I bet you can’t say the title three times fast. Here is something that never crossed my mind that could be done with Solar Energy and that is to put them on tankers. At the end of last month Australian Sailor Company had announced that they would make a deal with China’s biggest shipping lane which is COSCO. What they are planning on doing here is placing huge solar powered sails to power and push the tanker.

Solar powered devices are used in many things these days and of course the military is going to take part in this as well. This robotic BAT spy plane is designed to gather up real time data to provide to soldiers and the Army has given a 5 year 10 million dollar grant to the University of Michigan College of Engineering to create it. This is a very cool concept and will us quantum dot solar cells which are twice as effective as photovoltaic solar cells. via IH

Miss Denis Rojas is shown here cooking two eggs in about 10 seconds. What is crazy is the eye wear shes wearing to cook the eggs, im hoping if they plan on us doing this one day that we don’t have to go all out and wear a Robocop eye wear to just cook eggs. The way she did this was using a Fresnel lense, reason for those goggles.

Taking only 7 months to finish building here is California’s First Solar Thermal Plant in 20 Years which will be providing power for over 3,000 homes with 5mw of energy. The plant uses 1,000 foot long mirrors to convert the suns rays into energy. This plant uses a technology called compact linear fresnal reflectors and what that does is it focuses the suns rays onto tubes of water causing the water to heat up and creates steam which drives the power turbines to create electricity.

Many of us don’t agree on everything, except one thing that is. We hate mowing the lawn! Don’t worry though Husqvarna has made an easier way to mow your lawn using solar power. The robot is not released yet in the USA but I’m sure many of us are anxious for it. What I find amazing is the fact that the robot can cut up to half an acre by using solar energy and if you do run out you can just recharge it by using an electrical outlet. Now you don’t need to pay a young child to do your yard work, now you just need a robot. Which may I add will cost you thousands, pricey yet worth it. Source: CJL

Many of you know about the devastating magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit China in May of this year which killed over 69,000 people and left hundreds of thousands without shelter. After this many designers needed and tried to figure out a way to make shelter for all of those people. Ming Tang did just that with his idea for folding houses. The government first intended to make 1.5 million temporary homes for the victims but this idea came along which is a much cheaper and more environmental friendly alternative. The concept of the bamboo house is basically a series of bamboo poles that are assembled to create a rigid shape. Once the shape of choice has been made it is covered with pre-consumer recycled paper.

When you start seeing more and more counties get involved in the solar energy and cleaner energy field that’s when things start to make a difference. Located in Ningbo, China the University of Nottingham’s new Center for Sustainable Energy Technologies is China’s First Zero-Emissions Building and it will not be the last.  The building uses a double glass skin to reduce solar radiation and it has a huge rooftop opening which creates a natural ventilation hole. This building can also store any unused energy for up to two weeks in case their is a few consecutive cloudy days. The building is 1,300 sq. meters and has an estimated coal use reduction of 448.9 tons and carbon emissions by 1,081.8 tons. These numbers are in the course of 25 years but still a very nice way to help the environment.

There are many winery’s using solar energy but here we bring to you the worlds largest solar powered winery. This is set to be built for Constellation Wines Gonzales winery in Monterry County, CA and will expand over 170,000 square feet producing 1,700,000 kilowatts hours a year. This amount of energy will be able to power over half of the winery’s energy consumption. That’s not all thought, the energy that the Winery does not use will go to powering the energy needs of the residential area surrounding the winery. That’s over 1,600 homes receiving about 25% of solar energy from the winery. It’s always great to see big businesses helping out the people around them.

At first glance at this picture you may say to yourself that this looks to be unreal as I thought myself but it is a real building and the view is probably one of the best that you could possibly wish for. The Monte Rosa Alpine Hut is located right outside of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps and the greatest part about it, besides the view, is that this hut is 90% energy self-sufficient. Most of the energy used comes from photovoltaic panels and solar energy thermal systems.