For one thing, the places with the best conditions for solar tend to be remote and/or incredibly inhospitable to life. In those places where the sun is plentiful, a great deal of the power generated will wind up going to air conditioning. Your typical American town has its fair share of cloudy days, and if you are anywhere near the northern part of the country, you can count on winters to put a dent in your solar efficiency as well. Then there is the fact that modern solar cells reflect a significant amount of light, and collect dust, which impedes absorption.

Some people have an idea of how to circumvent all of this; shoot solar cells up to where there are no seasons, the sun never sets, and the dust falls into a giant watery vacuum cleaner located a few hundred miles below. Believe it or not, it’s not a new idea; Isaac Asimov wrote a short story in 1941 where solar power was collected in space and beamed down to planets via microwave. Here’ the weird part; his idea is exactly what scientists now think would be the most plausible method. His ideas were later expanded upon by scientist Peter Glaser in 1968, who detailed a basic design for creating a solar satellite, which was essentially an engineer’s vision of Asimov’s idea and form the basis for most modern concepts.

The idea is in concept fairly simple; build a huge solar array, send it up into space and face it toward the sun, then transmit the collected energy via microwave to a collection center on Earth. The microwaves would not be the same intensity that you find in an oven so the threat (or promise, depending on your viewpoint) of grilled game birds falling from the sky is practically non-existent. The collecting device would look similar to a radio telescope, only made out of a mesh, so in all likelihood, it would not have a terrible impact on the natural world around and under it.

The collectors (called “rectennas,” I swear I’m not making that up) would be set well above ground level, reducing the likelihood that any humans would be exposed to the downpour of radiation, although the amount generated is intended to be so diffuse that it would be less radiation than you receive from a cell phone. Aircraft are also not in danger; the beam would simply bounce off like the rest of the stellar radiation that hits them when they are flying high in the air.

Photo Credit: Space Studies Institute

The satellite could sit far away in a geosynchronous orbit, always hovering over the same spot, shooting down converted sunlight to power towns during all hours; if the satellite were far enough away, the amount of intervening night time could be kept down to a couple of hours. Or, as some have suggested, a constellation of satellites could store power when on the day side of the planet and fire off bursts of energy to the station on the night side, keeping a continuous stream of power.

Sounds pretty great so far, right? Well, it turns out that even though it is plausible with modern technology, it may still be a long way off. First off, modern prices for space payloads are… astronomical (ugh… I’m really sorry about that…). Prices range from $1,000 to $3,000 per pound to send something into orbit, and a massive solar array is going to weigh more than a human, which averages $100k per launch.

Then there is this article  where a man much smarter than myself (Tom Murphy, Associate Professor in the physics department at USCD) goes through and does the math for what space based solar power would entail given the laws of physics and modern limitations of technology. It is less than optimistic. One major hurdle is the same major hurdle faced by the current state of solar power; how to store all of that power so it can be used when the external source is unavailable? There is also the issue of sending all of that energy through the atmosphere. The air itself absorbs a decent amount of energy, and reflects still more away, despite it largely being transparent to microwaves.

There is also the (currently) far fetched idea of using a space elevator to transport up the pieces. The major problem with that idea is that the core of the whole concept relies on technology that is not currently possible. In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, the space elevator is a very similar idea to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, that is to say that we have something up in the sky that hovers more or less over the same spot  all the time. Except the satellite just happens to be orbiting at the right distance and speed to be in the “same place” relative to a point on the Earth at all times.

The space elevator would actually be attached to the Earth, using the station at the end as a pendulum and the shaft would be a tether, and the whole building acts much like holding the string of a yoyo and spinning quickly. This way, you could not only just lift the supplies into space without having to place them on a controlled bomb, you could theoretically place the collector on the pendulum and send the energy down through the shaft. Of course, all of this hinges on being able to produce commercially viable carbon nanotubes that can be build hundreds of miles long. Not this week.

But it’s not all gloom and doom for the solar satellite of the future; NASA has been taking the idea seriously, and is working on starting up a project to test it out right now. Likewise, In February, at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, space based solar was suggested as a technology with real potential in the coming decades. It is gaining popularity because while the start up costs are high, the payback is potentially much greater. When you think about it, how much money was originally being generated by GPS? It was used mostly by the military, and a great deal of the equipment using it was flying through windows and levelling buildings. Now it is big business, with cars and mobile devices including it standard now. Solar power is immediately useful in a commercial form.

