Recent Articles
GE’s amazing hologram based Smart Grid ad
Mar 24, 2009 Green Architecture, Green Technologies Leave a comment
GE is betting big on Smart Grid technologies. It had advertised during the Super Bowl in US this year and now, GE Energy has come out with a unique online ad.
One can log onto GE’s site and print out a special marker that looks like a solar panel, activate your computer’s webcam, and then point the marker so it faces your webcam. The smart grid should automatically open up on your screen, and you can even blow into your computer’s microphone to make the turbines spin faster! Amazing isn’t it? You can also try out the Solar Energy augmented reality ad as well.
See a video demo for yourself below:
Hybrid diesel bus with in-wheel electric motors revs up in Netherlands
Mar 23, 2009 Auto Tech Leave a comment
Hybrid bus
Public transport is any day less polluting than private vehicles. Now Netherlands based e-Traction may widen the environmental friendliness gap by developing a diesel-electric hybrid bus that they say offers fifty percent better fuel economy over existing diesel buses.
The bus can run upto an hour on its batteries. It also employs a GPS-based system that switches off the diesel engine entirely while operating in areas with dense traffic, reducing emissions. e-traction has been awarded contracts to retrofit seven commercial buses with the technology.
e-Traction’s design uses in-wheel electric motors on rear wheels and recharges its batteries harnessing energy from braking, that can later be employed for acceleration. The in-wheel motors confer additional savings by eliminating the need for a transmission, differential, and related mechanical parts.
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Tata Nano launches; bookings start in April, deliveries in July
Mar 23, 2009 Auto Tech, Green Technologies Leave a comment
Tata Nano
The Tata Nano has finally got a concrete on-sale date at yesterday’s glitzy launch party, sidestepping the myriad of hurdles plaguing the project since last year. With a base price tag of a magical Indian Rupees 100000 (1 lac), which translates to less than $2000 at current exchange rates, hundreds of thousands are expected to put their name down for a Nano, including many Indian middle class families previously limited to motorbikes or public transport.
The Nano comes with a 624cc 2 cylinder engine and while its claimed 25 kmpl (56 mpg) fuel efficiency may have otherwise put a smile on the face of environmentalists, the expected huge numbers to be sold may make a not so negligible contribution to India’s oil import bills and the congestion and air pollution in its cities.
One can book the car between April 9 and 25 and it is expected to be delivered in July. With demand set to far outstrip supply, the first 100,000 owners will be picked at random, till a new plant in Gujarat, India comes onstream next year. The Nano can be booked at more than 30,000 locations in 1,000 cities across India, including Tata’s department and electronics stores, with booking forms costing 300 rupees ($6). It can also be booked online (www.tatanano.com).
The Nano has and is going to have a profound environmental, social and economic impact.
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Coca Cola steps up efforts to conserve water in Africa
Mar 16, 2009 Natural Resource Conservation Leave a comment
Coca Cola
Coca-Cola has announced that it will spend $30 million over the next six years to provide access to safe drinking water to communities throughout Africa through its Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN). Implemented by The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, RAIN will provide at least 2 million Africans with clean water and sanitation by 2015.
Coca Cola has been accused of exacerbating local drinking water problems in many countries, even outside Africa, like India in the past. The bottling plants use lots of water which can lead to depletion of water table. The effluents can wreak havoc as well. Criticism has forced Coca Cola to launch conservation efforts, constituting recycling, rainwater harvesting, et al.
The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation currently has water projects in 19 African countries – Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Cote d’ Ivoire, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia – reaching over 300,000 people.
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Fisker ads now on TV
Mar 14, 2009 Auto Tech, Green Technologies Leave a comment
Fisker has put out TV ads for its upcoming Karma luxury plug-in hybrid sedan. The 0-100 kmph time is advertised a little conservatively as 6.0 seconds, while “eco chic” makes one cringe! Overall, the ad is not that catchy. Hope the car turns out better than this.
