Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Wandering through the Maker Fair expo, I came across this solar charger I hadn't heard of before. It's called GoBe, and looks like a great portable way to charge up some hefty devices, possibly even your laptop. It comes in two parts - a brief case-sized fold-out solar panel that can be propped up at different angles, and a lantern-sized battery pack. The solar panel has a max of 13 watts, which means you'll get back-up power to a laptop after a day's worth of charging, but can't really run a laptop off of it. However, it's great for charging up the GoBe hub so you have spare power for a wide range of other devices.

Technology Review has an article on thin film solar vendor Xunlight's approach - making cells on flexible steel sheets - Roll-Up Solar Panels. Xunlight, a startup in Toledo, Ohio, has developed a way to make large, flexible solar panels. It has developed a roll-to-roll manufacturing technique that forms thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells on thin sheets of stainless steel. Each solar module is about one meter wide and five and a half meters long. As opposed to conventional silicon solar panels, which are bulky and rigid, these lightweight, flexible sheets could easily be integrated into roofs and building facades or on vehicles. Such systems could be more attractive than conventional solar panels and be incorporated more easily into irregular roof designs. They could also be rolled up and carried in a backpack, says the company's cofounder and president, Xunming Deng. "You could take it with you and charge your laptop battery," he says.

The best method for efficient, cost effective solar energy storage may be to store the heat in a solar thermal plant instead of storing the energy from the sun's rays in a battery.

The world is changing, including the way we travel from. There may come a time when everyone will be driving hybrid vehicles rather than ones that use gas, fast becoming a precious resource.

Using the polymer electric storage system will allow more energy to be stored without the added bulk and weight of a traditional battery. Polymers are lighter and far more flexible than any other energy storage system seen so far.

There are two ways to take care of your hybrid or electric vehicle's spent battery. You can charge it, a good option if you are close to home and are only using it for short trips or are home for the day and can charge it for a few hours, or even over night.