The satellites themselves are a bit of a paradox; they will need to have huge surface areas to collect as much light as possible, but at the same time the materials necessary to make them are readily available. With modern photovoltaics, they use silicon, which is one of the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust (second only to oxygen). The solar cells themselves don’t even have to be very large; A single panel could be used with an array of mirrors to focus the sunlight on it like Earth-based focus arrays.

In fact, the mirrored array is what NASA is banking on working the best. They have concept designs of a flower-shaped reflector that would concentrate sunlight on a solar collector that would be built into the microwave transmitter. Since they would not be using a single massive mirror, but an interferometer of sorts, it could be built piecemeal by piggybacking on other space missions and would be far easier to repair, It doesn’t matter if one of the mirrors is hit by space debris because it has an army of other mirrors behind it to take up the slack until it can be replaced.

This is not to say that other methods have not been suggested. There have been ideas of sending up a single massive mirror, likely made of mylar, that would act as the focuser/collector, or full arrays of solar cells, and not being a scientist I can only guess at what might be the most efficient. However, I also think NASA probably knows better than I do, so I will assume that the mirror array is the best bet so far.

NASA isn’t the only group setting hopes on solving our energy needs through space based solar; there are a number of startups that have an eye on orbital solar collectors, Of which Solaren, Space Energy and PowerSat are currently the most prominent. Solaren has already signed a contract with PG&E to provide space based solar power by 2016 to California. They anticipate it being slightly more expensive, in the beginning anyway, than California’s current power cost, until the technology is more refined. They plan on using their concept satellite to provide a continuous stream of 200 megawatts for at least 15 years; with this strategy, they have positioned themselves to be the first company to produce space based solar power.

Space Energy was founded by a group of business people, and as a result seem to have a more cooperative idea behind their startup; they have an $80 million grant from China and have given presentations to Japan. They appear to be interested in creating a more international company, which has some obvious advantages. (Not the least of which is the huge pile of money they acquired)

PowerSat is different from the other two in that it has a large number of scientists working for them, and they have not been trying to launch any satellites or sign contracts yet. Instead, they have focused on designing and patenting concepts that would outline an overall architecture of how the system would work, as well as some surprisingly innovative ideas, like a constellation of smaller collectors working together and an ion-thrust system to maneuver the satellites using nothing but the solar power collected to achieve the feat.

Photo Credit: UCAR

They are also dreaming up ways to make the receiving system more efficient than other designs, all in hopes that once they enter the race, they will quickly dominate it through more advanced, efficient technologies.

Solaren is, to date, the most ambitious with their due date set only four years from now. The others are looking for about a decade before things are mature enough to move forward. If they are able to achieve what they are setting out to accomplish, we could be a decade away from a revolution in powering everything from our homes to our vehicles, with inexpensive energy shot down from space, twenty four hours a day, regardless of weather. Not bad for an eighty one year old idea.

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Egypt and Sumeria Use Sailing to Create Civilization

Probably the first most notable use of wind power was in Egypt around 3500 BC. The ancient Egyptians used sails to push their river boats up the Nile against the current, which is good since the wind is typically not at risk of being snatched by a crocodile like an oarsman. Around the same time, Sumerians were using square sails to travel the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This technology allowed them to expand their sphere of influence in both cases. While the Egyptians were not particularly good at shipbuilding and therefore stuck to the Nile with their ships, the Sumerians were navigating the rivers of the Fertile Crescent and the Persian Gulf, trading with people as far away as Mozambique in eastern Africa. This contributed to the spread of Sumerian society as well as allowing them to import goods that they would otherwise not have access to, improving their overall quality of life compared to neighboring civilizations. (Not to mention start wars with some of them)

Babylon Used Wind Power To Create Its hanging Gardens (Maybe)

Okay, so this one is open to contention, since there are doubts that the hanging gardens even existed or that if they did, they weren’t Babylonian but Assyrian. Controversy aside, the stories say the gardens were 75 feet tall and built on a many-terraced ziggurat (think really old blocky pyramid) that had a novel irrigation system integrated into it to make sure the desert sun and heat didn’t kill the plants. And the prevailing theory is that if it did exist and it was irrigated, then it was likely done by screw or bucket pumps driven by wind power. Don’t get me wrong, that is a lot of “ifs”, but if it’s true, then imagine the people from other lands looking at the amazingly impressive gardens on a proto-pyramid and taking that awesome irrigating technology home with them.

