40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity

Physorg.com reports new breakthrough technologies announced by Spectrolab (Boeing) that makes possible solar energy with the highest efficiency.

Read more

View Flickr Pictures on Alternative Energy

There's a Flickr group plenty of pictures on Alternative Energy.
Find it here.

Could wind energy be stored in cold stores?

Nature tells about experiments in the Netherlands.

First bike on hydrogen

BBC reports on the first hydrogen driven bike.

Three catches are named. But I think those cathes are very relative. What is your opinion?

The first catch is that production of hydrogen isn't clean. The article is right if you think about hydrogen being produced by fossil sources. But hydrogen can also be produced by windmills, solar energy, wave energy, etc. So you can't call hydrogen an unclean energy source in my opnion, one should call it rather a neutral energy source. In fact hydrogen is more like an energy storage method...

The second catch is obvious but very normal for any new kind of energy form. When trains were invented, there were also no train stations...

The third catch is related to the second catch. The first book ever written was much more expensive than books we buy today...

I wonder why so many people are always mentioning those negative sides (that in fact are no really negative things)....

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Christmas Windmill
Originally uploaded by o0smart1.

I wish to you, your friends and family a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year full of new energy!

Wired on Google Solar Trees

Google is starting to plant Solar Trees.

On Wired you can find some nice pictures of them.

(Image by Wired.)

Is hydrogen useless?

A Slashdot posting tells us that Hydrogen won't save the economy?

Won't it? I'm not so sure... As we in Belgium doesn't have oil or other traditional energy sources, we'll have to generate our energy from wind, sun, water & maybe others. As we have enough water over here to make Hydrogen, that can't be the problem. Even if there are some efficiency and cost problems at the moment, technology will evolve like it did always and those problems will be solved...

So my conclusion is that Hydrogen will be used in the energy provisioning of the future. The Slashdot article is too pesimistic imo.

What do you think?

Yet an other way to produce hydrogen: solar cells.

Hydrogen is hot at the moment. Now some scientists have found a way to directly produce hydrogen in solar cells. An other step closer to future provisioning of hydrogen.

Read more here.

Can hydrogen be produced by biotech?

An new way to produce hydrogen has been made in labs Science Daily reports.
Hydrogen could be produced by genetically manipulated molecules. This offers great new perspectives for future energy applications.

Hat tip to the Combining the Sphere blog.

A present for the holidays?

The Components-n-materials blog reports about H-Racer.
A small hydrogen powered car. Looks great...
Click here if you want to order it.