It won’t be easy to run a national railway on renewable energy like wind, hydro and solar power but that is what Germany’s Deutsche Bahn aims to do for one simple reason: it’s what consumers want. Deutsche Bahn says it wants to raise the percentage of wind, hydro and solar energy to power its trains from 20 percent now to 28 percent in 2014 and become carbon-free by 2050.
Prevailing attitudes in Germany were already decidedly green before the Japanese Fukushima nuclear accident in March prompted a head-first dive into renewables. The Berlin government abruptly reversed course on nuclear power, shutting eight nuclear plants and vowing to close the other nine by 2022.
Environmental groups have cheered Deutsche Bahn’s partnerships with wind and hydroelectric power suppliers and its exploratory moves into harvesting solar power from the roofs of its 5,700 stations. Photovoltaic panels in the spectacular glass roof of Berlin’s main station produce 160,000 kw/h of electricity a year — meeting about 2 percent of the Hauptbahnhof station’s needs.
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Logitech company unveiled the Wireless Solar Keyboard K705, and it’s replacing the Windows Starter button with a Command key, among other things. Its integrated solar panels sits on the top of the keyboard, allowing users to power the K750 inside the office and out—no batteries necessary. It can also last for about three months on a full charge in total darkness. It comes with Logitech’s Unifying Receiver, a thumbnail USB device that allows you to wirelessly connect your keyboard over a 2.4-GHz frequency. The receiver also has a special feature that allows you to sync up to six Logitech peripherals to one USB dongle.
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The manufactured collection of solar power has been a regular staple in our everyday environmentally friendly means of collecting power docket for quite a few years now. Our method of doing so, of collecting that power with a bit flat array of solar panels to collect the sun’s energy. There’s a little man by the name of Aidan Dwyer who may have just changed the way we look at collecting solar power forever this year as he created an contraption that closely replicates how trees collect solar power to create the most effective means for doing so in history. This little guy is 13 years old.
What Dwyer did, whilst on a hike in the Catskills of course, was to take a look at some trees. His mind twisted and turned as the leaves on these trees did, and he wondered if the sequence at which the leaves grew from the branches had anything to do with how well the trees were able to soak up sunlight. He then did some advanced learning for his age, finding out all about the Fibonacci sequence, the golden rectangle, and the spiral it creates. Dwyer applied what he learned to the branches he was studying, and what do you know, the leaves adhered to the sequence.
Once he figured this out, his Oak Tree specimen’s secret may well have become Dwyers greatest discovery in his short 13 years on this earth. Taking what he’d learned so far about the placement of the leaves on the tree, he arranged solar panels on a model he’d created specifically for this scientific experiment. He found that by arranging the panels in such a way, he was able to increase efficiency by 20 to 50 percent over straight-line solar arrays.
Dwyer’s write-up on the project concludes with the following:
The tree design takes up less room than flat-panel arrays and works in spots that don’t have a full southern view. It collects more sunlight in winter. Shade and bad weather like snow don’t hurt it because the panels are not flat. It even looks nicer because it looks like a tree. A design like this may work better in urban areas where space and direct sunlight can be hard to find.
Source: http://www.slashgear.com/13-year-old-scientist-makes-solar-power-breakthrough-19173078/
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Welcome to my Solar Light Gatherings Blog. I am Elayna and live in wonderfully sunny ( and windy) Colorado – home of the new Sun Edison Solar farm located in the San Luis Valley. Got interested in solar and wind power way back when in California when I saw the wind farms being constructed above Palm Springs. Now that I live in Colorado, I am looking into the best alternative power sources for The Center property in Salida and discovered that I am not ‘windy enough’ but do have plenty of sunshine and good southern exposure. This will be a fun and exciting new adventure!
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