Asura just opened the first-of-its-kind thermal energy plant in California, which should generate enough electricity to power some 3,500 homes. The best part is that this plant, which is named Kimberlina, is merely a proof of concept of sorts— the real plant, to be constructed by 2010, will generate enough electricity to power, like, 120,000 homes.

The idea is dead simple: you’ve got really long mirrors (1,000 feet, to be exact) which reflect the sun’s rays. These rays are reflected onto a series of tubes that are filled with water. The water heats up and turns into steam, which in turn spins power-generating turbines. Makes you wanna become an engineer, doesn’t it?

Detractors will likely say, “That’s easy for California to do since it’s bathed in sunlight every day.” Granted, but should the technology prove efficient, what’s to stop the state from becoming an energy breadbasket of sorts to other states? Potatoes come from Idaho and Maine, electricity comes from California. Everyone wins.

via Inhabitat

Panasonic today announced [JP] it developed the world’s smallest fuel cell for use in notebooks, reducing the size of its predecessor by 50%. The new model is sized at 270cc, which makes it as small as existing lithium ion batteries used in notebooks currently on the market.

Panasonic says the fuel cell will be positioned at the underside of notebooks and provides about 20 hours of power with 200cc of fuel. The prototype weighs just 320 grams. The fuel, highly concentrated methanol, can be stored in bottles.

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Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. For $22.99 you can charge four USB-powered devices plus another regular DC-powered device in your car. It’s only $22.99 – roughly the cost of one or two device-specific DC adapters. Since just about everything charges via USB nowadays, this is a pretty obvious choice for any gadget fiend who spends a lot of time on the road.

Car Charger with 4 USB Ports and 1 Cigarette Socket [usbfever.com via Ubergizmo]

Some feel-good news for your enjoyment, this time about how wind power can save the planet, or something. It seems that for the low, low price of less than two cents per day, the U.S. would be able to generate something like 300 gigawatts of electricity using windmills. That translates to an 11 percent reduction in natural gas consumption, saving 4 trillion gallons of water every year, and a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide omissions by 2030.

The rest is some anti-Bush talk about how the administration has ruined America and has slowed our adoption of such alternative fuel sources. Relax, he’ll be gone soon. And then all our problems will be solved, right, just like when the Dems re-took Congress two years ago? Politics is broken here.

Go downstairs and check out your power meter. It’s probably spinning frantically. Why? Because you’re blowing electricity out of your home theatre set-up and home office like a fiend. Don’t worry: I’m doing it to. We all are. It’s the cost of staying online and entertained these days and, sometimes when I’m in the basement, I kind of get a twinge of embarrassment that the woman who lived here before me, a woman who died at 92, used so little electricity that ConEd called me after we moved in asking me if there was anything wrong.
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Straight out of the University of Texas at Austin comes the world’s most powerful laser. I just assumed that most lasers were very powerful, but apparently the great state of Texas has the best one until someone else can come along and build an even more powerful laser or mounts this same laser to a shark’s head.

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People who wear lab coats somewhere in Illinois (Argonne, to be exact) have reportedly developed a lithium-ion battery that’s capable of storing 30 percent more energy while at the same time being safer than current lithium-ion batteries.

What’s more, the technology has been licensed to Japanese laptop battery manufacturer Toda Kogyo, so we might actually see these batteries in notebook iterations relatively soon.

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In the 1960s most of America assumed that by 2008 we’d be driving nuclear-powered cars around. Even in Back to the Future the Delorian was powered by Mr. Fusion. But alas, anyone can tell you that we’re still chained to oil-powered internal combustion engines, just as we have been for 100 years.

But a new material scienticians have developed might pave the way for nuclear-powered cars in the near future. The material takes nuclear decay and can convert it to electricity far more efficiently than ever before. Spacecraft have been using this type of “nuclear battery” for decades to propel them through space, but it’s never been effective enough for terrestrial use.

More tests are needed, but the nano-tech based polymers could be adapted to be more energy efficient, enough so that they could drive a standard-sized American car. And it would do so cleanly.

The scienticians say we’re still at least a decade out from utilizing the technology, but it’s entirely possible we can hang up the pumps by then.

I said “cable-laying,” get it? Anyhoo, if you’re in the market for a huge remote controlled submersible robot that weighs 50 tons and can bury oil and gas pipes at the bottom of the ocean, look no further than the Ultra Trencher 1 by a company called SMD. It uses propellers to submerge itself to depths up to a mile and then uses ninja-like high-pressure “jet swords” to cut a trench in the ocean floor. Pipes can then be safely buried out of the way of shipwrecks, fishing equipment, and currents.

