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Showing posts with label Solar Gadgets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solar Gadgets. Show all posts
A-Data Solar Disk - Solar Gadgets
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Storing Solar Power Efficiently
Thermal-power plants that store heat for cloudy days could solve some of the problems with solar power.
Solar proponents love to boast that just a few hundred square kilometers' worth of photovoltaic solar panels installed in Southwestern deserts could power the United States. Their schemes come with a caveat, of course: without backup power plants or expensive investments in giant batteries, flywheels, or other energy-storage systems, this solar-power supply would fluctuate wildly with each passing cloud (not to mention with the sun's daily rise and fall and seasonal ebbs and flows). Solar-power startup Ausra, based in Palo Alto, thinks it has the solution: solar-thermal-power plants that turn sunlight into steam and efficiently store heat for cloudy days.
"Fossil-fuel proponents often say that solar can't do the job, that solar can't run at night, solar can't run the economy," says David Mills, Ausra's founder and chairman. "That's true if you don't have storage." He says that solar-thermal plants are the solution because storing heat is much easier than storing electricity. Mills estimates that, thanks to that advantage, solar-thermal plants capable of storing 16 hours' worth of heat could provide more than 90 percent of current U.S. power demand at prices competitive with coal and natural gas. "There's almost no limit to how much you can put into the grid," he says.
Major utilities are buying the idea. In July, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) signed a 25-year deal with Ausra competitor Solel Solar Systems of Beit Shemesh, Israel, to buy power from a 553-megawatt solar-thermal plant that Solel is developing in California's Mojave Desert. The plant will supply 400,000 homes in northern and central California when it is completed in 2011. Florida Power & Light, meanwhile, hired Solel to upgrade the 1980s-era solar-thermal plants it operates in the Mojave.
Ausra, meanwhile, is negotiating with PG&E to supply power from a 175-megawatt plant that it plans to build in California, for which it secured $40 million in venture financing this month.
What distinguishes Ausra's design is its relative simplicity. In conventional solar-thermal plants such as Solel's, a long trough of parabolic mirrors focuses sunlight on a tube filled with a heat-transfer fluid, often some sort of oil or brine. The fluid, in turn, produces steam to drive a turbine and produce electricity. Ausra's solar collectors employ mass-produced and thus cheaper flat mirrors, and they focus light onto tubes filled with water, thus directly producing steam. Ausra's collectors produce less power, but that power costs less to produce.
One megawatt's worth of Ausra's solar collectors has been producing steam in New South Wales, Australia, since 2004; the steam is fed into the turbines of a primarily coal-fired power plant. The final piece of the system--a proprietary heat-energy-storage system--should be ready by 2009.
Solar Keyring Torch
The Solar Keyring Torch ensures you no longer have to fumble at the door whenever arrive home after a late night date, as it provides ample light from a trio of LEDs to keep your keyhole illuminated. Since it is solar-powered, there is no need to worry about dead batteries as well.
The best things in life are free, and sunlight is pretty well at the top of the list. The only trouble is of course, that the sun has a regular habit of shuffling off to the other side of the world leaving everything a little dark round here. Fortunately this little gizmo ensures that the sun leaves a little light behind that you can carry around with you on a key ring. It’s integral mini solar panel stores up energy from the sun and via it’s three super-bright LEDs becomes a blazing and very useful little torch when night falls. Many of these sorts of solar powered lights can have a tendency to be a tad lame, but this one is not only astonishingly bright, it also lasts for an absurdly long period of time, so long in fact that we don’t know how long it is - we got bored waiting for it to run out of power. It comes in a shock resistant rubber casing, and naturally requires no batteries, ever. Free light for life.
Keep your car fresh using solar power
Cars tend to attract odors, especially when several people are crammed in one for long trips. Add in a couple of smokers and the smell can become overbearing. Thankfully I don’t smoke, and most of the people that ride with me don’t either, so I just stick with the occasional pine tree air freshener. However, if you want something a little more hi-tech cleaning your air, you might try out this little gadget.
Solar Breeze Pool Skimmer takes some of the work out of pool maintenance
When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have a pool. I was excited when my parents informed me that we would be getting one, and it was awesome jumping in it that first time. Of course it also meant that I had the task of keeping the pool clean. What I wouldn’t have given back then to have a couple of handy gadgets to do my work for me.
Backpack solar heater could help the planet
It looks like one of those inflatable pool loungers you use to soak up the sun. However, SolarStore panels are meant for a more practical use. Backpackers can use them to store up to 3 full tanks of water per day while heating the water at the same time. Easy to fold, easier to use, SolarStore panels are now being looked to provide not only heated water, but also solar energy to low income and third world housing.
Solar Powered Cordless Fan uses the sun to keep you cool
Until this past weekend came, the area where I live was experiencing near summer-like temperatures outside. I was even forced for a couple of days to kick on the old A/C for a little bit. Most of the time I made do with just some fans around the house, which got me thinking about how much power I must be using running those fans all the time. If I had one of these Solar Powered Cordless Fans, I wouldn’t need to wonder.
Solar powered speedboat
Solar power looks like it is here to stay, and we have so far seen solar powered cars being the Holy Grail in the fight to be independent of black gold, or rather, oil. Hybrid cars aren’t exactly catching on as fast as environmentalists prefer, and solar powered cars have not made the impact they were supposed to mainly because the technology is not yet there for a powerful, conventionally shaped vehicle that runs entirely off the sun’s rays. Never mind modes of transportation on land - here we have a solar powered speedboat that will slice through water pretty much in the same way an ordinary speedboat does, save for the fact that this one relies on the sun to power its electric engine instead.
Solar Powered Gear
Most gadgets that we report on require some sort of power source. One of the most techie and ecologically friendly ways of powering gadgets is via the power of the sun. This section of Coolest Gadgets is dedicated to gadgets that get their power from the sun’s rays, be it via solar panels or just simple heating.
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