Green Options

How do you make a better wind turbine? With lasers, of course.

The Manassas, Virginia-based Catch the Wind(TSX-V: CTW.S) has signed an agreement to work with the National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colorado, to test the company’s Vindicator laser wind sensor.

Here’s a feather in the cap of renewable energy supporters.

When the (baseload, coal and nuclear) power went out after storms in Muskegon, a mobile renewable energy unit came to the rescue.

A recent study concluded that it’s dangerous to text while driving.

What about texting while bicycling?

That’s also not advised, but a device from a company called PedalPower+ will charge your Blackberry while you ride. It also will charge your iPod.

The device, similar to the old school dynamo systems used to power headlamps via the back wheel of a bike, also stores generated power in a battery and will charge with [...]

Pond scum just got an upgrade.

SunEco Energy is working with J.B. Hunt Transport Services, a leading transportation company, to run trucks on biodiesel mixed with algae oil.

SunEco says a blend of 20 percent and 50 percent algae oil with petroleum biodiesel has cut particulate emissions by 82 percent.

Fairview has become the first town in Texas to build a street lit entirely by low-energy LEDs.

There are 82 light-emitting diodes on the newly constructed Fairview Parkway. The LEDs came from EvoLucia, a division of Sunovia Energy Technologies in Sarasota, Florida.

When the sun goes down, some walkways in Birmingham, Michigan, start to glow.

They’re fitted with a phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark pavement marking system from Glow-Mark Technologies LLC of Royal Oak, MIchigan.

The system consists of encapsulated “pucks” fitted into brick pavers, wood or other material with a boring drill.

Biomimicry is about emulating nature. Scientists at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina are using the concept to increase the efficiency of solar cells, peering into how a moth’s eye absorbs light.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy lab are working with the University of Florida’s Peng Jiang to study how special coatings that mimic structures found in nature can make solar cells more productive for commercial applications, homes and even space satellites.

Sometimes, when you ask a question, you get a good answer.

A recent post on a push to increase the U.S. gasoline blend rate ended with this thought-provoker: At this rate, will cellulosic ethanol, from non-food plant materials, ever get off the ground?

Yes, replied Sam Salyer, a representative for a Massachusetts-based biofuel company called Qteros.

You’d think this would be a “Buy American” type of issue. Growth Energy, an ethanol industry trade group, wants to raise the content in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent in the United States.

The ethanol industry, of course, is firmly behind the proposal, made to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ethanol plant operators say a boost would bring jobs and investment on U.S. soil.

Wind turbines have been around since just after the dinosaurs began making fossil fuels.

These days, a team from Purdue University and Sandia National Laboratories are working to make future blades more efficient, more cost effective and more reliable.

In other words: Plans for the smart grid, meet plans for the smart blade.

Engineers have embedded sensors inside wind turbine blades, and are testing the technology at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s [...]