It takes two hours on a sunny day, but this solar heater built by engineering students at Humboldt State University in California works. It’s made from waste materials, specifically can lids. These are held together by vines from Himalaya blackberry plants, which are an invasive species in their area. You can find in-process photos and descriptions at the link.

Link -via Make

One of the difficulties with using solar energy is its inability to produce electricity around the clock. Torresol Energy in southern Spain has solved this problem by storing thermal energy in two tanks of molten salt. This enables the plant to generate electricity long after sundown in order to satisfy the energy needs of the local populace. The molten salt — known as MSES — stores enough thermal energy during the day to create steam power during the night.

The MSES consists of 60% potassium nitrate and 40% sodium nitrate. This mixture has the amazing ability to retain 99% of the heat energy generated by the CSP plant to be reused later. Essentially what Forbes calls a “battery” that lasts for about 15 hours – more than double Andasol I’s 7 hour capacity – the MSES is not considered especially toxic to the environment.

Gemasolar is expected to produce approximately 110,000 MWh of energy each year – enough to power 25,000 homes. Although a 19.9 MW plant is relatively small, this functions on par with a 50MW plant that lacks decent storage since it can feed the grid all of the time. Designed to operate 6,500 hours annually, this latest development in super-duper CSP plants opened in May, 2011.

Link

Andrew Schneider’s invention is the glorious future of swimwear that will replace the obsolete and dangerous coal-burning bikinis of today:

The suit is a standard medium-sized bikini swimsuit retrofitted with 1″ x 4″ photovoltaic film strips sewn together in series with conductive thread. The cells terminate in a 5 volt regulator into a female USB connection

Question: wouldn’t it make more sense to make a one piece swimsuit? You know — for more electricity.

Link and Project Website -via Technabob | Photo: Ecouterre

“Infantry need electricity for weapons, radios, global positioning systems and many other vital pieces of equipment,” says Professor Duncan Gregory of Glasgow uni, one of the institutions participating in the project. “We aim to produce a prototype system within two years.”

The project has been dubbed “solar soldier” and has been assigned £650,000 of funding from the MoD and the government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. More cash will come from Leeds and Brunel universities and a studentship which will be part of the project is to be funded by US weapons’n'aerospace megacorp Rockwell Collins.

Link via Popular Science | Image: EPSRC

Advances in photovoltaic technology have led to the development of thin, flexible solar cells. It’s possible to build a tent out of them, and the US Army is considering acquiring and using such portable structures:

The TEMPER Fly is a roughly 16-by-20-foot tent structure able to generate 800 watts of electricity. A QUADrant is a smaller variant of the TEMPER Fly, able to generate 200 watts of power, and the Power Shades range in size and are capable of generating up to 3 kilowatts of exportable electrical power, Tucker said. The PV integrated military shelter items use a lamination process to combine the PV materials into the textile substrate, Tucker explained. The US Army News Service spoke with Steven Tucker, an engineer working on the project:

“Alternative energy sources are really going to shine in mission scenarios where you don’t want to use a generator because you don’t want the noise or heat signature that goes along with it, or where re-supplying that generator with fuel doesn’t make sense,” said Tucker.

Link via DVICE | Photo: US Army

Artist Paul O’Connor and his colleagues at the British art collective Undercurrents built a tiny solar powered movie theater in a 1960s-era travel trailer. Sol Cinema can seat eight adults and generally screens films with an ecological theme. The official website provides additional photos as well as a list of tour dates and locations in the UK.

Link via Technabob | Official Website | Photo: Sol Cinema

The disks, carrying the reaction centers, are in a solution where they attach themselves spontaneously to carbon nanotubes — wire-like hollow tubes of carbon atoms that are a few billionths of a meter thick yet stronger than steel and capable of conducting electricity a thousand times better than copper. The nanotubes hold the phospholipid disks in a uniform alignment so that the reaction centers can all be exposed to sunlight at once, and they also act as wires to collect and channel the flow of electrons knocked loose by the reactive molecules.

The system Strano’s team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system.

