On August 4th I wrote about a solar company claiming 800x improvement on the power generated and made some points about how that was attained. The article is here "Solar Cell Power Production is Increased 800x?!?".

This article is about a breakthrough regarding the actual solar cell as normally exposed to light. The world record conversion efficiency was accepted by the scientific journal - Progress in Photovoltaics (PIP), which offers a forum for reporting advances in the PV industry and independently tested by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Germany.

This is a new world record conversion efficiency of 15.6% on a commercial-grade multi-crystalline silicon PV module. This conversion efficiency surpasses the previous record of 15.5% set by Sandia National Labs 15 years ago.

You can see that this is significant, but without a breakthrough, we are very much at the limit for current PV technology. This increase took 15 years to achieve and represents a 0.1% increase in efficiency.

You can see why I was so quick to point out that in the previous article claiming 800x, it was not the solar cell but the light delivery that was actually increased.

For more information on this article, click the related link below.

For the first time, BMW is launching a hybrid.

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PS - there isn't a picture on the related link either... :(

This is not a new project, but a recent project. What is new is that they just crossed the Thames river with this machine! There is a great deal of information and photos at their website.

click the related link below to visit them.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology feels that an electric vehicle would perform better without batteries. As this is not a new idea, but an idea to get back to basics, they might be on to something. I remember as a kid, the buses in San Francisco had these long arms that reached up to wires overhead and asking my dad what they were. So we have had electric public transit for quite some time as this was over 30 years ago.

Take a peek at the full article to find out more.

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Aside from a name that sounds like it belongs in an action movie, this is really a good idea. The premise is simple, measure the attributes of the wind and adjust the position of the wind turbines to match. This would create an optimal performance for the given wind condition.

This seems like something that would happen naturally, but wind turbines currently do not understand the type of wind hitting them, turbulent or vortex winds are most difficult for horizontal propeller type turbines to deal with. This added brain would help them optimize their efficiency for the type, not just direction of the wind.

If you remember blowing on a pinwheel or have a toy with a small propeller you can play with, you will find that you make it spin a lot faster when you blow slightly across it instead of directly at it. This device will help take advantage of that kind of knowledge.

From the article:

The Vindicator(r) fiber optic laser wind sensing system is capable of measuring real-time horizontal and vertical wind speed and direction data at varying ranges ahead of the sensor location. The sensor design is based on state-of-the-art fiber optic laser technology developed and patented at Optical Air Data Systems LLC.

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