Tag: Solar
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Sol Pod Makes a Great Workspace
Vina Lustado, a designer from California recently created a quaint tiny studio. It’s a mobile (towable) structure, which can serve many purposes, such as an additional workspace, home office, guesthouse, or even vacation cabin. It’s called Sol Pod and, as the name suggests, it gets its electricity from the sun. The mobile studio is made…
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Net Zero Prefab Home Built in California
Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford University, California recently commissioned the Canadian firm Bone Structure to build him a prefab net-zero home. And the result is shaping up to be quite astounding. He chose the company because of their proven ability to minimize construction waste, dust and disruption to neighbors, as well as the flexibility…
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Thinnest and Lightest Solar Cell Produced
Researchers at MIT have successfully manufactured the world’s thinnest and lightest solar cell. This cell is so tiny that it could be placed on a soap bubble without popping it. That’s quite a feat and it also means that such cells could be attached to virtually any surface where they could then generate clean, renewable…
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A Thermophotovoltaic Cell That Can Generate Electricity Even in the Dark
Claiming that a solar cell can produce energy even in the dark sounds a little like the beginning of a joke, but I assure you it is not so. A team of scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have successfully made a prototype of a device,…
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Smart Windows Coming Soon
Smart windows are the logical next step in the evolution of home design. Basically, the idea behind them is that instead of adding blinds or curtains to windows, so as to control the amount of heat or light entering the home (or for privacy) the windows would already have this function built in. Sounds futuristic,…