This is an amazing how-to on building your own solar panel. It’s incredibly cheap as well at only $104.85, much cheaper than pre-built models. Let’s hear it for DIY!

How I Built and electricity producing Solar Panel

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We’ve covered dozens of solar powered gadget chargers in the past, all charging your popular gadgets through USB cables or other special cable. So far however, we haven’t seen a solution to provide an actual outlet.

The Earthtech Portable Power Kit is marketed as a gree way to charge your laptop, and it does do a great job of this. A fully charged battery will run a 25w laptop for about 6 hours.

It’s much more than just a laptop charger however. It provides both a 12V DC outlet, and a 115V AC outlet for charging any other device or appliance. TV, Phone, Computer, Radio, etc. All can be powered by the battery.

Here’s a list of examples of operating times when running off battery power:

Approximate Operating Times for 115 Volt Products:

• Cordless Telephone (5 Watts): 40 Hours Operating Time
• Home Security System (5 Watts): 40 Hours Operating Time
• Clock Radio (8 Watts): 20 Hours Operating Time
• Portable Stereo (10 Watts): 15 Hours Operating Time
• Flourescent Work Light (14 Watts): 12 Hours Operating Time
• 5” Color TV (20 Watts): 8 Hours Operating Time
• Laptop Computer (25 Watts): 6 Hours Operating Time
• Table Lamp (40 Watts): 3.5 Hours Operating Time

Approximate Operating Times for 12 Volt DC Products:

• Cell Phone (6 Watts): 36 Hours Operating Time
• Fish Finder/Depth Sounder (6 Watts): 36 Hours Operating Time
• Bilge Pump (36 Watts): 6 Hours Operating Time
• Portable Cooler (30 Watts): 5 Hours Operating Time
• Car Vacuum (85 Watts): 1.2 Hours Operating Time

Pretty impressive times!

This can be incredibly valuable for emergencies, or just a small way to offset some of your electricity usage to a more green source.

The Power Kit was assembled by Earthtech from two different products. You can buy these two individually or as the kit to save some money.

The Battery pack is the XPower Powerpack 300 Plus, which Earthtech sells for $139.00

The Solar cell charger is the Sunlinq Portable Solar Panel Charger which Earthtech sells for $409.99

You can get these both in the Portable Power Kit for $478.95 (sale price).

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It seems nanotechnology is finally pulling it’s weight.

Gone are the days of theoretical structures, nanotubes that had great theoretical uses, and promises of tiny robots making us perfect. Now, nanotech is making real progress, and the findings are incredible.

We recently saw the nanowire, which could deliver free energy in theory, but now a company is claiming their “nano-paint” will generate free electricity.

Industrial Nanotech is the company behind this nano-paint, dubbed “Nansulate” is intended to be a form of thermal insulation. They claim their product will generate electricity when it is properly applied inside a structure’s walls
Obviously these claims are quite interesting, however we’ve got to be quite skeptical when it comes to claims about free energy. Energy from nothing? They better have something concrete to back it up.

As it turns out, Nansulate doesn’t exactly produce free energy; it harvests energy from the surrounding environment, similar to the nanowire. It’s placed inside a structure’s walls, and uses the temperature differential between the interior and exterior of the building to generate electricity.

there is almost always, day or night and anywhere in the world, a difference between the temperature inside a building and outside a building gives us an almost constant source of energy generation to tap into.  - Company CEO Stuart Burchill

Now of course, there has to be some source of energy to generate this temperature differential, and it remains to be seen just how much the differential has to be to generate usable electricity, but these claims certainly are exciting.

Could the days of perpetual motion machines and fraudulent free energy “science” be over, replaced by environment nano-harvesting? Well we’ve seen two plausible methods already,who knows what we’ll see in the near future.

via Treehugger

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The Navitas bicycle trailer is a new concept in portable green power.

Designed by Paul Smith, a final year design student at the University of Derby in England, the Navitas is “a pure concept in sustainable transport” explained Smith.

The trailer is a bit of a transformer. It’s wheel splits apart into 3 sections which serve as a wind turbine, and a compact solar panel provides another source of power in case of low wind.  These work together to charge the 24v on-board battery.

The trailer provides power output via a 12v cigarette lighter, and a USB port, allowing you to charge all your USB devices. Charge your iPod on the go!

Surprisingly, there’s no standard outlet, however power inverters intended for cars could be used in the cigarette lighter to provide standard outlets.

It clips easily to the seat post, and as an added eco-bonus, utilized all-LED brake and hazard lights.

