Balloon Power

There are lots of new ideas circulating about how to reduce the cost of alternative energy. In our previous  post, we linked to sites explaining how inexpensive kites can be harnessed to produce wind power cheaply.

In today's story, we learn about how balloons can decrease the cost of solar energy. The balloons are cleverly made with a reflective back surface and a transparent front. They act as concentrators of the sun's rays, and focus their high-energy beams on a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell. This allows a small PV panel to produce as much electrical power as a much larger one. Since the balloons are light and cheap, and can be held in place with light and cheap wires rather than the heavy and expensive steel frames required by metal concentrators, the total cost of solar energy production is much reduced.

The link is here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/cool_earth_gets.php

Go Fly a Kite

Dutch researchers have demonstrated a prototype wind energy generator that uses kites, rather than wind turbines. The kites can ascend to heights a half mile or more above the ground, where the winds are much stronger and more reliable than those that drive the near-earth wind turbines.

Scientists from Delft University in the Netherlands have developed a 10 square meter kite (ca. 100 square feet), that in tests produced 10 kilowatts of electrical power when tethered to a generator - enough to serve 10 homes. They say that the idea can be easily scaled to produce megawatts of electricity at prices comparable to coal fired electrical generators - far cheaper than wind turbines.

Last year Google invested $10 million in an American company with a similar idea, called Makani.

The link to the article in the Guardian is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/03/renewableenergy.energy

A link to the description of the project on the website of the Delft University of Technology is here:

http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=8d16d19a-e942-45aa-9b52-48deb9312e92&lang=en

And a link to an article on a similar scheme from Italy, from Wired News, is here:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sequoiaonline.com/blogs/img/kitegenerator_definitivo_caption.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kitestudio.blogspot.com/2006/11/generating-power-from-kites.html&h=4000&w=5315&sz=2149&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=8KlIIzP2lxYdaM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkite%2Bwind%2Bgenerator%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

MIT Scientists Discover Cheaper Way to Produce Hydrogen from Solar Energy

In the July 31 issue of the premiere scientific journal Science, a team of MIT scientists reveal a new method of producing hydrogen from electricity. This new method uses cobalt and phosphorus, both being abundant and widely available minerals, to dramatically lower the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The proposed application of this technology is to store energy from solar electric panels for use during the hours when the sun isn't shining. The scientists suggest that this will make it feasible for each household to produce its own energy, with no need for the present system of transmission lines from central power generators. The household will use solar energy directly during the day, and use the stored hydrogen energy at night, in a fuel cell or other hydrogen powered energy generator.

The scientists predict that the technology could be in widespread use within 10 years.

A link to the MIT News Office release is here:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html