The Ancient Persians Grind Grain and Water Fields

It might have taken some time, but that wonderful, potentially fictional watering system, or simple sailing vessels, inspired the Persians to start using wind power to pump water into their fields and grind grain. It’s pretty easy to see how this would help a civilization, especially one as relatively advanced as the ancient Persians, presumably when they weren’t busy trying to steal Greece from Scottish speaking kings and naked men with spears (I learn most of my history from action movies.) The original windmill used a panemone design, that is to say a vertical pole surrounded by sails that spun when the wind blew. They may have been beaten to the punch by almost 200 years by the Chinese, but while some historic records suggest that maybe the Chinese invented it, there is direct evidence that the Persians absolutely had the technology refined to the point that they were able to use it regularly. This allowed them to irrigate fields far removed from rivers by using underground well water, and as long as you had wind and grain, you could use a mill, so no doubt the mills were located pretty close by. It’s kind of ironic that the part of the world where the economy is almost entirely built around oil developed originally because of wind power.

Ancient Greeks Improve The Windmill Design and Water Their Food

A few hundred years after the Persians perfected the vertical axis design, the Greeks (possibly out of spite over the whole conquering thing. Just my assumption) developed the more familiar forward-facing windmill we see these days. Instead of vertical sails just twisting any which way, they pointed sails designed to grab the wind more directly and pointed them at it, grabbing more power. This became particularly popular on Crete where thousands of windmills were (and still are) used to pump water to irrigate crop fields and provide water for livestock on the Lasithi Plateau. It is believed that they developed the horizontal wind-catcher design based on the existing water-wheel technology that had already been around for some time by then. These new horizontal wind mills led to…

The Dutch Make Windmills More Efficient Still

The “traditional” windmill most of us imagine when we hear the word is the old fashioned Dutch windmill. They were built several stories tall, could be rotated to face the wind directly if direction changed, and came built with everything needed to grind grain, including levels dedicated to storage, chaff removal and living quarters. Imagine living in the factory you work in. These windmills led directly to many of the properties considered important in modern windmills; a wing-like design for maximizing the amount of wind captured while reducing resistance on the leading edge of the blade so a minimum of force is lost as it turns, a nonlinear edge (again, aerodynamics) and improved center of gravity. This design allowed mills to be built, again, miles away from water sources and closer to the resources that needed to be manufactured into goods. Windmills were not only used as wells and grain mills, but also as sawmills, paint factories and even for grinding powders for dyes and paints. Much later, in America, the water-pumping windmill was refined further into the light metal versions seen on farms all over the midwest. This allowed people to pump water wherever they could find an underground cistern and helped provide water for steam locomotives, which assisted in both westward expansion and the industrialization of America, which still has global repercussions today.

Back To Sails, Western Culture Took Over The World On The Wind

Probably the single most influential use of wind power ever was on galleons and mast-ships during the Age of Discovery. Let’s face it, without wind power, there would have been no Age of Discovery. As a result, Western influence spread around the world. Eastern spices and silks were spread far and wide. Exploration of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas rode on wind power, with the world’s coastlines being accurately mapped from wind-blown ships. The unfortunate Triangular Trade that forged America and the Caribbean islands was driven entirely by ships, as was the prolific whale hunting that flourished in the northern seas. All of the great explorers travelled by wind, from Magellan to Columbus. Sailing vessels also brought the Conquistadors to Mexico, which had a pretty profound influence on that region, even to today. (In case you were asleep in class that day, the Spaniards destroyed and enslaved the native Aztec culture) Everything from trade to war rode on ships. Europeans invaded, er, “settled” every piece of land they found, including India, Australia, South America, North America, South Africa, all changed significantly and irrevocably because Europeans had perfected capturing the wind to push a boat through water, and technology that at the time was a few thousand years old.

