Will we finally achieve the long sought-after perpetual motion machine that is perfect (positively productive) nuclear fusion? I sure do hope so.

Yes this is a sadly short return article for TGT… but 75 hour work weeks will do that to you. Don’t worry though, this site won’t die! It will only get better with age and reconstruction surgery. ; )

The kind folks over at MIT’s material science department have engineered the M13 virus to create super thin conducting wires that allow for the creation of a battery that could not only be environmentally friendly it might even out-compete today’s leading lithium technologies! Go check the short article about it over at National Geographic.

Solar concentrators have been around since the days of Archimedes‘s Death Ray, but this new type of solar concentrator intended for PV cells is something new altogether. The Light-Guide Solar Optic (LSO) was created around the principles of total internal reflection and designed to concentrate the sun 1,000 times onto a PV cell in order to reduce the amount of PV material that is needed to produce the same amount of energy. The technology is soon to go into testing phases and could prove to be cost competitive with the (still expensive) thin film PV cells. You can get the whole low-down over at the Technology Review.

If you’ve ever lived in an older home with thin window panes or leaky seals then you know how much heat is lost through these sneaky avenues. Many sufferers don’t know that you can actually treat these leaks without having to spend thousands on new windows; with plastic insulation. These thin, saran wrap-like, rolls of plastic come with double-sided tape that you border your leaky or thin windows with. After you’ve got the plastic nice and taught across your tape border you simply hit it with some hot air from a blow-dryer and you’ve got yourself a relatively invisible and extremely cheap new layer of protection from the frigid winter air! I used these last year in my decrepit college house but this year I didn’t have to so I wasn’t reminded of their usefulness till this weekend by this article over at Planet Green. When I used this extra method of insulation to reduce heat loss in my house I actually saw a reduction in my heating energy consumption. If you’re really out to save energy then you can use heavy curtains to cover the windows at night to keep in every last bit of heat. Both of these methods combined will really help you out in an old house.

Hello everyone! Well, this is my first time posting, so forgive me if my thoughts wander a bit or I somehow manage to insult you in some manner. I’m pretty good at that, actually, but never on purpose. I’m also rather long winded. I can’t help it, it’s genetic, I swear!

Today, class, I’ll be touching briefly on some energy saving and energy efficient methods that are out there and newly emerging. Where do I get my information, you ask? Well I think that question calls for a quick bio after the jump…

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How accurate is that standby power consumption rating on your computer, TV, or stereo? Good question. For some reason a few years back manufacturers decided that every damn electronic device would “turn off” by going into standby. This meant that instead of just cutting the power all together devices now draw a (supposedly) small amount of electricity for various ‘reasons.’ Now I’m sure there are some devices, like computers, which benefit from that and usually those are rated at 1 to 3 watts while on standby but this number may not be what it seems, especially for TVs. You can check out some discussion about a Sony TV here and here. The problem resides in the fact that the manufacturers self-certify their products and there are far too many loopholes allowing for greater than listed power consumption and not-so-but-almost in standby modes.

My advice; buy a power strip. Or if you want to really go all out; get a power meter and check all your devices in your house and then decide which need power strips to truly be turned off.

In this seemingly bleak article, Why Sustainable Power is Unsustainable some of the downfalls of current renewable energy systems are discussed. The main limiter on many of these technologies is the resources used to produce them, namely; extremely rare metals like indium and platinum. These metals are used in the more advanced technologies such as multi-junction solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells. The story won’t end here though, technology will always progress and human creativity will eventually, with effort, find new and better ways to implement these technologies while using materials that are more abundant, less expensive, and hopefully renewable/recyclable themselves. Make sure to check out the article, there are a bunch of great links throughout it.

This all makes a really great case for increased use of wind power generators by the way! I guess they will be the best option for the time being.

Not quite in the public’s eye but certainly widely used; geological energy sources are all the rave in new home and office heating & cooling. Check out this cool article about “Tapping the Earth for Home Heating and Cooling.” You’d be surprised by how nice it is to have a constant source of 55F at your home’s HVAC ‘finger tips.’

I’ve always found the idea of generating electricity from constant sources of kinetic (‘free’) energy like rain or dancing but I can’t say I’ve ever thought of how practical this idea would be! Texas A&M has thought up the bright idea of using the energy packed air vibrations you generate while talking to power you cell phone. Using Piezoelectric materials to capture the vibrations and convert them to electricity these researchers hope to revolutionize the way we power mobile devices. I wish them luck! (I would be happy to test them out for them… if they’re reading)