India has recently won the appreciation of the world after successfully conducting the biggest democratic elections. The soon to be Prime Minister of the Southern Asian nation, Mr. Narendra Modi, has won the favor of the public not only for his knack at developing cities but also for his green ideologies. Narendra Taneja, convener of the energy division at Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party said, “We look upon solar as having the potential to completely transform the way we look at the energy space.”Continue reading
Category Archives: Alternative Energy
Flushing a toilet has been known to serve just one purpose, until now. Besides taking away all your waste to a land where you never have to look at it again, toilet flushes will now help power up homes in South Korea. Scientists in South Korea have developed the means to harvest the mechanical energy generated from the flushing of a toilet and convert it all to usable electricity. From the experiments conducted, these researchers have concluded that the movement of a single droplet is enough to power up a green LED.Continue reading
Let’s not deny it. Solar plants are a space-taking affair and many a times, most areas don’t have enough space to house these renewable-energy-generating facilities. The Stanford scientists have therefore come up with a way to save space and integrate photovoltaic farms with agricultural areas! A system like this works as a boon for areas like southwestern United States where water is scarce. The system proposed by the scientists will allow solar farms not only to collect sunlight for electricity but also to produce crops for biofuels.Continue reading
While most multinationals around the globe shy away from taking a greener step, some companies like IKEA are a shining example of how the manufacturing sector can settle for more energy efficient and eco-friendly practices. For the 206th time since its conception, IKEA has shown the world just how environmentally friendly it is with its recent investment in its first wind power facility in the United States! IKEA’s new wind farm is located in Hoopeston and has a 98 megawatt capacity.Continue reading
There’s nothing better than a cup of joe, except a cup of joe brought to life by the power of the sun! Behold Wheely’s Café, one of the first among mobile coffee-serving restaurants, powered by the sun! This solar powered cart is as revolutionary as revolutionary gets and is an “ecological café bike”. The little bike-cart has everything needed to brew a cup of coffee, tea and serve all of this alongside soft drinks and pastries.Continue reading
One of the biggest automobile manufacturers hailing from the United Kingdom, Jaguar Land Rover, has recently taken a step towards energy efficiency. The company has topped its new plant in South Staffordshire with the largest rooftop solar array in the UK! The company’s Engine Manufacturing Centre now plays home to more than 21,000 photovoltaic panels on its roof. The solar panels have a joint capacity of 5.8 MW and Jaguar plans to increase this to at least 6.3 MW soon!Continue reading
We all new plants give out oxygen, better the quality of the environment and work as a food source. What we didn’t know however, is the fact that plants also work as electricity generators! A Dutch start-up called Plant-e has developed a fantastic way to use plants to generate electricity. The principal behind it all is pretty simple. When plants use photosynthesis, organic matter generated is excreted by the roots into the soil. This organic matter is consumed by microorganisms and the byproduct of the entire process is electrons! By placing an electrode in the soil near the roots, small amounts of electricity can be generated.Continue reading
What better place could you chose to play home to the biggest solar energy power plant in the world, than the sunny state of California, right? Well, that’s exactly why this plant in the Mojave Desert has begun operations off late, basking in the glory of the sun and powering up the grid with clean solar juice. Located 80 kilometers southwest of Las Vegas and is 14 square kilometers in size, the Ivanpah power plant sports over 300,000 rotatable mirrors (heliostats)!
Searching stuff on Google is a simple matter of a few clicks of a mouse and the miniscule effort you need to take to punch words on your keyboard. However, a simple search does consume astounding amounts of energy, given the fact that these queries sent by us hapless folk are sent across the internet to servers where they are processed and sent back to you with results within microseconds. This also obviously implies that being a search engine giant isn’t the most eco-friendly business in town, which is why, Google has been striving hard to keep the earth green.
The Golden State has finally begun shining bright with a surge of solar electricity as the world’s largest solar thermal plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California, has finally begun operations. The solar plant is backed by Google and NRG Energy and promises to generate a total 392MW of power through 173,500 multi-mirror units. Simply put, this plant will generate enough energy to power up 140,000 homes in the United States of America.