A Rose-Coloured Window to Renewable Energy

The Massacheusetts Institute of Technology has announced a breakthrough in the effort to transform our windows into powerful solar energy collectors.

The MIT development uses a sequence of dyes that efficiently trap incoming light and transmit it to solar cells built into the window frame. From TechNewsWorld:

“The MIT procedure uses something called a “solar concentrator.” Unlike the 1970s-era devices, this creation is able to grab the light — and then hang onto it. The concentrator can send the light at a much longer distance than past models have achieved, shooting the energy straight into solar cells along the glass’s edge.

“A lot of technology goes into ensuring that the light is transmitted to the edge of the glass panel,” Rob Collins, professor of physics at the University of Toledo, told TechNewsWorld. “Oftentimes, when you illuminate a dye, it will radiate in all directions. What you want to do is capture it within a glass, [and] they have established a way of efficiently doing this.”

The solar concentrator results in 10 times more energy being created than what current systems can provide — and theoretically, it can do it at a fraction of the price.”

“You could do dual-use as a window or skylight, where you have some light passing through but also have power being produced by it. It could be interesting because it would have those aesthetic advantages,” [MIT researcher Jon] Mapel pointed out.

The MIT team estimates the products could become widely available within the next three years.”

 

Driving on Zero

Today’s Globe & Mail has an account of Honda’s new, zero emissions car, the FXC Clarity.

The new Honda runs on hydrogen and electricity, in other words a fuel cell, and emits only water.

It’s a start.

The great thing about the Clarity and other fuel cell vehicles is that the break the dependency on fossil fuels, but only on their end. They still depend on power generation to produce electricity or generate hydrogen and that is typically fossil fuel powered.

Now we know how to generate electricity, lots of it, without burning fossil fuels. We have hydro-electric, solar, wind, tidal and geo-thermal generation. There’s also nuclear power as a stopgap. What we have to do is tap into these renewable sources of essentially free energy. Use that electricity to produce the fuel for our zero emission cars and get on with it.

With oil hovering at $140 a barrel, those nations which first implement successful renewable energy grids will be the winners in the coming decades.

New technologies are coming. One of them is the WES or Water Energy System now being tested by the Japanese developer, Genepax. Unlike the normal fuel cell vehicle, WES does its own hydrogen generation. You fill the tank from your garden hose and WES converts the water into fuel using an onboard membrane electrode assembly or MEA. Now, admittedly, the demonstration vehicle is a bit quirky but, who knows?

 

Sensible Sea Power

Here’s the world’s first tidal turbine power generator that just went into operation in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Slough. The designer, Marine Current Turbines, says, “they can be installed in the sea at places with high tidal current velocities, or in places with fast enough continuous ocean currents, to take out copious quantities of energy from these huge volumes of flowing water.”

The prototype, called “Seagen,” is said to be powerful enough to provide the electricity needs of 1,000 homes. The twin rotors that can range from 15-20m in diameter, can be reverse pitched to function on both ebb and flood tides. The power units are attached to a wing-like structure that can be raised above sea level for maintenance.

Unlike windmills or solar generators, tidal energy is predictable and completely reliable. Tides ebb and flood every day, twice a day, without fail. Seagen is able to operate between 18-20 hours per day.