This is Tech

The Web Urbanist examines seven fantastic green-architecture concepts from around the world.

The most stunning of the bunch is the solar tower. The 377ft tower is surrounded by hundreds of ground level solar reflectors that beam reflected sunlight onto one point of the tower. The tower transforms this concentrated sunlight into steam, which is then fed into turbines:

From a distance, as we rounded a bend and first caught sight of it, I couldn’t believe the strange structure ahead of me was actually real.

A concrete tower - 40 stories high - stood bathed in intense white light, a totally bizarre image in the depths of the Andalusian countryside.

The tower looked like it was being hosed with giant sprays of water or was somehow being squirted with jets of pale gas. I had trouble working it out.

In fact, as we found out when we got closer, the rays of sunlight reflected by a field of 600 huge mirrors are so intense they illuminate the water vapour and dust hanging in the air.

A Scottish architecture firm’s award winning ‘lilly pad’ solar panel design is under consideration for use in the city of Glasgow. The city hopes to not only provide clean energy for the city’s grid, but to do so in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The firm said the design of the lilypads was “inspired by nature” and they could be tethered to the river bed.

Integrated motors would then rotate the discs to follow the sun for maximum output.

(Via Clean Technica)

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind - New York Times: “The Energy Challenge
Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind
Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Jim Albert, front, and Jerry Tuttle, General Electric wind technicians, perch atop a turbine in Sweetwater, Tex. The turbines stand as high as 20-story buildings.

SWEETWATER, Tex. — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

(Via NY Times.)

Africa: small-scale generator powered by sugar and yeast (video): “Afrigadget recently blogged about an inexpensive power source for Africa created by Dr. Cedrick Ngalande in Malawi. Today, the blog points to videos of the invention in action:

The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight.

Basically we have two chambers on either end of the rotating (pivoted) rod. The arrangement of the chambers is such that on either side of the rod, one chamber sits on top of the other (this is important). At the beginning of this operation, I fill the bottom chamber on each side with a yeast sugar solution. Each bottom chamber is always locked under pressure by special valves. Due to pressure the solution starts moving from a bottom chamber into its respective top chamber. Note that by moving upwards, the fluid’s center of gravity shifts, resulting in a mass imbalance which causes the wobbling.

Link to post with video.

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(Via Boing Boing.)

Toyota announces plug-in hybrid for 2010: ”

Filed under: Transportation

According to reports, roost-ruling, green automaker Toyota has confirmed plans to launch a plug-in hybrid by 2010. Our man in Japan Katsuaki Watanabe (company president) dropped the bombshell at this year’s Detroit Auto Show while detailing the automaker’s plans for tackling environmental concerns. Apparently, the new lithium-ion-equipped vehicles will first be made available to Toyota’s commercial customers — such as government agencies. Watanabe gave no indication of when a general consumer rollout would occur. The vehicle, which is a modified version of the ultra-popular Prius, is capable of achieving fuel efficiency of 99.9 miles-per-gallon in EV mode, though it can only sustain pure battery power for about seven miles. The announcement will no doubt come as a total bummer to GM, which has plans to sell its own plug-in, the Volt, around the same time — though the Chevy vehicle is said to be able to make trips of up to 40 miles on a six-hour charge. It’s about time we saw some healthy competition in the green-auto-game — let’s just hope consumers reap the benefits.

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(Via Engadget.)