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Tesla's solar panels and Powerwall batteries are becoming a package deal
Elon Musk said that starting next week, if you want a Tesla solar setup, you'll have to order a Powerwall battery too.
Tesla and Walmart settle lawsuit over solar panel fires
Tesla and Walmart clearly weren't ready for a knock-down-drag-out fight over solar panel fires. The two companies have settled a lawsuit that accused Tesla of neglecting and botching installations for solar panels that caught fire on the roofs of seven Walmart stores. In a joint statement to Engadget, the companies said they were "pleased" and that concerns had been "addressed." The duo looks forward to a "safe re-energization of [their] sustainable energy systems," according to the companies. You can read the full statement below.
BioLite launches disaster preparedness kits in time for hurricane season
Even though Hurricane Dorian has slowed down, the storm has left behind plenty of damage in its wake. Given that hurricane season lasts until November, it's a wise idea to stock up in the event of another natural disaster. BioLite has launched a set of disaster preparedness bundles for use during a power outage. Each bundle contains solar-powered lights, chargers, headlamps and a water filtration straw. The kits come in three sizes; solo, family and apartment.
Tesla's relaunched solar power efforts include $50 panel rentals
Tesla has relaunched its troubled solar power efforts, and that now includes an option that might be more affordable for some homeowners. The company has debuted a Rent Solar program that lets residents in six states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Mexico) pay a monthly fee instead of making an expensive up-front purchase. You'll typically pay $50 per month ($65 in California), but Tesla will do all the hard work. There's no long-term contract -- Tesla is simply betting that you'll keep it for long enough for those fees to add up.
Eton FRX3: Emergency power for your iPhone when you need it the most
If there's anything that nature teaches us, it's that our highly technological society is just an extended power outage away from complete chaos. Last fall's Hurricane Sandy left many on the East Coast of the US without power for weeks. No power at the home or office means no power for your iPhone, which means you have no way to talk to relatives, friends or first responders if the mobile network is still up (which it usually is). The Eton FRX3 (US$59.99) is primarily an emergency radio, but it also has power-generating features to keep your iPhone going when the power's down. Design The Eton FRX3 is probably one of the strangest accessories I've ever reviewed, since it's not specifically made for the purpose of working with Apple devices. Design-wise it's a hardy looking little device that does not look like a radio at all. It's a black plastic box about 5.5" wide, 6.5" tall, and about 1.6" thick, with a rather industrial-looking "X" design and a silver and yellow crank on the front. There's also a version in red if you prefer. That crank powers a dynamo ("hand turbine") that is used in concert with a small solar panel on the top of the device to charge an internal NiMH battery pack. You can also power the radio off of three standard AA batteries, or by plugging in an external power source through an included USB to micro-USB cable. That solar panel on top has a glow-in-the-dark bezel around it, helpful for those situations where the power has just gone out and you're trying to find the FRX3. %Gallery-176877% There's a backlit LCD panel that shows the time (this can also be used as an alarm clock), battery status, band (AM/FM/WB) and station frequency. Under the solar cell enhanced handle is a group of buttons used to set the clock and alarm. On the front of the FRX3 are buttons to switch between the dynamo-powered rechargeable batteries and AA batteries, a master power switch, and a slider switch to go between bands. There are two large and easy-to-turn silver knobs that control volume and tuning. Eton includes a wrist strap for carrying the radio, although I think it would be easier just to use the built-in handle. On the right side of the case looking from the front are three LED bulbs -- two provide a bright white emergency flashlight, while the third is a flashing red LED to attract attention. The back of the FRX3 has a niche for an extendable antenna, a door covering an AUX port, a headphone jack, a DC-in micro-USB port, and a USB port for charging your iPhone. There's also a separate door for accessing the rechargeable battery pack and AA batteries (if used). Functionality For iPhone users, the biggest question is going to be how much of a charge you can give your phone using the FRX3. To charge your phone, you'll use your standard iPhone USB to Lightning or USB to 30-pin Dock connector cable, and plug the USB end into the "Cell" port on the back of the FRX3. You then press the CELL button located under the handle to start dumping the charge from the NiMH battery to your iPhone. That battery pack contains 600 mAh of charge, while fully charging an iPhone 5 takes about 1434 mAh. You'll be able to recharge your iPhone less than halfway with the FRX3, but that may be enough to make a call to a worried relative, check on a close friend, or contact first responders. Once the FRX3 battery pack is dead, it's time to recharge it. Unless you want to build up arm muscle mass by turning the crank for a while, you'll most likely want to let the sun do the charging -- if it's sunny outside. Unfortunately, that little solar panel takes about 10 hours to fully charge the FRX3 battery, so if you really need juice quickly, your arms are going to get a workout. On the plus side, that crank turns pretty easily, so it's not going wear you out too badly and it may give bored kids something to do while you're waiting for the power to come back on. You do not want to turn the dynamo crank while your iPhone is attached; instead, you disconnect the phone, charge the FRX3 battery up with the crank and solar panel, and then connect to the iPhone for charging. The