Ideas are a dime a dozen. Useful ideas are rare. Feasible ones are rarer still. But does that mean we throw away most ideas?
Treehugger had an interesting post on making a solar cooker with redundant CDs and cast away dish antennas! (see pic) The CDs placed on the dish serve as mirrors focusing sunlight at the focal point where a cooker can be placed. Temperatures can go very high, we are warned, and it is better to place your hand at the focus well-guarded.
Then we have the mobike that moves on air pressure designed by engineering students in India. Equipped with two compressed air cylinders, the 100cc bike currently runs at a speed of 18km per hour, but the students hope to make it faster.
Solar thermal is very promising but to generate a sizeable chunk of power, there is need to spread out equipment across vast areas. This may be possible in desert areas but the cooling required for the equipment mean availability of water! Hence the search for optimizing on land and equipment required.
Skyline Solar, a startup claims to have developed a cheaper way to harvest energy from the sun. The company's solar panels concentrate sunlight onto a small area, reducing the amount of expensive semiconductor material needed to generate electricity. Attempts to concentrate sunlight on smaller solar cells have been reported earlier. But this one combines two technologies.
In thermal plants, the troughs concentrate light on tubes, heating up a fluid inside them that, in turn, is used to drive power-generating turbines. Skyline Solar has replaced those tubes with narrow solar panels, adding a heat sink to keep them from getting too hot. The troughs concentrate the light by about a factor of 10, increasing the power output of the panels by about the same amount as conventional solar panels without concentrators
These are designed for medium range installations in the 1-to-10-megawatt range in suburban areas as part of distributed power for food-processing, water-treatment, etc.
Combining wave power and offshore wind is another experiment that is on. Yes, many great-seeming ideas flunk in the commercialisation exam, but some make it through. We will keep bringing you many of these stories. Let us know what you think, and also let us know if you hear of exciting, workable ideas. If you notice, most are SIMPLE.
Treehugger had an interesting post on making a solar cooker with redundant CDs and cast away dish antennas! (see pic) The CDs placed on the dish serve as mirrors focusing sunlight at the focal point where a cooker can be placed. Temperatures can go very high, we are warned, and it is better to place your hand at the focus well-guarded.
Then we have the mobike that moves on air pressure designed by engineering students in India. Equipped with two compressed air cylinders, the 100cc bike currently runs at a speed of 18km per hour, but the students hope to make it faster.
Solar thermal is very promising but to generate a sizeable chunk of power, there is need to spread out equipment across vast areas. This may be possible in desert areas but the cooling required for the equipment mean availability of water! Hence the search for optimizing on land and equipment required.
Skyline Solar, a startup claims to have developed a cheaper way to harvest energy from the sun. The company's solar panels concentrate sunlight onto a small area, reducing the amount of expensive semiconductor material needed to generate electricity. Attempts to concentrate sunlight on smaller solar cells have been reported earlier. But this one combines two technologies.
In thermal plants, the troughs concentrate light on tubes, heating up a fluid inside them that, in turn, is used to drive power-generating turbines. Skyline Solar has replaced those tubes with narrow solar panels, adding a heat sink to keep them from getting too hot. The troughs concentrate the light by about a factor of 10, increasing the power output of the panels by about the same amount as conventional solar panels without concentrators
These are designed for medium range installations in the 1-to-10-megawatt range in suburban areas as part of distributed power for food-processing, water-treatment, etc.
Combining wave power and offshore wind is another experiment that is on. Yes, many great-seeming ideas flunk in the commercialisation exam, but some make it through. We will keep bringing you many of these stories. Let us know what you think, and also let us know if you hear of exciting, workable ideas. If you notice, most are SIMPLE.
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