Subway cars on the Philadelphia subway will do a lot more than just give you those dreadful jerks every time they brake. The energy generated from breaking of these subway cars will now be stored in a high capacity battery, which will be stored and used. The system will be put into place by Viridity Energy which was awarded a grant of a whopping $900,000 by the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority. The battery will be located near the Market-Frankford Line and the energy stored will be used to power up the trains leaving the station. Surplus will be sold back to the grid for a price. The battery will have a capacity of 1 megawatt and 1.5MW and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA hopes to save up on at least $500,000 a year.

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In far flung villages where power lines have never been heard of, electricity is an alien concept that the people there yet haven’t had the pleasure to use. And so, they use fuels like kerosene in small quantities to satisfy their daily energy needs. That’s where the e.quinox concept comes into play. This system by James Dyson is somewhat of a virtual grid. Battery Boxes developed work as energy carriers, by which people can access electricity. The 5Ah gel-based lead acid battery can power up LED lamps for up to 25-30 hours while people can also connect their cell phones, radios and other small devices. Once depleted, users can connect the drained out Battery Boxes to the Energy Kiosk where they are left to charge using solar panels, and pick up a fully charged one for a continued use.

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A catalyst is all it takes to boost oxygen production in fuel cells and will help us customize renewable energy power plants in future. Daniel Nocera, a scientist along with a bunch of his colleagues, hopes that each home will be a power station in itself, hence decreasing and completely abolishing the dependency on power stations in future. He hopes that these personalized systems will help power up homes, help with energy for heating, cooking, lighting and charging an electric car when hooked up to roof-based solar panels. Excess energy generated from the solar panels will then be diverted to electrolysers which in turn will break down water into oxygen and hydrogen, sending it to fuel cells to produce enough renewable energy for use at night. That’s where the catalyst comes to play, giving impetus to process of conversion of water to energy.

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All right, here’s something we seriously never thought of before and think it to be just great and innovative indeed. We’ve seen solar panels adorn the roofs of buildings around urban areas before, basking in the sun and powering up our lives. Well, how about having them integrated in our roads too! After all, roads are exposed to just as much sunlight as the roofs of our homes. Asphalt sure will be kicked out on its butt if this technology is realized in future and photovoltaics end up in roads. The US Federal Highways Administration currently is funding a research being done by electrical engineer Scott Brusaw who is figuring out ways to toughen up PV cells and use them in roads.

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The sunshine will be basked in the most in the Salt Lake City, Utah, at least when it comes to solar panels. And that’s because the city is to have the country’s largest rooftop solar array soon. The Salt Palace will play home to this 600,000-square-foot, 2.6 megawatt array soon. To be finished next year, this solar array will power up almost a quarter of the electricity needs of the Salt Palace. Costing $10 million, the system will be built by Bella Energy and will be owned by NexGen. Power will be sold from this system to the country by NexGen for the next 20 years at a predetermined rate.

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The next time you enter into a phone booth, you won’t need to pick your pockets for change, that’s if you step into a Google Voice booth. The Google Voice that we’ve heard of from Gmail before now finds its place in phone booths. Designed like those good old phone booths you’d usually step into in Britain, red with squares of glass and wood, the Google Voice phone booths being constructed by Google will be set up in places where phones are most needed, especially college campuses, for people to make calls for free! So what powers up Google’s effort to ease communication? Solar power! Oh yeah, this one’s powered by the sun, with solar panels sunbathing on its outside.

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Its time we drop the guns and work towards a better and greener future. An armory in Germany did so, in Wolfhagen, quickly changing colors and pushing out the guns to play home to learning and education instead. The armory has been converted into a school, and not just any, a green solar powered one. Earlier a tank armory, the place was given an overhaul with the roof going translucent with thin-film solar panels. Around 5000 square meters of roof space integrate 7160 solar panels with a 1 micron-thick profile, semi-translucent and letting in natural lighting. The array on the roof is capable of generating as much as 220kW and is currently one of the largest in Europe!

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Those flashes of lightning streaking across the sky during storms can give us the goosebumps at times. We’ve seen them before for real and in cliché Hollywood thrillers. It’s time for the streak of lightning to get a greener touch, with researchers planning to use it as a power source. For years together, researchers and scientists have been trying to figure out ways to use this natural source of electricity. Electricity is formed when water vapor collects on microscopic particles of dust and other material in the air. Scientists also believe that the water droplets in the atmosphere are electrically neutral, which could also be a source for hydroelectricity. Researcher Fernando Galembeck has come up with the idea of setting up panels on building tops that will help soak in atmospheric electricity, prevent the building up of electrical charge and help generate energy.