At The Turn Of The 20th Century, Windpower Evolves

So for millennia, mankind used the wind to grind, pump and sail in various forms all over the world. Then, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when we were discovering this electricity stuff could be used to move and light things, we discovered wind power’s true calling; cheap, efficient electricity. The first example was from a Scotsman named Professor James Blythe; he made a cloth windmill and hooked it up to a turbine which he then used to power lights in his cottage. He was smart enough to patent the idea. Later, an American named Charles Brush developed his own electric windmill which he used to power his house and laboratory for over a decade, possibly complaining about a lack of anything on TV, or more likely, it’s lack of existence. In the 1890s, a Danish scientist named Poul la Cour built wind turbines that not only generated electricity, but used electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel and… wait a second… This has been around since the nineteenth century? Why are we still using coal, at all? Anyway, he is also the man that discovered that fewer blades on a windmill produced more efficient results and therefore more electricity. By 1956, a student of la Cour, Johannes Juul, built the first three-bladed windmill which was the direct ancestor of modern windmills. As a result, we are now looking more and more into using wind power to replace fossil fuels for our power needs, which will clean up the air and make life a lot less awful for generations to come. And it all started in Sumeria because ancient people needed to transport goods and walking across the desert was harder than inventing world-changing technology.  

Header Image Credit: Håkan Dahlström Egypt Phot0 Credit: zoonabar Babylon Photo Credit: luisvilla Persia Photo Credit: kanjiroushi Greek Windmill Photo Credit: Wolfgang Staudt Dutch Windmill Photo Credit: Punxsutawnerphil Mast Ship Photo Credit: Andy Farrington Modern Windmill Photo Credit: Colin park

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Here are seven popular myths about wind energy, and why they are wrong.

Turbines Are Spinning Blades of Avian Death

It’s been shown that birds and bats occasionally run into the turbine blades of windmills, so on the surface, it’s true; turbines kill flying creatures. So do airplanes, buildings, and mean-spirited brats with pellet guns, and any one of those three kill more birds in a year than turbines do.

This myth stems from a wind farm built in Altamont Pass in California. Someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put many turbines close together right smack in the migration path of certain types of birds. They were also built low to the ground and close together, making it much more likely that the birds would run into them. Newer turbines are taller (over many birds’ flight path), more widely spaced, and not built on bird highways where generations of imprinting told them it was safe before someone placed a food processor in their way.

Statistics state the turbines annually kills less than one out of every 30,000 birds that live around them. Compared to the number of birds killed every year by buildings, roughly 19,300 birds die by running into an immobile structure than the blades of turbines. If you’re going to use this as an argument against wind-power, then you should probably protest the existence of cities and homes before tackling the windmill issue.

Wind Power Causes Localized Global Warming

The same people who will shriek “shenanigans” the second you mention global warming or man-made climate change will happily jump on this one as an argument against clean energy. “Your precious wind power causes global warming! Which isn’t real! Except in this case in which it works for me!”

They then drive off listening to Cat Scratch Fever and offering up prayers to Ted Nugent. Or maybe not, but it really is hard to comprehend that people will believe Earth either isn’t getting warmer, or if it is, it must be hippies trying to keep things green and not their 40-year-old truck.

This is another myth that has some grounding in actual data, but it is nothing close to what the opponents would claim. Recent studies have shown that wind farms can have an effect on the local climate, but to have a worldwide impact, the amount of land covered by wind turbines would have to exceed that used for farming, and I doubt that is in our near future, no matter how many people decide wind power is the way to go. The studies found that the turbulence caused by the turbines’ wake can cause warm air to be dragged down, increasing the overall temperature of the area behind the wind farm. It also turns out that this side effect might lead to increased use of wind power, since you can set up a wind farm for free power, then use the naturally occurring side effect of their presence to allow farms located downwind to grow crops over a longer portion of the year thanks to the mild increase in temperature.

Mind you, these changes are very localized, and wind farms are not causing the ice caps to melt. That is still the fault of burning coal and drag racing stepside trucks.

Wind Power Is Expensive

Like most myths, there is a certain degree of truth to this. Start-up costs for a wind farm are in the millions since modern wind turbines are not exactly some fabric and sticks on a twisty thing for running a simple mill or dredge up water. They have to hook into an existing power grid, require a decent expanse of land, and have to deal with the typical costs associated with building anything massive on Earth where a government holds sway (which is most of it).

While it does cost a virtual arm and leg to build a wind farm, it also costs a disturbing amount to build a new coal or oil plant, and wind power does not require mining or drilling operations, dependence on other countries, or a near-constant supply of dangerous fuel to be shipped in. You build it, maintain it, and let the air do what it’s been doing since there has been an atmosphere and convection currents (that’s a few billion years, for Earth anyway.)

Wind Power Is Noisy

Noise created by wind turbines used to be an issue; there are stories of nearby wind farms driving locals mad with the constant wooshing noise and the annoying flicker caused by the spinning blades. I’m the kind of person who goes nuts if the fan has a slight rattle or I’m trying to sleep with a single LED on the radio showing, so I can understand the concern here, and it was an issue with older models.