This is a fantastic concept, however a method to charge the battery, even just a small charge, without  disconnecting and setting up the whole trailer should have been included, I wouldn’t want to stop just to charge the battery.

This is only a concept, and not currently available for sale, but it certainly seems marketable, and if it ever hits store shelves, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Get more information from the design poster:

via MetaEfficient

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In the last post we talked about Sanyo’s Eneloop rechargeable batteries. These batteries come fully charged, do not lose charge over time, and can last over 19 years!

We should your batteries run out of juice, just pop ‘em into the charger and you’re ready to go.

…but why use traditional power when there’s an even greener way to recharge them?

Enter the Eneloop Solar Charger.

This charger uses the sun to produce power, and can charge an eneloop battery in as little as 2.5 hours, must faster than even a traditional wall-powered battery charger.

In addition to charging batteries, the eneloop solar charger provides the first solar powered USB port. Providing DC 5v, 500mA output, the solar charger can charge any device you would normally charge through USB.

The solar charger is available now, but extremely hard to find outside of Japan. If you do find it, expect to pay about $170.

via engadget

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 This is the CIS Photovoltaic system, a huge leap forward in home solar systems.

The CIS has uses new battery and solar technology to reach an unprecedented 0.9 year payback. That means this system will pay for itself in less than a year!

This is less than half of traditional solar systems.

In addition to a quick payback, the CIS system is much more eco-friendly than other systems. Yes, it does does produce 100% green power, but the system itself uses 1/100th the materials used in traditional batteries.

This means much more green manufacturing.

The CIS system uses a stepped design, modeled after traditional Japanese roofs.

Unfortunately CIS is a Japanese company, and their product website is also in Japanese. We’ll let you know if this system gets picked up by english retailer so you can get more information.

via Good Design Awards

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 You might want to start saving those eggshells from your breakfast, they could help make hydrogen fuel.

While you’re probably not going to be able to make it at home, Engineers at Ohio State have been using eggshells  to soak up carbon dioxide in a hydrogen-producing reaction. They explain that excess carbon dioxide has been a major problem, and have found that when the eggshells are ground-up, they can absorb carbon dioxide. The process is explained as follows:

That brought them to eggshells, which mostly consist of calcium carbonate — one of nature’s most absorbent materials. It is a common ingredient in calcium supplements and antacids. With heat processing, calcium carbonate becomes calcium oxide, which will then absorb any acidic gas, such as carbon dioxide.

The eggshells absorb up to 78% of the carbon dioxide, being the most effective carbon-dioxide absorber to date. The best part, eggshells are a 100% green material. No complicated or dangerous chemicals, no emissions. It’s a massively plentiful resource too, according to the ENN article, nearly 91 billion eggs were produced, which is about 455,000 tons of shell, that’s a heck of a lot carbon-sucking power!

Researchers came upwith another benefit of the shells as well, in order to use them for hydrogen production, that filmy layer on the inside of the shell has to be removed. They developed an organic acid to accomplish this and collect the collagen. This collagen can fetch big bucks , so in addition to producing hydrogen, we’ve got a great money maker too.

With hydrogen looking to become a major source of fuel in the near future, we could very well see eggs becoming pretty valuable, or maybe we’ll just have to sort our garbage for eggshells too!

…oh, and apparently eggs are good for you or something too….

via ENN

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 There’s no doubt nanotechnology is the future. Nano-sized machines assembled at the cellular level have the potential to increase efficiency, accomplish tasks previously thought impossible, and maybe even generate energy.

One of the problems with nanotechnology is a power source. Batteries do no work at that scale. Nano scientists have developed what’s called a “nanowire” to solve this problem. Made of a piezoelectric material, the nanowire is able to harvest mechanical energy. When deformed, voltage is produced. This can used to power nano machines.

Now I’m not an expert in nanotechnology, so forgive me if my interpretation is a bit naive. It seems to me that if this nanowire is capable of generating electricity, however small the voltage, it should be able to be multiplied enough to create something of use.

These nanowires create 0.3 attojoules (”less than one quintillionth of a joule”). Obviously we would need an incredible amount of these to create anything useful, but it seems to me that there is a potential that these nanowires, working in unison, could create usable electricity.

We just might be able to power your iPod by harvesting tiny amounts of mechanical energy.

Obviously this technology would be a long way off as nanowires are still a very young technology, but every day nanotech seems to change our views of how technology can work.

Could this be a future green power source? I invite anyone with nanotech experience to chime in on the subject, is it possible?

via ENN

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