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Try as they may, designers, engineers, architects and about just everyone has a hard time trying to hook on wind turbines onto structures in urban areas. This is probably why we don’t see too many of them in our cities, where the green folk prefer solar panels instead. The Greenway Self-Park found an innovative and creative way to trap the wind and produce energy though. What would otherwise be just a boring old garage; the Greenway Self-Park has the spotlight focused on it, thanks to its energy generating system. The wind turbines used were made by Helix Wind, who took another firm who believed the place just wasn’t suitable, Aerostructure’s place instead.

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We all know how green, eco-friendly and environment-loving those friendly windmill are. After all, they use no fossil fuels, produce no carbon, and yet produce a significant amount of energy. The windmill now goes lot greener than it already is! Using bamboo instead of steel for blades, Dutch designer Gijsbert Koren’s idea for greener energy seems just right. The blades of the windmill, woven in India, will be lighter too, taken that they use lightweight bamboo, instead of the annoyingly heavy steel. And besides doing a bit more for the environment right from production, these windmills look greener too, with an increased aesthetic appeal.

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A $4 million in a federal stimulus grant will enable Wanxiang America Corporation to sprout up the largest solar field in the Midwest, Illinois. In a joint venture known as Rockford Solar Partners with New Generation Power, a renewable energy developer based in Chicago, the field being built will at first generate around 28 megawatts of power in early stages. Once finished, it will generate a whopping 62 megawatts, saving up to 40 million gallons of water annually and reducing carbon emissions by a sweet 10,000 tons annually or more each year. Wanxiang will source the solar panels to be used for this one from its Rockford Plant.

(Image For Representational Purpose Only)

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WA's Mines and Petroleum Minister, Norman Moore, recently cut the red ribbon at the Horizon Power's Pippunyah Solar Diesel Power Station, the first of its kind in the world, located at Western Australia's Pilbara region at Marble Bar, a place known for its heat. Costing around $34 million, this one’s powered by Australia’s biggest sun-tracking solar panel farm. Marble Bar holds the world record for the most consecutive days of maximum temperatures too. The station will soak in the sun, generating 1048 megawatt hours of solar energy annually and fulfilling 65% day time energy demand. The station will also keep away 1119 tons of greenhouse gas emissions while saving up to 35% to 40% annually.

(Image For Representational Purpose Only)

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Maybe the Aussies haven’t a clue about this, but those waves that they love surfing on, can actually power up the country, three times over! In a study, scientists have found out that the waves crashing onto the southern Australian shores are good enough to generate a whole load of energy. Waves crashing on the shores of continents around the globe could be an answer to the world’s desperate pleas for new and renewable energy sources that leave a much lesser carbon impact on the environment than the fossil fuels we use today. The Australian government thinks so too, and has passed laws that mandate 20 percent renewable electricity generation by 2020 that will slowly help rid carbon emissions.

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Well here’s some good news for those keeping their noses in the air trying to sniff out carbon emissions. Global Co2 emissions dropped by a sweet 1.3% last year, this may not seem too much, though it does mean a whole lot, on a global level. The emission levels have fallen to 31.3 billion tons on a global scale, which could probably be caused by global economic crisis and rising investments in renewable energies. However, a few people think this isn’t really true, since the dropping levels of Co2 emissions in Europe, the U.S., Russia, and Japan were simply replaced by the increase of emissions in Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Currently according to IWR reports, China has the highest Co2 emission levels at 7.43 billion tons, followed by the United States at 5.95 billion tons and Russia at 1.53 billion tons.

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Remember the Thyagaraj Stadium in New Delhi being built for the 201 Common Wealth games? Well, Reliance Group’s solar energy initiative, Reliance Solar, has just plugged in what will be India’s first one-megawatt (MW) solar plant to the stadium. This stadium is in fact something to look up to in India, an example set, with a host of green features, which hopefully other stadiums will look up to and follow. Owing to the fact that a 1MW plant will help power it up, the stadium will keep away as much as 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually. When unused, the power generated will be returned to the grid too, which will help relieve the strain on other power plants around to some extent. Expected to generate around 1.4 million units of electricity per year, the plant was installed and commissioned in a record braking duration of less than 3 months in the country.

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