However, as with all technological improvements, the newer turbines are quieter, and are typically built away from dwellings so that any noise and obnoxious strobing they cause will be away from the people it is supposed to be helping. According to a noise comparison chart, the noise generated by a wind farm is somewhere between a quiet bedroom and a car at 40 mph. That almost sounds downright relaxing, but I will reserve judgement since the closest wind turbine to where I live is almost an hour away.

Wind Power Is Unreliable

Wind is like the sun, the ground and obnoxious teenagers on the internet; it’s always there, even if occasionally circumstances make it so that we can’t tell. While almost everywhere experiences some break in the wind (oh, grow up), wind farms are typically built in areas with a fairly constant windflow, so the amount of time it is viable on any given day is statistically about as good as solar power is on any given day.

The intermittency issue brings us to the fact that there will be times that the wind is simply not blowing, or perhaps not strong enough to move the turbines. This does not mean that the fossil fuel energy source must then kick in to provide backup, thereby generating more pollution. In reality, if the wind power is hooked into the same grid as, say, and natural gas plant, then they are both being used at the same time, all the time. With the current state of things, the fossil fuels aren’t providing a dirty helping hand to the wind turbines, the wind is alleviating the load from the fossil fuels.

Wind Turbines Are Ugly

This is mostly in the eye of the beholder, but it appears that most people find the new, sleek designs of windmills to be somewhat pleasing, if not downright pretty. Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but surveys seem to imply that people on the whole find them to be acceptable, if not actually enjoying their presence.

Wind Power Is a Drain on the Local Economy

Pick your poison here; turbines drop property values, kill tourism, cost taxpayers more money than other types of energy, they are unsafe. For the first one, property values are determined by a great number of variables, and the numbers appear to support the “inexpensive, clean energy nearby” is only a turn-off to people who hate money and love pollution. This is not typically the demographic people want to live near, so it’s kind of a dead argument.

For tourism, it has been shown in the UK that wind farms are actually often a tourist attraction. My math may be off, but attracting tourists seems to be in the list of top 10 things that actually help the tourist trade. As far as costing taxpayers more, the government subsidizes all forms of energy, and wind power does not come with the requisite need to work on maintaining clean air (it causes no air pollution), nor does require the massive insurance needed for a nuclear plant. While nuclear is relatively safe, it only takes one mistake to make the surrounding area unlivable for a generation.

Lastly, wind turbines are safe. The blades do not spontaneously fly off, and ice buildup is not much of a concern because the engineers who designed them accounted for it when they made plans. As far as human fatalities are concerned, in the last 35 years, there have been 20 accidents that resulted in a human death related to wind energy — and most of them were people falling from the turbines because they did not take the necessary precautions when climbing a multi-story structure with moving parts. You are at more risk of being killed simply by being outside. Statistically, you could stand next to a turbine to increase your chances of living (I have nothing to back that up).

In the end, wind is safe and effective. Like any technology, it requires intelligent, consistent use and care when operating it. If you are worried about having a wind farm nearby, just remember: If you don’t jump off of it or fly into the blades, odds are pretty good all you will experience is cleaner air and a drop in your electric bill.

Main photo credit: Eclipse.sx

Avian death myth photo credit: Dirk Ingo Franke

Warming myth photo credit:  Evelyn Simak

Expensive myth photo credit: Winchell Joshua

Noisy myth photo credit: Davagh

Unreliable myth photo credit: Trent Brome

Ugly myth photo credit: John Wright

Economy drain myth photo credit: Winchell Joshua

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Lucky for us, there are large number of folks in the world who have pretty wild imaginations and access to outside funding. As a result, Photovoltaics are not just limited to flat, boring cells collecting bird poop and marginally alleviating our reliance on fossil fuels. These concepts could one day elevate solar power to dominance as our primary source of power.

And if they don’t, hey, whatever, some of them at least look pretty cool.

Solar Windows

Photo credit: New Energy Technologies

Unless you work in a cave or a parking garage, odds are pretty good that the building you work in has windows. If you work in a major city, odds are even greater that the outside of your building is covered in glass, which does two things really well; let light through, and reflects quite a bit of it away.

The smart people at New Energy technologies, however, decided that just letting the light pass through the window was silly. Why waste all of that light heating the floor and blinding the accountants and IT guys four hours a day when you could capture some of it for free energy?

