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The world's largest solar power plant is now up and running
Solar power just hit one of its biggest milestones, in more ways than one. First Solar recently finished building Topaz, a 550-megawatt plant that represents the largest active solar farm on the planet. And we do mean large -- the installation's nine million solar panels cover 9.5 square miles of California's Carrizo Plain. It's an impressive feat that should power 160,000 homes on Pacific Gas and Electric's grid, although it won't be alone at the top for very long. First Solar's Desert Sunlight farm will match that capacity once its last solar cells go online, and SunPower's 579MW Solar Star is due to go live in 2015. Not that there's a problem with that, of course. These solar plants have been a long time coming, and they promise eco-friendly energy for hundreds of thousands of Golden State residents. [Image credit: Center for Land Use Interpretation]
Warren Buffett's company is buying Duracell for $6.4 billion
Last month, Procter & Gamble decided that it wanted out of the battery game, and was selling Duracell to the highest bidder. Today, a surprising figure has emerged as the buyer: America's richest man, Warren Buffett. According to the release, Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett's company) will spend around $1.7 billion in cash and will swap stock worth around $4.7 billion in order to own the power outfit. After all, as devices with built-in, rechargeable batteries rise in prominence, the need to buy expensive AAAs from the store is decreasing. Still, Buffett's got a track record of making savvy investments - so perhaps this is time for a corporate reinvention that P&G couldn't, or didn't want to, implement.
WiTricity's CEO paints a picture of a wirelessly powered future
If WiTricity CEO Alex Gruzen gets his way, the company's tech will soon wind up in your phone, your car and even inside your body. That's because the Massachusetts-based company deals in magnetic resonance technology, and if those words don't mean anything to you now, they probably will before long. You see, WiTricity has been working for the past five years on a way to wirelessly transfer power between devices, and Gruzen told our audience at Engadget Expand NY that the wireless future is basically right around the corner.
HTC's new charger gets your One back in action 40 percent faster
Current HTC phones like the One M8 have solid battery life, but that won't do you much good if you're already running low on energy and need a top-up as soon as possible. That's where the company's upcoming Rapid Charger 2.0 might just come in handy. The wall adapter leans on Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 to fill your power pack up to 40 percent faster -- not as useful as the Droid Turbo's 15-minute partial boost, but enough to get you through a long night out. There are a few catches, though. You'll have to wait a little while to get US pricing and availability, and the compatibility is limited to a handful of 2014 devices with Quick Charge 2.0 built-in. The One M8, One E8, One Remix and Desire Eye are your only options. If you're carrying an older One or a budget phone like Desire 610, you'll be stuck with slow charging for now.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Fusion power, Drop-a-Brick and settlements on Mars
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Why can't Tesla's sales model catch a break? The automaker is paving the way for the future of electric vehicles, however states keep stepping in the way. This week, Michigan passed legislation that essentially bans Tesla from selling cars in the state due to a last-minute addition by a legislator who receives contributions from the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association. In other transportation news, Italy has long been the Mecca of souped-up sports cars, but surprisingly the country has never produced a fully electric supercar. That all could change soon, now that the Italian company Tecnicar has unveiled a new electric car with a 789-horsepower electric motor.
Lockheed Martin thinks it can give the world unlimited clean energy in 20 years
Remember back in the '50s, when official-sounding newsreels promised that we'd have new-kew-lur-powered cars by the '70s and no one would ever be unhappy? Probably not, since we've gotten a skewed sense of history from watching too many episodes of Futurama. Still, several decades behind schedule, the promise of clean and unlimited energy might finally be looming upon the horizon, thanks to Lockheed Martin. The defense behemoth believes that it might have a working prototype of its Compact Fusion Reactor in a decade, which might just save the world as we know it.
California's giant battery test is a step towards clean energy
One of the biggest challenges of switching to clean energy sources is finding a place to store excess power. That's relatively easy on a small scale, but it's much more daunting for your utility company. Southern California Edison is apparently ready to take on that challenge, however. It just launched the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project, a large-scale experiment in using lithium-ion batteries (608,832 of them, to be exact) to preserve unused electricity. For the next two years, the 32 megawatt-hours array will scoop up leftover energy from nearby sources, including a wind turbine area; SCE will be watching closely to see how the lithium-ion packs improve its grid's real world performance.
Researchers create a headset to turn your jaw into a tiny power plant
We're no strangers to projects that try to capture the power of the human body, but here's one with a peculiar twist. A pair of researchers from Montreal's École de Technologie Supérieure have cooked up a headset that, while extremely goofy-looking, can harness the power of your mighty jaw muscles while you chew, gab on the phone and stress-grind your teeth into a fine powder.
US nuclear regulator hit by two foreign cyberattacks in three years
It's no secret that the White House is eager to protect the energy grid against cyberattacks, but it's now clear that the government is speaking from bitter, first-hand experience. Nextgov has confirmed that foreign hacker groups broke into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's systems twice within the past three years, compromising PCs and accounts by tricking users into installing malware. A third, individually-launched attack also happened during the same time frame. While investigators couldn't determine the origins due to internet providers deleting their logs, the targets suggest that the attacks were government-backed -- the NRC knows the contents and health of reactors across the US. That logically draws suspicion toward China or Russia, although these could have simply been black market operators hoping to sell to the highest bidder.
3D-printed wind turbine puts 300W of power in your backpack
For the most part, portable energy generators are intended for modest uses. They can charge your phone, but they won't drive high-powered laptops or small appliances. That might change if Omni3D gets its crowdfunded AirEnergy 3D off the ground. The 3D-printed wind turbine should fit into a backpack, yet produce up to 300W of power -- enough that you can keep a whole slew of devices running, including those that wouldn't run at all on solar or thermoelectric systems. It will be open source, too, since part of the goal is to let those in Africa and other developing regions create their own reliable, renewable power sources.
