A new project revealed. According to this post, a new solar powered airplane is about to be launched. The only question I would like to ask is: if it’s about to be launched, how come there’s no video of the actual plane? I suspect that it doesn’t exist yet but it’s a good start.

Here’s how it works:

It’s powered by a dense array of photovoltaic (solar) cells which generate electricity from sunlight during the day and store it in on-board lithium batteries to be used at night.

Read more here

I think that in the future everything will be working with solar energy, unless they find out another way to harness energy. The more I’m searching on the web the more products I find. Nowadays you can power almost anything with the help of solar panels and since they are even making pain work as a solar panel, the whole market is very close to change.

Here’s a short description of the inflatable solar panel:

Water heaters are one of the primary power-hungry devices in most households. That’s why the prospect of an affordable solar panel system is particularly exciting.

The inflatable SolarStore by British company, IDC, is planned for commercial availability at less than 100 pounds ($200). While most domestic solar systems take 10-20 years to return the initial investment, IDC promises that their system will pay back its cost in six months.

Read more here

I’ve seen a few things in my life but these gadgets are worth mentioning. Most of them are useless but if we take a look around ourselves we can notice a few useless things we have laying around our house, so why not solar powered gadgets?

The best thing is that I found a bunch of gadgets by just looking on one site. Here are a few that are worth mentioning:

• Solar Powered Electronic Mosquito Repeller

• Solar Powered Shaking and Nodding Desktop Toy

• Solar Powered Sporty Wrist Watch

• Solar Powered Turn Table / Rotary Display (4 Panels)

• Solar Powered Self Recharging LED Lamp (1200mAh)

• Solar Powered Digital Tire Pressure Guage with Depth Measurer and Flashlight

• Baseball Cap with Solar Powered Fan

  

To find even more interesting gadgets go here

]]> http://thesolarpanel.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/the-weirdest-solar-powered-gadgets-on-the-market/feed/ 0 thesolarpanel http://thesolarpanel.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/good-news-for-nature-and-for-solar-panels/ http://thesolarpanel.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/good-news-for-nature-and-for-solar-panels/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 08:55:13 +0000 thesolarpanel http://thesolarpanel.wordpress.com/?p=69 ]]>

As solar panels are beginning to be more and more used, it’s getting easier to see the results of the effect these have on our environment. It is a fact that all forms of generating electricity are creating emissions whick are more or less harmful for the environment we are living in.

Here are some facts:

PV systems generate sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions, resulting from the fossil energy used in production. The production of PV systems is also responsible for toxic metal emissions, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel, as all these elements are present in fossil-fuels.

Now, this doesn’t sound good, but I assure you that other types of generating energy are either even more harmful or less effective.

But there are good news:

Emissions From Solar Power Technologies Continue To Fall

Read a more descriptive article here

There are lots of sites which are concentrated on selling solar panels. I thought it would be good to have them all in one place.

Here are some:

Findsolar.com

AWE Solar Energy Technologies

Soul-er

Silicon Solar

Verde Energy

Here’s a great video on how solar panels are made. I found it on Youtube and I thought that it would be interesting to share. There are other videos too on this topic but this one seemed the best.

Here it is:

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun’s invisible, infrared rays.

Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell phone or other wireless devices. A hydrogen-powered car painted with the film could potentially convert enough energy into electricity to continually recharge the car’s battery.

Read the rest of the article here

If this is true then it will change the whole concept of how we harness energy. I don’t know how it will affect the worldwide economy, but if it will be released, there might be some controversy. Just imagine that you won’t have to buy gas for your vehicle or you won’t have to pay for electricity… Even if this project will be finished, I doubt it that it will hit the market very soon or in the best case, it will be very very expensive, so you won’t afford to buy it anyway…

Today I came across a short but good article on how the Harvesting, Distribution, Storage and Pricing works when we’re talking about solar energy. There are just simple answers for dummies and for people who don’t really know much about solar energy and want to learn some quick facts.

Read the article here

If you want to know more about Solar Energy check out Wikipedia

First of all I would like to start with two commercials found on a fellow blogger’s site. The commercials are really good and are definitely worth watching.
Here you go:

Solar:

Wind:

Read the whole article here

After watching these commercials we can get down to the more serious part of this post.
Here are 2 sites with arguments on this topic:

• Power struggle: Wind vs. sun hotly debated

It’s not a question of whether the United States should pursue clean-air strategies — but rather which ones, and at what cost. Who stands to save money and who stands to pay more ? Is nuclear power part of the solution ?

Read more here

• Renewable Energy Comparison

The hybrid combination is by far the least expensive option for our area and other areas with a similar wind / solar resource.

Read more here

A conclusion would be of course that both of the alternative energy solutions can be considered better in some cases and worse in other cases.

As we have seen in movies, in the future there might be solar powered space ships and we all know that many of the things we use today were invented thanks to films like Star Trek and others

Anyway, the reason why this could be great is that the spaceships from the future will not have to carry any kind of fuel…

Here are some more ’scientific’ descriptions:

The electric solar wind sail developed at the Finnish Meteorological Institute two years ago has moved rapidly from invention towards implementation. Electric sail propulsion might have a large impact on space research and space travel throughout the solar system.

Read more here

This one is so complex, that there’s no specific part that can be quoted because it takes the subject and describes it from many points of view.

Read the article here