What they did was develop a solar cell so small it could just be sprayed on to a surface (more on that in a bit) and fine enough to not darken the glass significantly. They are developing everything from residential and commercial grade glass for homes and offices, to structural glass for big structures and art, Architectural glass for interior walls, even flexible films, similar to window clings. Except they turn a hot day into free air conditioning. If the numbers New Energy is showing on their site are accurate, their windows will actually collect energy better than normal solar cells. Those dreams of a greenhouse powered hot tub may become reality after all.

Solar Textiles

Photo Credit: MIT News

While we’re on the subject of things that are everywhere that could easily be drinking up the sun’s rays to power our portable heated thermos (assuming they have those), what about your clothes? One area that is being researched heavily is solar textiles, flexible, wearable solar cells that could mean a future where the drapes we pull closed behind our solar windows are also solar collectors.

One idea is to use the fabrics to drape over structures, using the same space that would hold normal solar panels in a more efficient, less jarring way. Or they could be woven into clothing, especially since e-textiles are becoming a hot commodity, to power the nifty new fashions or even wearable televisions some day.

Some clever folks are even using them to help people in developing nations to make a few extra bucks and otherwise better their lives by giving them solar textile kits and training on how to weave them into clothes. They can make everything from a purse that charges your cell phone to clothes that will allow them to read at night. The sets only need three hours of daylight to produce seven hours of electricity.

Solar Paint

Photo Credit: Kurzweil/Matthew P. Genovese, Ian V. Lightcap, and Prashant V. Kamat

So what do you do if you’ve replaced all of your windows and curtains with bleeding-edge solar versions, but then you notice you have walls that could be soaking up rays for you? Then what? Have no fear, there are people working on solar paint to fill in those gaps. Using the same basic principal as the coating on the solar windows, using conductive photovoltaic nanoparticles, researches at Notre Dame university have developed a compound that can be sprayed on a surface which then generates electricity when hit by light.

It’s not perfect yet; it has to be sprayed on a conductive surface (steel, for example) and it does not generate much energy yet, but they are already actively searching for a means to amplify the amount of electricity generated. Someday in the not too distant future, we may be able to turn all of our unused surfaces into solar cells.

The primary advantage to the paint is the ease of setup; all you need is a flat conductive surface and the paint. Once they get it to a more usable energy output, this could revolutionize how people power their homes. Imagine a time when we actually look forward to blisteringly hot summer days instead of worrying about roasting during a brownout.

Solar Supercapacitors

Photo Credit: Inhabitat

But what about those brownouts? Sure, the solar paint drapes and windows work great during the day, but what about night time when there is no sun? Do they work as moon collectors?

Well, sadly, no, but they may not need to. Scientists in India recently developed a solar supercapcitor; basically a solar panel that stores its energy for later use. While a quick Google search shows you can find quite a few tutorials on how to wire together a set of photovoltaic cells and a capacitor on your own, the Indian scientists created the world’s first truly integrated system.

With this setup, you would not need a separate storage unit for nights and cloudy days, the solar cells themselves would supply the needed energy during the off hours. The current prototype can use four hours of sunlight to power a laptop for two hours. While that may not sound like much when compared to the solar textiles, keep in mind an LED uses much less power than a Macbook.

They are looking to improve upon their current design, which uses off the shelf parts with thinner photovoltaics and carbon-based storage and structure.

Self-Recharging Cell Phones

Photo Credit: Phys.org

Most cell and smart phones these days use LED screens, which are a step above the old LCD screens in that they use individual light emitting diodes to back-light a traditional LCD screen. While these are was more efficient than a traditional back-lit LCD, there are still a lot of downsides. Enter OLEDs, or Organic LEDs. No, they aren’t grown on a farm in Vermont; the “organic” means that they are carbon based. OLEDs can use the diodes themselves to create the red, green and blue screens use to give their amazing pictures, so there is no need for the liquid crystal screen or a back-light, they handle everything on their own.

But there are some downsides to this great new technology; one is that the blue OLEDs have only a fraction the lifespan of the red and green. The other is that they lose roughly 64% of the light they generate out the sides, which means 64% of the power you are using is lighting the interior of the phone (or eventually TV), which is wasteful by anyone’s standard.