Scientists turn to hemp for cheap, fast-charging batteries
Forget lab-made materials like graphene -- natural, old-fashioned hemp may be the ticket to our energy future. Researchers have demonstrated that you can make very efficient carbon electrodes simply by heating hemp bast fibers in a two-stage process. The resulting substance holds as much energy as graphene, but is much cheaper to make. You're just using biological leftovers, after all. It's much more tolerant of temperature extremes, too, and can survive anything from freezing conditions to a scorching 200F. And before you ask -- this is hemp, not pot, so you're not going to get a contact high just by using a battery.
Spray-painted solar cells promise cheap power on seemingly any surface
Scientists have dreamed of painting solar cells to generate energy on just about any surface, but efficiency has been a problem; researchers were happy to get one percent just a couple of years ago. At last, though, it looks like viable paint-on power is close at hand. A team at the University of Sheffield has developed spray-on cells that should be both cheap and capable. The trick is to coat an object in perovskite, a calcium titanium oxide mineral -- it's inexpensive like organic solar cells, but absorbs light nearly as well as silicon.
Solar cells cool themselves to produce more power
Solar power cells need to stay relatively cool for the sake of both efficiency and longevity, but active cooling (like ventilation) isn't practical; it's expensive, and may block the very rays the cells are supposed to collect. To tackle this problem, Stanford University researchers have created a new form of solar cell that cools itself. The technique embeds a pattern of very small cone and pyramid shapes into the collector's silica surface, bouncing hot infrared wavelengths away while letting in the visible light that generates the most energy.
Google finally agrees to fix Chrome bug that drains Windows laptop batteries
Chrome may be the browser of choice for around 35 percent of the world's internet users, but it's not without its flaws. A report by Forbes has highlighted that the browser won't return to an idle state if it's not being used, demanding significantly more power than rivals like Firefox or Internet Explorer. That's a big problem for laptop users, since their portable Windows machines are losing battery life far faster than they should. It's apparently been a problem since 2010, but it's only now that Google is admitting that something needs to be done about it. In a statement to PC World, the company has pushed the fault to the top of the Chrome team's to-do list, so hopefully it won't be long before you get a lot more browsing before you retreat to a wall socket.
Australia drops carbon tax in favor of paying industries to use clean energy
For years, Australia has tried to fight polluters through a carbon tax that charges the most egregious offenders based on their greenhouse gas emissions. Prime Minister Tony Abbott doesn't believe that this strategy is helping much, however, and has just won a Senate vote that scraps the tax altogether. The nation will instead spend $2.55 billion AUD ($2.4 billion US) on the Emissions Reduction Fund, an attempt to curb pollution by paying industries to both reduce their emissions as well as use clean energy sources like solar and wind farms. In theory, it's a win-win: the average Australian home saves money ($550 AUD per year, Abbott's government says), but companies still have an incentive to use eco-friendly technology.
Generating power from heat will soon be dirt cheap
You could power your car's cooling AC using wasted heat, ironically, without a solar panel in sight.
Nanotechnology can turn your jacket into a battery
There are certainly clothes and wires that can transmit electricity, but wouldn't it make sense if they could hold on to it as well? Researchers at the University of Central Florida certainly think so, since they've just developed technology that lets wires and threads store energy. Their approach sheathes the wire in nano-sized whiskers that, when treated, become electrodes; the sheath effectively becomes a supercapacitor that preserves energy without hurting electrical transmissions.
Google wants your help making cheaper, tinier solar power systems
Solar panels have become cheaper and more efficient in recent years, but you can't say the same for the big, costly inverters turning their energy into usable electricity. Google isn't happy with this lack of progress, so it's about to launch the Little Box Challenge, an open competition to build a tiny (and consequently cheaper) solar power inverter. The search giant is promising $1 million to whoever cracks the problem, although it warns that this won't be easy; don't expect to reach a breakthrough in your basement. If someone does produce this miniscule power box, though, it could lead to eco-friendly energy in places where it's currently unaffordable or otherwise impractical -- whether it's a remote village or your own rooftop. [Image credit: Getty Images]
Arizona will get non-stop clean energy from hot air drafts
Many green energy sources only generate power in a narrow range of conditions. Solar panels won't work when it's dark, for instance, and wind turbines are useless when everything is still. If Solar Wind Energy Tower has its way, though, we'll soon get clean electricity around the clock. It recently received permission to build a tower in San Luis, Arizona that produces power through hot air downdrafts; water injected at the top of the tower cools the desert winds, dragging them toward turbines at the bottom. Since it's almost always hot in the area, the plant should run all day and night for much of the year. An ideal summer day could have it churning out a healthy 1,250 megawatts per hour.
Tesla opens 100th Supercharger... in a state where sales are banned
You can't buy a Tesla in New Jersey, but now you can Supercharge one up! Tesla's 100th Supercharger just came online in Hamilton, located just a few miles from the NJ state capital of Trenton. The Garden State's very first Supercharger sports six stalls, and, since it's positioned just a few miles from the New Jersey Turnpike, can accommodate Tesla owners traveling down the East Coast, from Connecticut to Florida. Of course, while you can fuel up your Tesla in Jersey, you can't make a purchase -- direct-to-consumer sales are still banned, following a shady (Jersey-esque) backroom deal between politicians and lobbyists just last month.
