A few years ago, I slept at a campsite next to a trailer running an obnoxiously loud diesel-powered generators all night long. If AMP’s silent, solar-powered portable generator had been around, I may have gotten a full night’s sleep. The silent, all-weather generator is installed in a trailer with photovoltaic solar panels on its roof.
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A new year, a new solar cell efficiency record is broken. German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems have built a solar cell with 41.1% efficiency, besting the previous record of 40.8% efficiency set by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The three-layer gallium-indium-phosphide, gallium-indium-arsenide, and germanium cell broke the record when [...]

A US-based company has successfully tested a revolutionary solar panel that is expected to cut the costs of photovoltaic solar power generation by more than 50 per cent, and herald a new era of improved efficiency and lower production costs of solar energy globally.
The panel, known as the Alubond Solar Collector Panel (SCP), was created [...]

We all know that conventional retro-reflective road markers, or “cat eyes”, don’t always work when you need to see into the distance. Luna Road’s new solar-powered LED cat eyes, however, illuminate the road ahead for miles. The company’s lights are built in poly-crystalline/ single crystalline solid, and come in economical, intermediate, and advanced models.
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Earlier this week, CleanBoard started talking publicly about what it calls “the most environmentally friendly drywall on earth.” That’s quite a claim, but there might be something to it: the drywall will be produced in a solar-powered factory and made from coal-fired power plant residue.
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I’ve always wanted a solar water heater in my imaginary house that I own, and now I think I know what brand I want, too. EnerWorks solar water heaters are the first to qualify for the new ENERGY STAR residential water heater program. The heaters were judged based on numerous factors, including solar fraction (portion [...]

Before buying a small wind turbine for your roof, consider this: a recent British study claims that many home turbines generate only a fraction of what manufacturers promise, and some don’t even generate enough power to run their own electronics. The study, which was funded by the British Wind Energy Association, looked at turbines [...]

It’s easy to think that solar panels can do no wrong— after all, they will help lead us out of our energy crisis, right? Unfortunately, these shining beacons of hope produce toxic e-waste just like cell phones, TVs, and computers. A report released today by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition admonishes the solar industry [...]

Chicago architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz has produced the winning design for the US Department of Energy’s Solar Wall competition. SCB’s sun wall will be 32,000 square feet and will cover the south elevation of the DOE’s Washington DC headquarters.
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A Swedish inventor has unveiled a solar-powered water purifier that could provide billions of the world’s poorest people with access to clean and disease-free drinking water [video].
The device, called the Solvatten, (Swedish for ’sun water’), looks much the same as a standard jerrycan and can be filled with up to ten liters of water, opened [...]