Mileage maniacs hack Toyota’s Prius for 116 mpg

In a presumed attempt to prove questionable reports about the Prius’ true fuel efficiency dead wrong, a Japanese group of mileage maniacs (or nenpimania) have assembled to push their hybrids to the brink and utilize a sly combination of hackery and zen-ish ways to elicit extreme miles per gallon figures. One such enthusiast burns [...]

Prius Hack: Enjoy the Silence

…This week’s post goes out to other North American Toyota Prius owners who, like me, fail to see the logic of having the car beep on the inside when driving in reverse!Are you a 2004-2008 Prius owner suffering from this cacophony? If so read on… while the instructions below have been available on the Internet [...]

Plans Announced for a Wave Power Plant in Hawaii

Oceanlinx, an Australian wave energy company, announced plans for a $20 million project to install three floating wave energy converters (WECs), i.e. wave-powered turbine platforms, to supply up to 2.7MW of electricity to the island of Maui, Hawaii. The company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Renewable Hawaii, Inc. (RHI), for potential passive investment [...]

Sandia, Stirling Energy Systems Set New World Record of 31.25% for Solar-to-Grid Conversion Efficiency

On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled on SES’s “Serial #3” [...]

DOE Enhanced Geothermal Systems Projects

In a move that I greet with great enthusiasem DOE has embarked on a project with a number of partners to test Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technologies at a commercial geothermal power facility near Reno, Nevada.
EGS technology enhances the permeability of underground strata, typically by injecting water into hot underground strata at high pressure. The [...]

Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles

A new report has found that thin-film cadmium telluride solar cells have the lowest life-cycle emissions primarily because they consume the least amount of energy during the module production of the four types of major commercial PV systems: multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe).
The study, published in the Environmental Science [...]

End in Sight for Silicon Shortage in Solar industry

Severe shortages of silicon have plagued the solar photovoltaic market over the past few years. According to a Frost & Sullivan press release a turnaround can be expected this year with polysilicon catching up with the demand . Quoting from the press release:
It was estimated that the demand for silicon feedstock neared 26,000 tonnes in [...]

GM, Toyota Dismiss Fuel Cells for Mass Use

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., at the Geneva Auto Show Tuesday, “expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better [...]

New Enzyme Promises to Reduce Ethanol Costs

University of Maryland research that started with bacteria from the Chesapeake Bay has led to the development of a bacterium, called Saccharophagus degradans which can break down almost any source of biomass, or plant life, into sugars, which can then be converted into ethanol and other biofuels.
That process, developed by University of Maryland professors Steve [...]

The Hydrogen Economy

Although the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in your car can burn hydrogen, the hope is that someday fuel cells, which are based on electrochemical processes rather than combustion (which converts heat to mechanical work), will become more efficient and less polluting than ICEs.1 Fuel cells were invented before combustion engines in 1839 by William Grove. [...]