I think everybody remembers the Masdar City, the first project of a zero-waste city, that Foster&Partners designed it for Abu Dhabi. Since Masdar was announced, we saw other projects like Auroville, in India and Dongtan, in China. Now, England gets is share of zero-carbon city as RIBA announced the winner for the visitor center at the new Brockholes Wetland and Woodland Nature Reserve in Preston.
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Solar energy is an enormous source of power but the solar panels that we rely on are expensive and not so efficient therefore many researchers are trying to find better ways to harvest Sun’s power. Joseph Cory, an environmental architect from Geotectura, has teamed up with Dr. Pini Gurfil, aerospace engineer from Technion, and they designed an interesting system.
The project is called Sunhope and it’s based on helium-filled platforms covered in photovoltaic solar cells. Sunhope is low-cost deployable and it maintains little environmental footprint. The idea of the developers was to design a system that would be spread vertically, not horizontally and they succeeded as you will need two solar balloons at the most to power up one home.
The infrastructure of the solar balloons consist of a control panel, a helium supply cable and a power cable therefore they are low-impact just like power plants.
Sunhope can produce a kilowatt of energy with a 10 ft solar balloon which costs $4,000 and when you think that for the same amount you need 25 square meters of solar panels and $10,000 for the solar field, then you must be impressed.
According to the developers, the balloons can work one year without any maintenance, but they are working hard to make them more wind resistant by testing sizes and structures. In the future, the solar balloons could be used to harness power in deserts, isolated islands and into heavily forested landscapes.
The G8 and seven African governments are planning to build the most powerful dam in the world. G8 represents top eight industrial nations in the world consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. G8 and the African governments will meet in London where they will talk about a $80 billion project for the dam over the Congo river.
The dam will be the most powerful ever built and it’s expected to double the amount of electricity on the African continent. The name of the dam will be Grand Inga and what’s certain is that it will produce twice as much electricity as the Three Gorges dam in China which is the biggest dam in the world at present.
The Gand Inga will generate about 40,000 MW, will be 150 meters high and it’s expected to be completed by 2022.
Wind power can finally relax as it doesn’t disturb anyone thanks to HYmini, a wind-powered hand-held charger that is cheap and good looking, unlike the expensive and ugly wind turbines. HYmini is palm-sized, you can choose between three colors and will charge all your gadgets.
I will not rush to praise the HYmini even more because it doesn’t work at full potential without four solar panels, each priced at $25. In order to function properly, the hand-held charger got to have its internal battery fully charged because its turbine is not powerful enough to recharge it on the go.
HYmini costs a mere $50 (solar panels not included) and we have to say the for the future we expect to see an improvement to the current technology.
Researchers from the University of Texas, Austin have created a cyanobacteria which produces cellulose that could be converted into biofuels like ethanol. The microbe doesn’t secrete just cellulose, it also produces glucose and sucrose, both sources for ethanol.
The cyanobacteria was created by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. who said that it can be grown on non-agricultural lands with the contribution of salty water. The findings of the researchers also show that the cyanobacteria needs sunlight in order to secrete cellulose and the glucose and sucrose can be cropped continuously without any harm done to the cyanobacteria.
This cyanobacteria is very cheap to produce and it can be one of the key findings that will make us forget the petroleum and start producing more renewable energy.
