Innovation Needed

Cutting the clutter

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A wireless replacement for all those pesky power cables
BENEATH your correspondent’s desk is a cat’s cradle of tangled cables linking a pair of computers to numerous peripherals and laptops around the office. On the credenza opposite is another jumbled nest of wires for recharging mobile phones, cameras, netbooks, MP3 players [...]

Tags: electrical cables, gizmos, power adaptors, power cables, wireless replacement
Posted in 5 Years Out, Consider This, Economist, Innovation Needed | No Comments »

Home Charging for Electric Vehicle: Costs Will Vary

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By the end of the year, at least five plug-in cars, including the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt, are expected to be on the market. And as electric vehicles roll out, their owners will be wiring their homes to accommodate what is called Level 2 charging. The [...]

Tags: battery cars, chevrolet volt, electric vehicles, energy rates, home chargers, home wiring, plug in hybrids, wiring upgrades
Posted in Automotive, Innovation Needed, Project Energy | No Comments »

Companies join forces to standardize charging infrastructure

One of the criticisms often levied at the drive to get electrically-powered vehicles from the fringe into the mainstream is the current lack of a network of charging stations.
Four car manufacturing giants have teamed up with a utility service provider to tackle this problem head on. The newly formed CHAdeMO Association [...]

Tags: chargers, electric car, electric vehicle, electric vehicles, hybrid vehicle, standard charging infrastructure
Posted in Automotive, Innovation Needed, Project Energy, environment, gizmag | No Comments »

Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant, Floating Power Plants

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Take a huge oceanic catamaran, stick a hydroelectric turbine underneath it, and hitch it to a 6.5 million-square-foot parafoil flying nearly a mile in the air. That’s a Korean research team’s new proposal for generating gigawatts of clean energy.
As the parafoil pulls the boat, seawater would be forced through the [...]

Tags: catamaran, clean energy, hydroelectric turbine, mega-kites
Posted in 5 Years Out, Consider This, Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Project Energy, Shape of Things to Come?, Wired.com | No Comments »

Smoothing Out the Wind

A cunning plan to store energy underwater may help fulfil the promise of wind power
THE problem with wind power is that is cannot always be relied upon. The wind—and other transient, environmental energy sources such as solar—must either be used when it is harvested or stored expensively in batteries or specially [...]

Tags: alexander slocum, environmental energy, hexagonal array, hydroelectric schemes, storage capacity, storage system, wind power
Posted in 5 Years Out, Cutting-edge Research, Economist, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Project Energy | No Comments »