A Deeply Impressive Bit of Kit; World’s Biggest Subsea Robot [RedOrbit] via ZDNet

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline will conduct a test flight at the end of the month wherein a Boeing 747 will fly from London to Amsterdam using an 80/20 blend of conventional fuel and biofuel, respectively. The plane will carry no passengers but will be “the first time a commercial aircraft has flown on biofuel,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Man oh man, do I miss Snickers. When I worked in an office, I used to eat one (and only one) each day. Yum. Now that there’s going to be a Snickers bar infused with caffeine, taurine, and B vitamins, I’m going to have to seriously reconsider starting up my Costco membership again.

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That’s Mavericks, a world class big wave spot in Half Moon Bay.

Oil prices are getting out of hand. Wind and solar power are somewhat unpredictable and apparently they ‘cost too much’. A few weeks back I saw Southland Tales and the movie was about the end of the world and all this other crazy stuff. What was intriguing about the film other than Sarah Michelle Geller being a porn star was the fact that alternative energy was being pumped from the ocean. It’s not rocket science (or maybe something close to it), but I’d imagine building a huge turbine of some sort would produce massive amounts of free energy, right?

Well, Finavera Renewables has this thing called the Aquabuoy that’s a buoy connected to an underwater piston. Can you figure out how it works? No? Ok, fine. As swells roll through, the buoy goes with the flow and goes up and down. This in turn gets the piston running, which pressurizes a chamber that’s inhabited by seawater. Said pressure gets the turbine running, which if you haven’t figured it out by now produces electricity. That’s cool but so what?
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Continuing with Biggs’ “down with Big Oil” mantra from earlier today, check out this suspicious (and yes I know, old old old) video that I originally heard about on Opie & Anthony. It’s a news report of a man who supposedly invented a water fuel cell capable of powering all sorts of vehicles. The catch is, he was mysteriously poisoned before he get his device on the market.

Think of how different the world would have been if this invention came to light (if it were ever real to begin with). Powering your car and heating your home with a couple gallons of water? Oh, what could have been.

Maybe we should change our name to ConspiracyGear.

Water fuel cell [Wikipedia]

As someone who sits at home in front of a computer all day every day, I can — like Richard to Tommy in Tommy Boy — actually hear myself getting fatter.

So the thought of sitting all day every day in an apparatus that forces me to expend energy in order to provide power to my lifeline to the outside world and device by which I earn money for food, shelter, and clothing is intriguing to me.

Such is the "pedal-powered laptop" being developed by a group of MIT students. I live near MIT and every time I’m over near the campus, I like to look at all the people and try to figure out who’s legitimately an insane homeless person and who’s a genius that’s been working on a project like this and hasn’t slept or showered in a week. If you’re one of the latter, nice work!

The students "predicted that a bicyclist should be able to produce up to 75 watts continuously–far more than the 30 watts needed to power the laptop."

Students get charge out of pedal power [MIT News]

Sure, you could build your own similar device for far less than $4.4 million (Australian) but would it look nearly as awesome as the vest that the bad mamma jamma on the left is wearing? My position is “no, it would not.”

The aforementioned money was given to Australia’s national science agency as a grant in the hopes that it could develop an “electrojacket” that “uses what are called Piezoelectric materials to transform kinetic energy into storable power.”

Its intended use will be for military personnel and will (hopefully) allow them to eschew all the little battery packs needed to power the many various gadgets they have strapped to them while in the field of battle. The energy that’s created by the soldiers’ movement will theoretically power many of those devices. The technology could also have practical applications in the private and medical device sectors as well.

A jacket to keep you warm and powered [bit-tech.net]

A few TV manufacturers and broadcasters have joined forces to develop 10 minutes of boredom as a standard way of measuring energy use. Apparently energy consumption varies based on the genre so the clip combines all of them into one including soap operas, sports, and nature programs. It would be assumed that porn uses up the most energy and as a result we encourage everyone to cut back and go outside. You know, for the sake of the environment and all.

The clip will become an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard and will be used to measure the efficiency of TV’s world wide.

World’s most boring TV show to measure energy use [Reuters]

Neon signs will always looks cool when one is inebriated, but what happens when these signs get old and die? They go out to the deserts of Las Vegas, where they remain still in time forever. Some are beautiful, some are ugly, all are old and overused. Quite beautiful actually.

Neon Graveyard [Cool Hunting]