Patent for a concentration solar power module that integrates into façades and roofs

 

UdL has obtained the Spanish patent for the creation of a concentration solar power system, and has already started the proceedings for obtaining an international patent. This system produces heat, cold and electricity and can be architecturally integrated into the buildings where it is installed.

A concentration solar power module that produces heat, cold and electricity and that can be integrated to façades or building roofs constitutes the new patent obtained by UdL. This system has been developed by Daniel Chemisana, member of the research group in Agrometeorology and Energy for Environment, leaded by UdL lecturers Manel Ibáñez and Joan Ignasi Rosell.

This thermal-photovoltaic modular system has a solar concentration of 10 suns, that is, it only needs a tenth part of a standard system’s active surface to produce the same energy, be it electricity, heat, or both simultaneously. Besides the reduction in the surface of used solar cells and the cost reduction this implies, this new technology can generate cold by connecting a heat pump to the system.

Rosell highlighted the architectural integration that these modules will allow either in roofs or in façades, which will reduce their visual impact. They can be directly installed in roofs, on the closure of concrete or brick blocks, forming a curtain wall in the façades or as a part of the railings in terraces, "as if they were a building’s second skin". They can also be used in residential buildings, companies or farms.  …

Patent for a concentration solar power module that integrates into façades and roofs

Technorati Tags: solar power,solar thermal,green construction,photovoltaic

Dell bans export of e-waste to developing countries

 

Dell -- which scored pretty poorly in the latest Greenpeace report -- has just officially adopted a ban of the export of e-waste as part of its policy. The company, which also has a recycling program, says it's been holding its partners to high standards for several years, but has revised its policy to conform to the Basel Convention, an international treaty that governs e-waste handling. E-waste is growing, toxic problem in developing countries like China and Ghana. …

Dell bans export of e-waste to developing countries

Technorati Tags: pollution

Smart solutions for a retail apocalypse

Malls are being mauled. In case you’ve been paying closer attention to Wall Street or the housing market, rest assured that America’s once-bustling shopping meccas are doing just as poorly.

Last month, General Growth Properties, the country’s second largest mall owner, declared bankruptcy. Anchor chains are dropping like flies, from Circuit City to Filene’s Basement. The trend has even reached the level of irony as liquidation resellers are being liquidated. The practical implication of all this is that local malls are going dark all the time across the country, with the carnage being documented at sites like DeadMalls.com.

It’s fair to assume to that these vacant structures are now done forever–at least as old-school malls. But rather than let them become gaping holes in the fabric of our communities, it’s time embrace the national project of finding ways to reimagine them as vital, forward-looking developments. This is exactly what Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson have done in their book Retrofitting Suburbia. Recently we spoke with Dunham-Jones, the director of the architecture program at Georgia Tech, about how repairing the legacy of this failed American institution. …

Smart Solutions For A Retail Apocalypse

Technorati Tags: green construction,financial collapse

High human impact ocean areas along US West Coast revealed

(National Science Foundation) Climate change, fishing and commercial shipping top the list of threats to the ocean off the West Coast of the United States.

"Every single spot of the ocean along the West Coast," said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "is affected by 10 to 15 different human activities annually."

In a two-year study to document the way humans are affecting the oceans in this region, Halpern and colleagues overlaid data on the location and intensity of 25 human-derived sources of ecological stress, including climate change, commercial and recreational fishing, land-based sources of pollution and ocean-based commercial activities.

With the information, they produced a composite map of the status of West Coast marine ecosystems.

The work was published online today in the journal Conservation Letters, and was conducted at NCEAS. NCEAS is primarily funded by NSF's Division of Environmental Biology.

"This important analysis of the geography and magnitude of land-based stressors should help focus attention on the hot-spots where coordinated management of land and ocean activities is needed," said Phillip Taylor, section head in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

The lead scientists on the study conducted a similar analysis on a global scale; the results were published last year in Science. …

High human impact ocean areas along US West Coast revealed

Technorati Tags: climate change,ocean,pollution,overfishing

Orlov: The new new money

Well, this portends good things for the U.S. …

It's official: The government in Beijing has announced that the Yuan can now be used in international trade. Their mouthpiece for this occasion was the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a private entity, which made the announcement on their behalf. By the end of this year, it is expected that fully 50% of all transactions with Hong Kong will be denominated in the Yuan. In turn, Hong Kong re-exports 90% of its Chinese imports. Importer #1 is the European Union; importer #2 is the United States. Some of these countries may soon find themselves hard-pressed to earn enough Yuan to continue importing Chinese-made products. …

