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'Solar' breakthrough reveals green ambitions
Blog MIT Energy Storage Discovery Could Lead To "Unlimited" Solar Power! Illustrated with a large picture of a solar cell array, it has a familiar, breathless style: The process, loosely based on plant photosynthesis, uses solar energy to split water...
[October 26, 2008, 12:29]
Solar server farm
Blog The article fails to mention that AISO.net has been relying on solar energy for the past ten years, but it's pretty cool nevertheless. Solar power may be a viable solution to power problems in countries which get a lot of sun, but it would take a...
[October 4, 2007, 17:19]
Freeloader Pro solar powered charger
Blog This is an impressive piece of kit comprising a double solar panel, plentiful array of connectors and a separate charging unit that copes with camera batteries. I’ve been on a long quest for ways to charge my many gadgets without needing mains power.
[August 11, 2009, 12:08]
Samsung's Solar Powered mobile phone
Blog Samsung has just announced a solar powered mobile phone. Time will tell whether the solar panel can produce enough energy to keep the phone going satisfactorily. Clearly it can't charge overnight via solar, so does that mean taking it out of your...
[February 13, 2009, 7:17]
Silicon balls drop in zero G for solar cell magic
Blog Rather magically, thousands of highly efficient, highly tiny, very spherical solar cells are created. What do you think happens when you dribble molten silicon at thousands of droplets per second through a 14 metre tube?
[March 10, 2008, 21:30]
Transparent solar cell? Can't see it myself
Blog News from the Far East: Japan's National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) has built a prototype boron nitride solar cell. BN is particularly fascinating because it has a wide band-gap, an aspect of the way its electrons are configured that...
[September 9, 2008, 15:17]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog So is Macclesfield, where a scale model of the solar system is being created. Few of the reports of the Macclesfield cosmic caper say that there's already a 1:500 million scale model of the solar system already orbiting York -- and this one's on a...
[March 26, 2004, 16:15]
Sunshine power out of my ass
Blog The first is the big one - orbiting solar power. There are also huge disadvantages: the environmental impact of launching the bleeder, the degradation of solar panels in space, and most importantly the difficulties of efficiently and safely beaming...
[October 11, 2007, 12:58]
Radioactive laptops? Perhaps not...
Blog This is a way of generating electricity much as solar cells generate power from photons, only by using high energy electrons generated from the beta decay of certain radio-isotopes. While solar cells have the same problem, it's to a much lesser...
[October 2, 2007, 12:09]
More boson goes on - computing with excitons...
Blog You can convert a photon back into an exciton too, which is how solar cells work (and yes, an LED can act as a solar cell); the photon impinges on the electron, which grabs the energy and powers away from its old position, leaving a hole.
[September 22, 2008, 19:18]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog We've put a solar panel on the roof, it proudly proclaims, and at this very moment it's generating 2.12 kW. It's a sunny day, so the solar panel won't always be producing 2kW.and then there's the electronics in the display.
[May 5, 2006, 18:50]
Micro-USB endorsed, a trick missed?
Blog The other day I reported on Samsung’s solar powered mobile phone. LG is also working on a phone with a solar component, and expects to release the phone to market later this year. I know the Samsung and LG initiatives are only two handsets among a...
[February 18, 2009, 9:28]
It's not just the LHC that could rewrite physics
Blog Now, a paper from researchers in the US points out that the variations in the decay rate correspond very closely to the seasonal change in the distance between the Earth and the Sun - with some possible link to solar activity.
[August 30, 2008, 14:06]
Compact Hot Flashes
Blog At home the CF will be the drive for my solar energy data collection/management system. I was thinking about running it off a battery and a solar panel in the eventual installation. It was a nice change of pace from having to ride home @ 5 or 6 or...
[June 24, 2009, 10:51]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog Solar power is the new corporate fish tank. Tuesday 17/10/2006 Where once I sat in foyers watching fat carp idly float past the receptionist's head — I really must put more water with it — I'm now liable to be distracted by some display proudly...
[October 20, 2006, 19:20]
'Handbags at dawn' redefined
Blog What every eco-friendly/tech-savvy lady surely needs: a handbag covered in little solar panels. Cleverly, it has a USB connection inside it, drawing on the beneficent rays of Sol to charge your mobile phone or MP3 player or whatever.
[February 28, 2007, 9:16]
Rupert Goodwins' diary
Blog Doctors in Illinois have implanted experimental chips into the retinas of patients with eye damage: powered by solar cells, these are designed to replace damaged light-sensitive cells with a version of the circuitry you find in camcorders.
[August 3, 2001, 15:55]
My tech top 10 for 2008
Blog Solar chargers in theory and when they work with the iphone In no particular order : Bento Database for the rest of us software Flip mino video camera iphone app store -apps night stand italk and scribble
[December 16, 2008, 7:41]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog Witness the continued science coming back from the Voyager spacecraft, which are by now two faulty and hugely outdated lumps of technology scootling away beyond the edge of the solar system. Wednesday 28/1/2004
[January 30, 2004, 15:10]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog NASA is doing a great job of sending robots out to the four corners of the solar system and they return enormous and growing amounts of data. Friday 29/7/2005 If I were 30 again, I’d be working on interplanetary stuff" - so quotes Vint Cerf, one of...
[July 29, 2005, 18:30]
