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Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using an innovative wave powered boat. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion.

The world’s largest tidal turbine, weighing 1000 tonnes, has been installed in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. The tidal turbine is rated at 1.2 megawatts, which is enough to power a thousand local homes. It was built by Marine Current Turbines, and it will be the first commercial tidal turbine to produce energy, when it begins operation later this year.

We just wrote about the new LED streelights in Ann Arbor. Now we find these self-contained streetlights that generate 100% of their power from the sun and the wind. During the day, solar power is stored in a battery at the base of the light pole. At night, they illuminate while continuing to generate power via a small vertical-axis wind turbine. The streetlights, dubbed “seagulls”, were spotted in Tokyo outside the Panasonic Center by Hyperexperience. Here’s a video clip of the wind turbine in action:

“We use one-fifth of the raw silicon material compared with traditional PV cells,” he says. This can make a huge difference to the overall cost of producing solar cells

The ultimate goal is to make them 50 percent cheaper than existing cells by 2010, he says.

These work like car headlights but in reverse, ensuring that any light hitting the reflector is directed toward the sphere.

Hawaii has become the first state to require solar water heaters in new homes. The bill was signed into law by Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican. It requires the energy-saving systems in homes starting in 2010. It prohibits issuing building permits for single-family homes that do not have solar water heaters. Hawaii relies on imported fossil fuels more than any other state, with about 90 percent of its energy sources coming from foreign countries, according to state data.

A company called M2E Power has announced plans today to release a charger that will powered by kinetic motion. The released date is expected to be next summer. The charger derives power from the motion of walking, jogging, cycling, or driving. Six hours of motion provides 30 to 60 minutes of charging power. It will be priced between $25 and $40.

On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade width of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts.

They look like foil party balloons, but they are actually very efficient solar concentrators. These solar “balloons” were developed by a company called Cool Earth, based in California, and it has just received $21 million dollars in investor funding. The company is now planning to build a 10-megawatt plant of solar balloons in the next couple years. This power plant would be comprised of 10,000 balloons, and cover roughly 80 acres!

LEDs desk lamps are also efficient, because they do not get hot, so there’s no risk of burns, or excess heat in the summer. Because LED light is so focused, a 100 lumen LED desk lamp will seem quite bright. Let’s take a survey of what’s currently available:

Varese, a town in Northern Italy, runs on 100% renewable power. The town uses a mix of wind, solar and small-scale hydropower. The town has reaped benefits from the energy network through added jobs, and an additional 350,000 euros [US $514,000] in tax revenues which is handed over to the council each year. Varese has also seen a six-fold increase in tourists in the last ten years, many coming just to see its renewable energy network.

The air quality of urban areas would greatly improved if we could replace the thousands of diesel delivery trucks currently in use with zero-emission vehicles. In this vein, a company called  Smith Electric Vehicles will be introducing their electric trucks to the U.S.  Their Newton truck (pictured above) can be recharged via an regular electric socket. They have some pretty impressive features, including a range of up to 150 miles when fully charged. The battery system is rated at 120 kilowatts, and trucks have a maximum speed of 50 mph. The trucks also use regenerative braking to recover energy from the braking process.

The Japanese are intent on making train travel a more comfortable experience for everyone, women and children especially. Both trains contain hundreds of toys, TV screens showing cartoons, immaculately clean wooden flooring and cots for younger children.

It’s a prototype hybrid car that gets 150MPG, and goes 40 miles on electricity alone, drawing its power from a combination of lithium-ion batteries and ultracapacitors. The ultracapacitors provide a burst of energy to the engine, when needed. They are then recharged by the lithium-ion batteries. This avoids the problem of emptying the batteries too fast, which can cause them to heat up, and possibly catch on fire.

This new 42-inch LCD "Eco TV" by Philips was announced at CES 2008 (Consumer Electronics Show). The television certainly has a lot  of energy saving features  that make it possibly the most efficient TV on the market. CNET reports:

Solar power is a truly efficient source of energy, but it tends to fluctuate, and, as you might know, it turns off at night. One clever way to alleviate this intermittence is to store solar energy in the form of heat using molten salt. An aerospace company, Hamilton Sundstra, has created a venture called SolarReserve, and it plans to have its first molten salt solar power plant online by 2010.

As you would expect from a Foster + Partners project, the self-contained city within a city has green energy management at the very heart of the design. Crystal Island will generate low carbon energy from solar arrays and wind turbines located on the building with vast atriums to regulate the internal air temperature during the extremes of the Russian summer and winter.

Each time the electric eel at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium touches a copper wire in its tank, it sends power that lights up globes decking a Christmas tree.