The new new money

Technorati Tags: Orlov,financial collapse

Tidal Energy preps 1.2MW sea bed generator

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Monday 11 May 2009 at 00:15:00

UK firm on track to start manufacture of prototype underwater turbines this summer

UK startup Tidal Energy Limited is on track to begin construction of a full-scale prototype of its underwater turbine technology within the next two months, according to the company's recently appointed managing director.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Martin Murphy said that the company was close to finalising £8m in funding from renewable energy investment firm Eco2 and the Welsh government, which it plans to use to begin manufacture of its Delta Stream tidal stream generator.

He added that should the Welsh government approve the EU-backed investment, work could begin on manufacturing the 1.2MW prototype within six to eight weeks. ...

Tidal Energy preps 1.2MW sea bed generator

Technorati Tags: tidal power

Flexible, transparent solar cells for windows

Solar company Konarka has developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating windows.

A transparent solar cell Konarka hopes will be fitted into power-generating windows. Under its Arch Active Solar Glass development, the company has built prototypes of windows with the solar cells between two panes of glass. The photovoltaic cells can be tinted different colors. …

http://picocool.com/eco/building-on-flexible-solar-cells--/

Technorati Tags: solar power,photovoltaic

It’s a solar panel, it’s weather protection … it’s Flexa

 

The Italian firm Enerqos, a photovoltaic (PV) system and solar power plant construction company has teamed with ESP, a specialist in the design of metallic structures for solar installations, to launch Flexa Solar Parking, an innovative, multifunctional solar canopy.

The canopy combines a solar-energy producing array with simple weather protection for parked cars. Enerqos and ESP are showing the product at this week’s SolarExpo 2009 in Verona, Italy.

Flexa Solar Parking can be adapted to any car park design — linear, vertical, angled, etc. — whilst optimising the available surface space for solar power generation. It can even be used for greenhouses, or to protect against hail storms. …

It’s a solar panel, it’s weather protection … it’s Flexa

Technorati Tags: solar power,photovoltaic,green construction

Roomba mod allows it to pick things up, hand them to you

 

Sure, we've seen some wild Roomba mods, but overall it's pretty much a low-to-the-ground affair -- unless you get the cats involved, of course. That's apparently changing, though -- check out this robotic grasping system, which can pick up foreign objects and deliver them to you at about waist height. The system was 95 percent effective in picking up objects of all sizes and shapes during trials, and it was apparently quite simple to build and code. Nice for a Roomba, sure, but we'd rather be partying with SOBEaR. Video after the break. …

Roomba mod allows it to pick things up, hand them to you

Technorati Tags: robotics

'Smart Turbine Blades' to improve wind power

Researchers have developed a technique that uses sensors and computational software to constantly monitor forces exerted on wind turbine blades, a step toward improving efficiency by adjusting for rapidly changing wind conditions.

The research by engineers at Purdue University and Sandia National Laboratories is part of an effort to develop a smarter wind turbine structure.

"The ultimate goal is to feed information from sensors into an active control system that precisely adjusts components to optimize efficiency," said Purdue doctoral student Jonathan White, who is leading the research with Douglas Adams, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of Purdue's Center for Systems Integrity. …

'Smart Turbine Blades' To Improve Wind Power

Technorati Tags: wind power,wind turbine

Report: concentrated solar set to shine

Tom Young, BusinessGreen, Thursday 7 May 2009 at 16:12:00

Spain leading the way, but US is catching up fast

Despite the onset of global recession, the concentrated solar power (CSP) industry is growing rapidly with 1.2GW of new capacity currently under construction and another 13.9GW scheduled to be constructed. …

Report: concentrated solar set to shine

Technorati Tags: solar power,solar thermal

Bioelectricity promises more 'Miles Per Acre' than ethanol

Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass? Researchers writing in Science say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. …

Bioelectricity Promises More 'Miles Per Acre' Than Ethanol

Technorati Tags: bioenergy,bioelectricity

New U.N. climate deal: not much bolder than Kyoto?