radio in the FRX3 works well, if you realize that it's not meant for entertainment purposes. It's designed for listening to news and NWS weather reports. Of the seven weather band channels, you'll need to flick between them until you find the one with the strongest signal. Where I live in the southern suburbs of Denver, only one weather band channel was accessible. You can switch to your local AM and FM stations as well. Listening to music on the FRX3 is almost painful; the sound quality reminds me of the radio that was in my mid-1970s Chevy Vega wagon, and that's not a good memory. But as I said, this is an emergency radio and you're most likely not going to listen to music on it. The radio operates for three to four hours with a full charge and at low volume. In emergency situations, you may want to just turn it on every hour or so to get an update, then turn it back off. The dynamo crank provides about 5 to 7 minutes of radio capability or 20 minutes of flashlight use for every 90 seconds of hand cranking. Calculating, it would take approximately an hour of cranking to get the battery fully charged back up. Conclusion Everyone should have a way to listen to emergency radio reports when the power is out, and in that respect the Eton FRX3 excels by providing multiple ways of recharging the device's NiMH battery pack. However, I would use the FRX3 as an iPhone charger of last resort due to its low capacity. If you're truly concerned about keeping your iPhone up and running in an emergency, you might want to invest in a Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Pro ($99.95) with a 6000 mAh rechargeable battery that can fully recharge your iPhone about four times. What you really want to buy the FRX3 for is the other emergency preparedness features -- the LED flashlight and the multiband radio. In a severe emergency, those features are probably going to be much more important to you than being able to play Temple Run 2 on your iPhone.
Fraunhofer black silicon could catch more energy from infrared light, go green with sulfur
Generating solar power from the infrared spectrum, or even nearby frequencies, has proven difficult in spite of a quarter of the Sun's energy passing through those wavelengths. The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications may have jumped that hurdle to efficiency through sulfur -- one of the very materials that solar energy often helps eliminate. By irradiating ordinary silicon through femtosecond-level laser pulses within a sulfuric atmosphere, the technique melds sulfur with silicon and makes it easier for infrared light electrons to build into the frenzy needed for conducting electricity. The black-tinted silicon that results from the process is still in the early stages and needs improvements to automation and refinement to become a real product, but there's every intention of making that happen: Fraunhofer plans a spinoff to market finished laser systems for solar cell builders who want their own black silicon. If all goes well, the darker shade of solar panels could lead to a brighter future for clean energy.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: ECOLAR house, transparent solar panel and Star Wars terrariums
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. For the past two weeks Inhabitat has been reporting live from the Solar Decathlon Europe in Madrid, where 18 student teams from around the world have been competing for the title of the world's most efficient solar-powered prefab house. As usual, suspense was running high in the final days of the competition, and we're excited to announce that Team Rhône-Alpes' Canopea House has been named this year's winner! The beautiful modular house took top honors in the architecture and sustainability categories, and it features a 10.7 kW photovoltaic array on the roof that produces more than enough energy to power the home. Some of the other standouts at the Solar Decathlon Europe include Germany's ECOLAR House, which features a flexible, modular design that can expand or shrink to accommodate the needs of its owners. It came as no surprise that the German team was tops in the engineering category, and the team incorporated hemp insulation in the floors, walls and ceiling to prevent thermal loss. Team Andalucia's Patio 2.12 House, which consists of four separate prefabricated modules built around an interior courtyard, scored high marks for energy efficiency and innovation. And although Italy's MED in Italy House might not look like much on the outside, step inside and you'll enter a different world altogether. The highly efficient home features a central courtyard and a rooftop photovoltaic array that generates about 9.33 kWh of energy per year -- roughly double what it needs. Team Rome also added wall layers that can be filled with heavy materials to provide high thermal mass once the home is installed.
IBM alliance sets efficiency record for solar power cells using common materials
There have been more than a few solar power efficiency records set in the past few months, let alone years. What makes IBM, DelSolar, Solar Frontier and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo think they can just waltz in and claim a record of their own? By using more commonplace elements in the periodic table, that's how. The partnership's new photovoltaic cell based on copper, zinc and tin (CZTS for short) can convert light rays to electric power with a 11.1 percent efficiency rate -- still nothing to upset traditional silicon power, but a large 10 percent more efficient than anything else in the class. In its early form, CZTS can already be manufactured through ink printing and could be produced in quantities equivalent to about 500 gigawatts of power per year, or five times more than some of the next-closest alternatives. The group wants to improve CZTS' efficiency over the course of the next several years, ideally reaching the point where it's useful as a truly cheap, ubiquitous source of power. We're looking forward to the day when there's a little slice of solar energy in just about everything, hopefully including a few more hybrid cars and private aircraft.
