Green Options

Rarely do we take the time to stop and consider just how complex and amazing our bodies are. It is understandable after all, as the busy world around us can be quite distracting. But the record breaking times set by Usain Bolt this past summer have piqued the interests of scientists in the perceived limits of the human body.

Where once the maximum top speed of a human being was thought to be around 28 mph, a new study suggests that a trained runner could achieve speeds of 40 mph, or perhaps even more. If true, it could mean that human-powered mobility might be more practical than previously thought.

A US-built Tesla Roadster has broken the world record for the distance travelled by an electric production car on a single charge.

While competing in the Global Green Challenge, Australian Simon Hackett and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas drove an incredible 313 miles before the batteries finally died in their Roadster.

Until now, the record has been held by another Tesla Roadster, after completing a 241 mile road rally on one charge.

A student engineering team from Ohio State University broke into the 300 mph club yesterday with their hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle. The Buckeye Bullet 2 averaged 300.992 MPH yesterday in the flying kilometer, with a top recorded speed of 304 MPH.

The Mission One electric superbike set a land speed record of 150 MPH at the Bonneville Salt Flats for electric bikes on the 1st of September. This record sets the Mission Motors electric motorcycle apart from the herd, proving both the viability and performance capabilities of electric motorbikes. With individual runs as high as 161 MPH, the Mission One achieved speeds faster than 70% of the entrants at the annual BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials.

I’ve always enjoyed the antics of Jesse James, the motorcycle mogul who owns the custom bike shop West Coast Customs. He was the star of Monster Garage, where him and a team of equally-eccentric characters were challanged with creating oddball rides, such as an ambulance that does wheelies. That is one trip to the hospital I wouldn’t mind. But he isn’t exactly what I would call an “enviromentally concious” person, especially after last week’s episode of Jesse James Is A Dead Man, where Mr. James was tearing across through housing projects and golf courses in a nitrous-injected Camaro.

But apparently the idea of breaking the land speed record for hydrogen cars has been on his mind for some time now. Last Wednesday, Jesse blew past the current record of 185 mph and set a new record of 199.7 mph

Rock legend Neil Young has never made a secret of his radical eco-credentials. Now it seems he’s putting his (non-fossil fuel based) creative juices to good use by releasing an entire concept album about … electric cars.

The album, called Fork in the Road, focuses on the singer’s most recent obsession - a retooled 1959 Lincoln Continental that runs entirely on alternative energy. Its main themes are inspired by Young’s involvement with the Lincvolt Project,  a collaboration between the singer and biodiesel innovator Johnathan Goodwin to develop a commercially viable electric power system for automobiles.

Following the earlier release of a single, also called Fork in the Road (video), Young’s label Warner Reprise have announced that the album will be available on April 7, and revealed the full tracklist (after the jump).

According to a new study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, The average installed costs for photovoltaic cells (in real 2007 dollars) went down from $10.50-per-watt in 1998, to $7.60-per-watt in 2007.

What’s most amazing about this report is that it appears to validate a whole slew of state and local solar initiatives. The researchers found that—despite the many, many reported advances to solar cell efficiency—most of the savings during this nine year period came from reductions to installation and external hardware costs.

Sun Well Solar—a subsidiary of the notoriously poor CD and DVD manufacturer, CMC Magnetics—has announced today that it is one month ahead of schedule in the ramp-up of its new photovoltaic production line.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that, as a result of its enforcement actions, U.S. companies will spend a record-breaking $11.8 billion on pollution control and projects to clean up the environment this year.

Solar PV manufacturer Oerlikon Solar has pioneered a new thin film solar technology process, which it claims has made its solar cells 7 per cent efficient - a 16 per cent energy improvement over its previous technology. The advance has led to a 50 per cent increase in the capacity of its thin film solar fabrication plant.

So, why is this important? Well, thin film cells are typically a lot cheaper to produce than more common silicon solar cells, but often suffer from significantly lower conversion efficiencies. Oerlikon’s breakthrough moves us a lot closer to the day when thin film becomes more cost-effective than silicon-based panels - which could mean a dramatic rise in the adoption of solar power in homes and businesses.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales have set a new world record by creating the first silicon solar cell to achieve 25% efficiency.

Team leader, Prof. Martin Green of the university’s ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence, says their world-beating solar cell is now a massive six percent more efficient than the next best technology. The record edges the current generation of solar cell technology closer to the theoretical limit of 29% efficiency.