solar announced yesterday plans to construct the world’s largest solar plant in Ordos, China. When completed in 2019, the 2,000 megawatt Ordos solar farm will produce enough power to provide for 3 million homes. It’s a development that makes China, the second largest energy-using country, one of the biggest players in the solar energy game.
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