Koenigsegg and NLV-Solar unveils electrifying sportscar
Mar 12, 2009 Auto Tech, Green Technologies Leave a comment
Quant
Supercar maker Koenigsegg has partnered with NLV Solar AV to unveil the Quant four-seat electric car at the Geneva Motor Show 2009.The Quant uses NLV’s proprietory Flow Accumulator Energy Storage (FAES) system (exact details are scarce) rather than a conventional battery to power it. With a claimed charging time of 15-20 minutes enabling a 500km range, this this car is not just for short distance driving.
It’s blistering fast too, the Quant reaching 100 kmph in just 5.2 seconds and a top speed of 170mph all thanks to a pair of electric motors driving the rear wheels and putting out 512bhp. The four-passenger Quant features large gullwing doors and extensive use of carbon fibre and aluminium keeps the weight to 1780 kg. The car has a invisible photovoltaic coatingon its roof, that helps recharge the batteries, along with regenerative braking.
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Norsun raises $163 million for making solar cell wafers
Mar 12, 2009 Green Technologies, Startups Leave a comment
Norsun
Norwegian solar industry group NorSun has succeeded in raising $163 million through equity and debt instruments. NorSun said that it has raised 500 million Norwegian crowns in equity and 650 million crowns in a five-year bank loan, totaling 1.15 billion crowns ($163 million). It also secured 450 million crowns in bank guarantee lines.
It is an encouraging development that Norsk Hydro and Good Energies reinvested in the company. But in line with the current economic gloom and the falling oil prices, which has made solar energy relatively expensive again, Norsun’s equity was valued at 2 billion crowns ($283 million) approx., less than half of its 5.4 billion fugure from a year ago.
Still, any cash will be welcome in a climate where every company is having trouble raising capital to not just expand, but simply to run existing operations and research. Norsun will need this money to expand its production of silicon ingots and wafers for solar cells.
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MIT’s battery breakthrough promises to revolutionize electric car batteries
Mar 12, 2009 Auto Tech, Green Technologies Leave a comment
SSC Ultimate Aero EV - will it use this new battery?
Researchers from MIT have made a breakthrough in battery technology that promises lighter and faster charging batteries for cars and cell phones and other devices in near future. Using their new processing technique, which has been published in the journal Nature, , Prof. Gerbrand Ceder and his team could fabricate a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds, while its conventional equivalents could do so in six minutes.
Conventional lithium ion batteries are good for steady charging and discharging. So they struggle to cope with the constant acceleration and deceleration cycle faced in electric cars. Their charging time of hours also means that their limited range becomes a hindrance, as we could not just recharge and get going, like in conventional petrol and diesel cars. But all this could now change!
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Honda announces Insight’s US prices while Mitsubishi shows Drive@Earth
Mar 12, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a comment
Barely a month after Honda put the Insight hybrid on road in Japan, it has announced official prices and trims for the US market. Prices start from $19,800 in base LX trim and goes upto $23100, for which you will get goodies like integrated GPS in dash and steering-mounted paddleshift gearchange. The prices confirm Honda’s claim as the Insight being the cheapest hybrid on sale, with the Prius starting prices being $2k more.
Meanwhile Mitsubishi has released ads of its iMiEV electric vehicles, of which, it showed off a couple of newer variants in the recent Geneva Motor Show. The ads are tagged as Drive@Earth campaign and highlisghts that the car has zero carbon emissions while driving.
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Samsung’s new 1.5 TB hard drive claims 40% power savings
Mar 10, 2009 Green Technologies Leave a comment
Samsung HDD
Hard drives are being used everywhere — from our homes to data centers. While our home computer may still be consuming not so significant part of our overall power consumption, Google, Microsoft and others are grappling with ways to bring down data center power bills. So Samsung’s new EcoGreen F2 harddisk drive with 1.5 Tb capacity and claimed 40% power consumption saving may be just what they were looking for.
Usually, hard disk capacity increases means an increased number of disks, which translates to higher power consumption. But Samsung’s solution, dubbed EcoTriangle is a low-power, low-heat, low-noise operation technology, ensuring that the F2EG drive is 40% lower in power consumption in idle mode and 45% lower in reading/writing mode than competitive drives.The company is already shipping the F2EG for $149.00.
Now before you become sceptical about all the “eco” terminologies being flung around, Andy Higginbotham, director of Samsung’s HDD division explains:
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