Researchers make unsuitable parts work as solar cells, could lead to cheaper panels
Harnessing the power of the sun is a tricky business, but even the past few weeks have seen some interesting developments in the field. In this latest installment, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California have figured out a way of making solar cells from any semiconductor, potentially reducing the cost of their production. You see, efficient solar cells require semiconductors to be chemically modified for the current they produce to flow in one direction. The process uses expensive materials and only works with a few types of semiconductors, but the team's looking at using ones which aren't normally suitable -- the magic is to apply an electrical field to them. This field requires energy, but what's consumed is said to be a tiny fraction of what the cell's capable of producing when active, and it means chemical modification isn't needed. The concept of using a field to standardize the flow of juice isn't a new one, but the team's work on the geometrical structure of the cells has made it a reality, with a couple of working prototypes to satisfy the skeptics. More of these are on the way, as their focus has shifted to which semiconductors can offer the best efficiency at the lowest cost. And when the researchers have answered that question, there's nothing left to do but get cracking on commercial production. For the full scientific explanation, hit up the links below.
3D, light-trapping solar cells successfully fabricated by Solar3D
Solar3D probably isn't a company you're particularly familiar with... at least not yet. The California-based manufacturer has just successfully fabricated a three dimensional solar panel that traps sun light in nano-scale wells on a silicon wafer. Perhaps most exciting, the prototype panel was built using off-the-shelf tech from Panasonic, meaning that the price of mass production shouldn't be prohibitively high. More testing is needed, but the resulting panels should be up to 50 percent more efficient than current generation 2D ones. For a few more details, check out The PR after the break.
BAE Systems designs hard composite solar cells: could act as structure of UAVs, piece of soldier's gear
BAE Systems revealed that it's working on hardy, high-capacity solar cells that could power unmanned vehicles and even attach to an individual soldier's gear. According to Darren Buckle, a manager from BAE Systems' Advanced Technology Center, the cells are geared toward smaller, often airborne, military units, where weight is at a premium. The system, still in the development stage, could offer up power for heavy endurance unmanned air vehicles, provided the cells are made sensitive enough to absorb energy in less sunny situations -- something that the company's England-based engineers are currently contending with.
Logitech unveils its Solar Keyboard Folio for the new iPad and iPad 2, we go hands-on
There are all sorts of ways to go green these days, from driving an EV to installing super efficient light bulbs, and now Logitech's given us an environmentally friendly way to type tactilely on a tablet. It's a new iPad and iPad 2-friendly case called the Solar Keyboard Folio, which packs a Bluetooth keyboard powered by ambient light using the same solar cell tech found on the firm's computer keyboards. Once topped up with photons, Logitech claims its battery will keep you typing for over 1,000 hours even in complete darkness. The case is crafted of black, soft-touch, faux leather embossed with a small Logitech logo and has perforations for the iPad's speakers, plus a portal for the tablet's camera. Its keyboard is made of gray plastic, and pecking at the grid is a similar experience to using the one found on Logitech's other recently released iPad typing peripheral, the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. Buttons are short-throw and provide satisfying clicky feedback, but the space bar and shift keys have a hollow feel when pressed. Perhaps the Folio's most intriguing design feature is the feet on the corners of the cradle in which the iPad is placed. Those little nubs allow for two viewing angles -- your slate can be seated in a more upright position behind the keyboard for typing, or in the notches outside the two shift keys for a more obtuse viewing angle when the keyboard isn't needed. What's this bit of green gear cost? It goes on sale in the US and Europe this month with an MSRP of $130.
Tesla pairs up with SolarCity, will power off-grid homes as well as cars
If you've ever dreamed of thumbing your nose at big energy and its expensive, polluting ways, then Tesla and a solar panel leasing company called SolarCity might be taking you a baby-step closer to reality. Although recognized mostly for its EVs, Tesla reckons it knows enough about batteries to solve a key problem in the solar energy chain -- namely the storage of power for use when the sun, power grid, or both go offline. The battery design, consisting of many laptop-style lithium ion batteries stacked together, was chosen after two years of research and a $1.8 million energy grant. The two companies are now waiting for tax credits from the Fed and California before rolling out the tech. And being kissing cousins -- with Elon Musk as both Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla -- certainly can't hurt.
