Green Options

Italian car company Pininfarina have announced plans to launch the first car in the world to use an iPhone as a remote control.

The Pininfarina Bluecar is an all-electric vehicle capable of travelling 155 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 80 mph. But get this - drivers will be able to use their iPhone to remotely check up on battery charge levels and ‘pre-heat the car’s electric drive system,’ very swish (more pics after the jump).

A team of US and Korean scientists have announced a major breakthrough in energy storage that could pave the way to a new generation of ultra-efficient electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The prototype capacitor, much more powerful than exisiting batteries, is capable of storing power at the same massive density as a supercapacitor (an incredible 10 billion tiny capacitors in every square centimetre), but releasing it as quickly as the fastest electrostatic capacitors.

Speaking about the invention, Gary Rubloff of the University of Maryland said, “Our primary target [for this technology] is as part of a hybrid battery-capacitor system for electric cars, but there are many [potential] small scale applications, [including] better electrical storage systems for cellphones or laptops.”

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed battery cells capable of charging in under a minute, an astonishing 100 times faster than a regular rechargable battery.

The breakthrough could revolutionize electric car battery technology and pave the way for ultra-fast charging electric vehicles in as little as two years.

The discovery came when MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder found out how to get a common lithium compound to release and take up lithium ions in a matter of seconds. According to Ceder, the compound, known as lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), has a crystal structure that creates “perfectly sized tunnels for lithium to move through,” allowing the team to reach “ridiculously fast charging rates.”

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.

Australian researchers have figured out a cool new way to tackle the threat of global warming, by setting up a network of ‘talking’ fridges.

But wait, the idea isn’t as crazy as it might sound. The fridges feature cutting-edge technology enabling them to communicate with each other via a network to share and store energy from renewable energy sources such as solar panels or wind turbines.

According to inventor, Sam West, “The fridges are designed to talk to each other, negotiating when it’s a good time to consume electricity and when it’s better not to.”

A US-based company has successfully tested a revolutionary solar panel that is expected to cut the costs of photovoltaic solar power generation by more than 50 per cent, and herald a new era of improved efficiency and lower production costs of solar energy globally.

The panel, known as the Alubond Solar Collector Panel (SCP), was created by American Building Technologies, a subsidiary of the UAE-based multinational group Mulk Holdings. Commenting on the breakthrough, a spokesman for Mulk said, “We hope the success of this project will lead to an upsurge in the development of more solar energy plants, which will not only lessen the strain on existing energy resources, but also severely reduce the pollution levels that are currently witnessed in power generation.”

A Swedish inventor has unveiled a solar-powered water purifier that could provide billions of the world’s poorest people with access to clean and disease-free drinking water [video].

The device, called the Solvatten, (Swedish for ’sun water’), looks much the same as a standard jerrycan and can be filled with up to ten liters of water, opened out, and left in the sun. A simple indicator shows either a red or green face to let users know when the water is safe to drink (typically after 3-4 hours), thus avoiding the risk of contracting water-borne diseases.

Tremont Electric has launched a portable energy generator that allows users to charge handheld electronic devices simply by going for a walk.

The nPower PEG, launched at last week’s 2009 CES event, works on the principle of electromagnetic induction to create a 100% renewable energy source for everything from iPods to mobile phones. To get a charge, users simply connect the PEG to their mobile device and lay it vertically, either against their hip, or in a bag, while they go for a walk or a run.

In an effort to tackle Pakistan’s growing energy shortage, representatives of the burgeoning Chinese solar industry have offered to cooperate with the country on a high profile partnership to manufacture solar energy equipment.

Engineers have created a new type of road capable of turning the vibration caused by cars into electricity.

The revolutionary new surface, created by engineers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, uses piezoelectric crystals embedded in the asphalt to generate up to 400 kilowatts of energy from a 1 kilometer stretch, enough to run eight electric cars.

Commenting on the innovation, a spokesman from the UK Environmental Transport Association said, “Many predict a massive shift to electric cars, and it may be the roads themselves that help provide some of the power needed.”