So some brilliant people at the University of Cambridge came up with a solution; line the edges with solar cells and recoup that lost light. They also integrated the whole thing with a thin-film supercapacitor so that the captured light could be immediately stored. Now, it’s not an entirely closed system; you will still be losing 36% of the light out the front, and the current ceiling on the photovoltaics is 11% efficiency, meaning that 89% of that 64% is still lost (it is not converted into electricity), but they are looking for ways to increase that efficiency, including ways of turning kinetic energy into power.

We may some day soon have ultra efficient phones that will allow us to watch day’s worth of TV on our phones without recharging. At least the phones will be efficient.

Solar “Traps”

Photo Credit: Materialica/Yan Yao

Speaking of increasing efficiency… But first, an aside. have you ever been to the Capitol Building in Washington DC? Or maybe the Parthenon? There is a little trick you can play while you’re there; go to one side of the dome and have a friend go to the other, then whisper something. The circular shape allows the sound waves to travel along the perimeter without interruption, and as a result, your friend can hear you just fine. It’s called a “Whispering Gallery.”

But what do domes and sound waves have to do with solar collectors?

Well, first off, while light is a particle, it is also a wave, as Einstein told us. This is good news, because waves do cool things, like travel around domes really well. Researchers at Stanford discovered that by making nanoparticle “shells” out of silica (essentially glass), they could create miniature whispering galleries that work for light the way domes work for sound, recirculating the light and preventing it from scattering around. This means that the surface holds onto the light, which obviously is a good thing if you are trying to use that light to, say, create electricity.

The light deposits energy inside the shell as it circles around inside, and they have found that by layering the shells, they can absorb 75% of the light that hits the surface. That is way better than traditional solar cells that are often highly reflective, and the nanoshells require less time to absorb a useable amount of energy and can use a fraction of the thickness of traditional photovoltaics. The best part is that they use readily available materials to produce; essentially sand. Now if someone could come up with a way to use the sun and sand in a single application…

The Solar Sinter

Photo Credit:Kayser

How is that for a setup? Markus Kayser developed a machine that uses the two most abundant resources in the desert to build objects; the sun and the sand. It is effectively a 3D printer that uses the sun to melt sand into glass and render 3D digital models into real-world glass sculptures. This video shows it at work and trumps every vinegar volcano and potato battery ever constructed in a home lab…

Typical 3D printers use resin and lasers to generate real-world renderings of computer generated models. The solar sinter uses the sun to create the “Laser” as well as solar panels to power the electrical components, like the computer that drives it.

It takes a while to run, but nothing free ever comes easy. Its current design requires some human interaction, but no doubt with some time, they could completely automate it and generate prototypes for free using deserts

or maybe they could just make some really cool art in the greenest way imaginable.

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Quicksilver was an 80s movie where Kevin Bacon… Oh never mind. Instead of a euphemistic description of psychotropics, the TAEBT will be using actual electric bikes; bicycles designed to use a lithium-ion battery to take the strain off of the rider on hills and other difficult to pedal terrain, thereby extending their range drastically. And this bike tour has a long range. How long?

About 4,000 miles long.

Alternative transportation and tech entrepreneur Boris Mordkovich will be joined by environmental scientist Anna Mostovetsky on a journey that will take them from New York city across the country to San Francisco on electric bikes, provided by Evelo Electric Bicycles. The trip should take them about two months to complete.

As they get ready for this amazing trip, Boris was kind enough to answer a few questions we had about their impending journey.

What will you do if you encounter any really horrific storms (lightning, tornadoes, etc)?

This question comes up fairly frequently in some shape or form when we discuss the trip with others. This is one of those things that seem worrisome on the surface or when planning out the trip, but is actually much more manageable when you’re actually going through with it.

The reality is that when you’re biking and the weather takes a turn for the worst, you simply make a plan right then and there and adjust accordingly. If it’s a minor rain, you generally keep going. If it’s a storm or hail, you take a break and try to find shelter for a few hours until it calms down. The only thing that we need to do differently is to waterproof the battery, as it is an electrical component and doesn’t like water. But that can be done as simply as putting a small bag over it.

A bigger problem for us is something else – instances when there is ice forming on the roads in the mountains in places like the Rockies. But even if that does happen, it’ll only be for a short distance in a specific region.

We haven’t come up with a plan for a tornado yet, though.

One of the electric bikes that will be used during the tour.

Will we be able to track your progress on Google maps?

To some degree. Our entire route is posted on a Google Map on our website, so anyone can see the planned stops and the dates when we’re planning to be there.

