Posts solar
Posts
SMART ENERGY: My Power Plant
Hi there, I just installed 30kW solar panels on my house!
FACTS: What to expect from a solar panel
Solar has becoming really popular, and for a whole variety of reasons - including the spectacular price drops (look out coal burners...) that I'm not going to get into here. Selecting solar is no longer...
FACTS: Energy Efficiency versus Nuclear
Let's face it, most of our energy usage today isn't that smart, at a time in history where we have more energy than ever before, we still don't have enough! The old school way of...
SMART ENERGY: Solar versus the Lights
I've just been doing some charting upgrades and adding some new gadgets, notably some nice doughnut charts! I was also just inspecting the solar energy output for the last 12 months versus the lights. It...
FACTS: Generating electricity the hard way
During the recent Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, the Smart Energy team got a chance to check out the Future Spark pedal power demonstration. This is a remarkable piece of engineering, and I had the...
INSIDE MY HOME: Summer is coming
We have had a long cold winter here in Melbourne, and with the Spring here, the days are getting longer, and the temperatures are getting warmer. Interestingly, @SEGmeter is also recording the fact from the...
SMART ENERGY: Marin county is doing renewable energy right
Perhaps the view is different from the other side of a bridge? Perhaps the big redwoods and beauty of the land give the people of Marin an appreciation of what's really important? Either way, the...
INSIDE MY HOME: Cleaner panels make more electrons
It makes sense - sitting out there in the rain and wind and weather, solar panels get dirty. Because the turn light into electrons, it would make sense that the cleaner they are, the better...
SEGMETER: SEGmeter the open source energy meter arrives
SEGmeter, the open source shield for Arduino has arrived! Yes, they have landed, our open source energy meter kits are in the warehouse, and we are working on various bits and pieces to make the...
SMART ENERGY: Self-assembling solar arrays as easy as mixing oil and water
"Researchers modify tiny solar "chiplets" to get them to self-assemble, driven by the free energy of their interactions with an oil-water interface." Read More.. Source: Ars Technica It will be interesting to see if researchers...
FACTS: Feed-in or fed-up - a flawed solar incentive
re in Victoria, Australia, homes with solar systems are about to get access to a feed-in tariff scheme that's claimed by the Minister for Energy and resources as "a pillar of Victoria's climate change strategy."...
SEGMETER: The open community smart grid
You may have heard of the smart grid initiative being rolled out across our cities and run by big utility companies, but have you asked why this initiative only delivers what the utility companies want?...
SMART ENERGY: The EV fleet: our future energy storage network
To make renewables work well our smart energy future is going to require lots and lots of battery storage, because if the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining, where else will all the...
FACTS: Electrons, electrons everywhere, what's this got to do with my en...
Well plenty! You see, we literally live in a sea of them. Fundamentally we are made from them (and other atoms...), and we use a hell of a lot of them to do things for...
SMART ENERGY: The Canadians go and build the first integrated Solar Comm...
Trust the Canadians to go and do it, build 52 homes that put true smart community energy into practice. This project was made possible by integrating energy efficient technologies with renewable energy sources like the...
SMART ENERGY: Solar efficiency boosted by nano technology - it keeps the...
By Matthew Knight LONDON, England (CNN) -- Researchers have developed a new anti-reflective coating that boosts the efficiency of solar panels and allows sunlight to be absorbed from almost any angle. Scientists from the Future...
SMART ENERGY: Solyndra reveals thin-film solar tubes
This item was originally published at cleantech.com and has been edited. Fremont, Calif.-based Solyndra unveiled today its entry in the copper-indium-gallium-selenium (CIGS) solar race—long cylinders coated in thin-film material inside glass tubes, which line up...
SMART ENERGY: New Concentrated Solar Tech: Simple, Cheap and Efficient
Written by Ariel Schwartz Published on September 4th, 2008 Morgan Solar, a Toronto-based company launched last summer, believes it has the answer to creating simple and cheap solar concentrators. While other companies are working to...