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent - Analysis

OSLO (Reuters) - A planned new U.N. climate pact is shaping up to be a mildly tougher version of the existing Kyoto Protocol rather than a bold treaty to save what U.S. President Barack Obama has called a "planet in peril."

"There's not a lot of ambition around," said Jennifer Morgan, of the London-based think-tank E3G, of submissions to the United Nations published this month to meet a deadline for consideration in a deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

Australia is a partial exception, saying on Monday that it would ratchet up planned cuts by 2020, if other nations also did so. But Canberra put back its planned carbon emissions trading scheme by a year to mid-2011, amid a recession.

Taking account of the new Australian offer, plans outlined by developed nations add up to average cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of between 9 and 16 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, according to Reuters calculations.

That is nearer the goal of the Kyoto Protocol -- an average cut by industrialized nations of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 -- than the 25 to 40 percent reduction below 1990 by 2020 outlined by the U.N. Climate Panel as the order of cutback required to avert the worst of global warming.

"The economic downturn is putting a brake on the level of commitment and investment to mitigate climate change," said Pep Canadell, head of the global carbon project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

He said Australia's delay was a sign of economic strains. …

New U.N. climate deal: not much bolder than Kyoto?

Technorati Tags: climate change

Pumping CO2 underground best hope for climate: Shell

By Joshua Schneyer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Projects to capture industrial emissions and store them in the earth's crust could cut CO2 pollution by up to 40 percent, according to officials from oil major Shell.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) -- gathering CO2 emissions at their source and pumping them underground -- faces steep cost hurdles, but may someday be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, a Shell executive said.

"CCS is probably the largest source of potential carbon reduction for the next 30 years, and a way to deal with 30 to 40 percent of (global) emissions," said Kimberly Corley, Shell senior advisor for CO2 and environmental affairs. …

Pumping CO2 underground best hope for climate: Shell

Technorati Tags: carbon capture,carbon sequestration

Virgin sees space tourism as just the beginning

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Long-haul trips could be made in spaceships instead of planes in 20 years' time if Virgin's efforts to commercialize space travel succeed, the president of Virgin Galactic told Reuters in an interview. …

Virgin sees space tourism as just the beginning

Technorati Tags: space flight

It’s Official – The European Seal Bill has passed

The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly today to ban seal product imports. Our long struggle to achieve this goal is over and it has ended in a great victory for civilized morality and ecological responsibility over barbaric greed, cruelty, and waste.

The Canadian government has already threatened to challenge the legislation, expected to take effect in the first half of 2010, at the World Trade Organization. They will fail, and if they have any sense of responsibility to the majority of Canadians who do not support sealing they will desist from trying to threaten a 25 billion dollar trade agreement with the European Union.

The results of the vote in Strasbourg were overwhelming: 550 votes for the ban and only a mere 49 against it. The European Bill to ban seal products passed with 92% support from the European parliamentarians.

"Hopefully this will give the government of Canada the message that they need to join the 21st Century," said Captain Paul Watson. "This kind of barbarity has absolutely no place in our world today." …

It’s Official – The European Seal Bill has Passed!!!!!

Technorati Tags: marine mammal

First platinum LEED-Certified, 100% solar powered, affordable housing in San Diego

 

 Image via: Wakeland Housing & Development Corporation

Los Vecinos, the first LEED-Certified Platinum, 100% solar-powered affordable housing in San Diego, offer 42-units of state of the art in green housing. The $17.6 million USD project opened its doors today to visitors to welcome the new neighbors, who are already living in the building, to the neighborhood.

The complex is located in the Chula Vista section of San Diego, and provides 3 floors of 1, 2 and 3-bedroom housing units. The complex also has a 1,500 square foot recreation center complete with fitness equipment, and space for classes offered such as finance, computer literacy and how to "go green." Eligible residents make between $16,600 and $58,800 USD per year (60% or less of the area's median income). The solar array covering the entire roof was installed by First Solar Inc and is a 93 kW system. Each apartment gets a certain number of solar panels hard-wired directly so it and gets whatever credit the system produces; the bigger the apartment, the more panels. …

Los Vecinos: First Platinum LEED-Certified, 100% Solar Powered, Affordable Housing in San Diego

Technorati Tags: green construction,solar power,photovoltaic