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New & Emerging Technologies
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)
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Clean Inexpensive Electricity
The engineers and technologists at eSolar, and the company’s key investor, Google, believe they are now ready to build rapidly deployable concentrating solar power (CSP) plants throughout the world. They expect their CSP plants to eventually produce electricity at coal-electricitygenerated prices.
A concentrating solar power plant uses relatively inexpensive components to generate electricity. The concept behind CSP is easy to understand: Mirrors are used to focus the sun’s heat onto a boiler. This solar heating is intense enough to generate steam, which spins an electric generator to produce electricity.
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   Photo Credit
eSolar
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Recharging Electronic
Devices with Ease
A recent MIT breakthrough in resonant magnetic coupling (WiTricity) will one day allow all battery operated devices to recharge without wires. Imagine a new technology that lets you charge everything (hearing aides to electric cars) wirelessly by drawing power through the air.
Powermat is the first company to introduce a very interesting WiTricity product. Energizer has come up with a less high tech but extremely effective way to get rid of all the chargers that came with your electronic devices. These topics are all covered in this column.
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Building a Smart National U.S. Power Grid
One of President Obama’s pre-election promises was to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by increasing our use of renewable energy to generate electricity. To increase our use of renewable energy we must create an enhanced electric grid system capable of transmitting electricity from the location where it is generated to the location where it is needed.
To fully embrace renewable energy our electric grid will need to go through a major metamorphosis. Our future grid will include smart meters to monitor the electricity that you use and also new technologies to store electricity produced during low demand periods for use when the demand is high.
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Monitoring How Much Electricity You Use
People are frustrated by their inability to control their energy use and the amount of money that this energy costs. The Black & Decker Power Monitor is designed to help people conserve electricity by helping them constantly monitor their electricity usage.
The system has two parts. The meter sensor is simply attached to the electric meter. The digital display is located at a more convenient location within the building.
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Seeing Beyond
Gasoline-Powered Vehicles
The All Electric Tesla Roadster
The Tesla Roadster is 100 percent electric and still capable of going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds. However, the early production vehicles will have a transmission that will limit their 0 to 60 acceleration to 5.7 seconds. Tesla Motors is building the car from the ground up with an all-aluminum chassis and 100 percent carbon fiber body panels.
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"Saving Energy one Light Bulb
at a time"
A 100-watt incandescent light bulb produces about 1,600 lumens which is the same light output of a 32-watt compact fluorescent light bulb.
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"Zero Pollution"
The fuel cell is a non-polluting method of generating electricity through a chemical reaction that combines hydrogen with oxygen.
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"Green Internal Combustion Engine"
This engine removes most engine emissions by pumping exhaust gases back into the combustion chambers for re-burning. This process reduces gas consumption by about 10 percent without affecting the car's performance.
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"Forever Light"
Just shake NightStar up and down for thirty seconds and it is ready to give you a full spectrum blue tinged white LED light for about 5 minutes.
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