As far as real-time updates, we’ll be blogging regularly and posting photos and Twitter updates on a daily basis to keep folks in the loop of where we are.

What is your plan for finding a place to charge your batteries every night?

We were quite fortunate to receive a sponsorship from a company called Airbnb.com, which allows us to book accommodations with locals in most of the cities that we’re passing through. It’s actually really quite amazing, as you get to meet and spend time with people who live in the communities and cities we’re passing through – something that you generally can’t get from a hotel. We’ll be charging the batteries overnight when we stay in these places.

When we are going through more remote areas, like a 600 mile stretch from Omaha, NE to Denver, CO or 550 miles from Salt Lake City, UT to Carson City, NV, we’ll generally stay in small inns and motels where available.

It’s somewhat impossible to plan out the entire route and accommodations in advance, so we generally try to have a plan for about 7-10 nights ahead of us and trust that everything will work out further on.

Do you have a backup plan if you are unable to recharge some night?

Well, that’s the beauty of electric bikes – even if we are unable to recharge some night, we are still able to simply pedal through on our own power (fueled by power bars and nightly pasta). It’ll make it a bit more difficult, especially if we’re going through a mountainous region, but it’s not anything that would stop us in our track. The only downside is that we’ll probably end up covering a bit less distance than we otherwise would.

Boris Mordkovich and Anna Mostovetsky of the Trans-American Electric Bike Tour.

How was the planning for this trip different because you are doing it on electric bikes?

Good question! There were a few factors to consider.

On one hand, the electric bikes will enable us to cover slightly more distance per day than we would do on a regular one – perhaps by around 30% or so. So, this enabled us to plan to complete the trip with about 50 cycling days (plus rest days and others when we’re doing talks and presentations in different cities)

Carrying cargo is also less of an issue. We’ll have a bike touring trailer and panniers attached to the bikes with a combined total of about 80 to 100 pounds of gear, ranging from bicycle tools, spares and extra batteries to food, water and clothing.

Finally, this makes it easier to do difficult road stretches, such as the Appalachians or the Rockies, where there are elevation gains and drops of several thousand feet that can go on for days.

On the other side, it makes us think more about our accommodations. So, where as with a regular bike, it would be easier to camp out along the way, on this trip, we’re planning to spend virtually all nights with an actual roof over our heads. This also forces us to stay closer to cities and towns, as opposed to being able to spontaneously pitch a tent on a mountaintop.

The purpose of the trip is also a bit different than a regular vacation-style tour. Here, we are focused on creating more awareness about electric bicycles and alternative transportation, as well as gaining a better understanding of urban transportation challenges and issues in different cities. As a result, we also had to figure out how to be able to work and stay connected throughout the trip. This means that our packing list also includes things like laptops, wireless internet device, and other things of that nature.

What distance are you traveling per day and what’s the actual range of the electric bikes?

When we were planning our the tour, we tried to keep the daily distance at no more than 80 miles. However, as we actually began to plan out the routes between cities, it does vary. There are some days when we’re just cycling 40-50 miles and a number when we go over 100 miles. The longest day planned so far is 130 miles – a stretch of road between Cedar Rapids, IA and Des Moines, IA. Not a lot of places to stop there in the middle!

The electric range of the bikes varies, depending on the terrain, headwind, weight of the rider, and other factors. Overall, you can get up to 40 miles on pedal-assist mode or 20 miles on electric-only mode with a single charge. Each of us is carrying a 2nd battery to extend the range, so it should work out just fine. Especially, since we don’t engage the assist all the time.

If somebody wanted to do a trip like this of their own, what advice would you give them?

Set a date and commit to doing it! Everything else will fall into place after that. Don’t think that you have to be an athlete or in perfect physical shape. A lot of it is mental – as much as physical, so being enthusiastic and open to adventure will take you a long way.

Also, think about where you want to do it – USA, Europe or somewhere more exotic; who you want to do it with – you  can do it alone, with a friend or a tour group; and how much time you can allocate to this trip – 2 weeks is much easier to plan out than 2-3 months. Once this framework is in place, it becomes easier to plan out the logistics.

I’ve actually written a more comprehensive article on this topic, if anyone is interested. And, of course, I’m always happy to answer questions and share feedback from our own tour.

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We wish Boris and Anna the best of luck, and hopefully the only events on their trip are good ones.

The post Interview: Boris Mordkovich of the Trans-American Electric Bike Tour appeared first on REVMODO.