Link via DVICE | Photo by Flickr user Anderson Mancini used under Creative Commons license

Australian inventors Brendan Corry and Peter Sargent designed the Wunda Weeder. This fanciful garden gadget is self-propelled, thanks to the solar cells on the roof. A gardener can lay on the cot and weed rows of plants in his/her garden while staying cool in the shade.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Wunda Products

The oddity, which looks like a crystal ball, had been put in a box and forgotten but is finally on show at yesterday’s Antiques for Everyone show at Birmingham’s NEC.

In direct sunlight the contraption can create 1.5 volts of electricity, which is enough power to run a modern day digital watch. [...]

The first basic solar technology was built in 1883 by Charles Fritts but was found to be far too inefficient and nothing like today’s models.

Russian physicist Aleksandr Stoletov developed the concept further by developing the first solar cell based on the outer photoelectric effect, a more stable and reliable cell.

But it was not until Russell Ohm patented the idea of the junction semiconductor solar cell, that the modern day solar panel was born.

Link via Make | Photo: Caters News Agency

The 60 tonne catamaran (or is that trimaran?) has cost 18 million euro ($24.4 million USD) to create at the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel in northern Germany and will be launched waterside next month with sea trials due between June and September. To achieve to full photovoltaic capture there are solar covered flaps that are extended at the stern and amidships.

SunPower has provided approximately 38,000 of their next generation all black photovoltaic cells, an efficiency of at least 22%, which they believe to be the highest efficiency solar cells commercially available. Maybe it’s buried somewhere on the PlanetSolar site, but I missed what storage medium the boat will use once it has harnessed the sun’s energy.

Link | Photogallery | Photo: Christian Charisius/Reuters

Solar Dog is a prototype cell phone recharging station developed by Erik Schiegg of Switzerland. The user mounts it on a dog’s back to collect solar energy as it plays outside. Schiegg writes:

My Android phone is charged in no time… The dog feels good and I’m feeling good and planet mud is turned a little bit more into planet earth. But this idea would be interesting? for farmers around the world, letting their animals collect electricity, too. Without the cost and waste for installation and the ground.

via Make

The hair replaces silicon, a pricey component typically used in solar panels, and means the panels can be produced at a low cost for those with no access to power, he explained….

The solar panel, which produces 9 V (18 W) of energy, costs around £23 to make from raw materials.

But if they were mass-produced, Milan says they could be sold for less than half that price, which could make them a quarter of the price of those already on the market.

Melanin, a pigment that gives hair its colour, is light sensitive and also acts as a type of conductor. Because hair is far cheaper than silicon the appliance is less costly.

Link (Photo: Tom Van Cakenberghe/Barcroft Media) – via Gizmodo

The 12- x 12-foot panels, which each cost $6,900, are designed to be embedded into roads. When shined upon, each panel generates an estimated 7.6 kilowatt hours of power each day. If this electricity could be pumped into the grid, the company predicts that a four-lane, one-mile stretch of road with panels could generate enough power for 500 homes. Although it would be expensive, covering the entire US interstate highway system with the panels could theoretically fulfill the country’s total energy needs. The company estimates that this would take 5 billion panels, but could “produce three times more power than we’ve ever used as a nation – almost enough to power the entire world.”

The Solar Road Panels also contain embedded LED lights that “paint” the road lines from beneath to provide safer nighttime driving. The LEDs could also be programmed to alert drivers of detours or road construction ahead, and can even sense wildlife on the road and warn drivers to slow down. The roads could also contain embedded heating elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice from building up on the road. Further, in the future, fully electric vehicles could recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, making electric cars practical for long trips.

Link via DVICE

Image: Solar Roadways

Inventor Knut Karlsen has designed batteries that recharge themselves when they are exposed to sunlight; no electric power source is required! 

Karlsen’s SunCat batteries circumvent chargers completely by integrating solar cells within the batteries themselves. To make these prototypes he attached 1.8V flexible photovoltaic cells onto 1.5V NiMH rechargeable batteries and connected them with a conductive silver pen and a few flat wires. The effect is similar to a trickle charger, which slowly charges a battery and can be left attached indefinitely without overcharging.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.