Ski helmet charges iPods, iPhone and other mobile devices
A team of German researchers is working on technology that could let you ski all day without worrying about your smartphone battery, says a report in GlobalPost. Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, TEXSYS and the Technical University in Berlin have created a solar helmet that charges your mobile device while you ski. The helmet has a curved solar panel skin, integrated headphones and a microphone so you can use your phone or mp3 player on the slopes. They've also designed a special set of gloves that can control your mobile device. Though it might not appeal to your casual, recreational skier, this solar system could be useful for adventurers who need extra juice for a long day mountaineering as well as mountain rescue teams who would appreciate the always-on communication.
Researchers create incredibly thin solar cells flexible enough to wrap around a human hair
You've probably heard that the sun is strong enough to power our planet many times over, but without a practical method of harnessing that energy, there's no way to take full advantage. An incredibly thin and light solar cell could go a long way to accomplishing that on a smaller scale, however, making the latest device from researchers from the University of Austria and the University of Tokyo a fairly significant discovery. Scientists were able to create an ultra-thin solar cell that measures just 1.9 micrometers thick -- roughly one-tenth the size of the next device. Not only is the sample slim -- composed of electrodes mounted on plastic foil, rather than glass -- it's also incredibly flexible, able to be wrapped around a single strand of human hair (which, believe it or not, is nearly 20 times thicker). The scalable cell could replace batteries in lighting, display and medical applications, and may be ready to be put to use in as few as five years. There's a bounty of physical measurement and efficiency data at the source link below, so grab those reading glasses and click on past the break.
Onyx develops 330-watt 'plug-n-play' solar panel with built-in AC outlet
Onyx's new 330-watt solar panel isn't the first to offer a "plug-n-play" solution for getting power to your gadgets, but it may be the first to include a standard US power outlet, and enough output to juice up a computer, light or any other appliance (within reason) through its built-in micro inverter. "You can literally point the panel at the sun and plug an extension cord directly into the panel for immediate power," according to the Onyx PR, which you'll find in full just past the break.
Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)
Leave it to the Fighting Irish to take a stab at solving the world's energy woes. Notre Dame researchers have successfully developed solar cells that can be easily painted on to any conductive surface. Imagine, for a moment, applying this solution to your home rather than attaching solar panels to the roof. The paint mixture incorporates quantum dots of titanium dioxide, which is then coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide, and is then suspended in mixture of water and alcohol to create a spreadable compound that's capable of generating electricity. While its efficiency isn't currently much to crow home about -- which hovers around one-percent -- scientists are now actively pursuing ways to improve this aspect while making a more stable compound. Most importantly, the paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities, which suggests that even if efficiency remains in the doldrums, it may be a very worthwhile pursuit. Touchdown Jesus is already watching the video after the break.
Has James Bond gone green? Bulletproof electric roadster in the works
Warding off assassins while saving the environment just became a cake walk with the Jo-Mojo, an upcoming creation by Lativian armored vehicle company DARTZ. This two seat convertible roadster brandishes an 80 horsepower electric engine capable of pushing zero to 60 mph in 9.5 seconds and a top speed of 125 mph -- yet most of its "mojo" is outside the hood. Custom seating, color-changing chameleon paint finish, bulletproof tires, and others are just a few of the many "drooling" features. The sunroof is given a task with flexible solar panels built-in, good for juicing up the batteries while idle or on the go. Aimed to hit the market at the end of Q2 2012, its estimated price tag starts at 30,000 euros (~ $40,000), within range of most low-end luxury automobiles. Check past the break for a video slideshow of this snazzy piece of metal by Gray Designs, DARTZ's partner in the venture.
Apple solar patent wants a sunny display light for your Sunny (De)light
Let's begin with the usual disclaimer: Apple patent applications do not mean the outlandish technology will be arriving in the next iPhone, just that someone in a Cupertino basement cooked it up during a marathon "imagining" session (possibly while enjoying a cool glass of purple stuff). The company's latest drawings-and-charts masterpiece concerns the construction and placement of photovoltaic cells and, more importantly, using the sun's energy to illuminate a display. By using a mirror pointed at the sky, you could reflect some rays toward your screen to supplement an LED backlight, or by turning the top lid of your Macbook into a solar panel. Although we can see one minor drawback in using solar powered backlighting -- if you have to point your display toward the sun, you're gonna need some powerful shades.
GE's new factory will push out one solar panel every ten seconds
General Electric is sending its troops to Colorado to conquer the thin film solar panel business. The 38th state will play home to a new facility that leverages the supermodel-thin panel know-how of PrimeStar Solar, which GE scooped up back in 2008. In traditional solar panels, sand is refined into silicon ingots, sliced wafers of which are then placed in a frame. The thin film process eliminates this, sandwiching layers of semiconductors between panes of glass -- saving time, money and, most importantly, energy. The factory will open ahead of schedule in 2012 and is reportedly capable of producing a new panel every ten seconds. You can learn all of that and more in the press release we've got for you after the break.
