Anyway it has good capacities that can purify up to 2.400 gallons of water a day. The system sucks water on the bottom, cleans it and returns it on top through the jet. Water spray cools the solar panels and increases efficiency. The jet makes purifier looks like a fountain, which gives the device besides practical function also an interesting solution for the surrounding.

Main problem of high expenses is gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which should be replaced with new nanomaterial that would be in normal expense range.

The cells are based on the use of specialized inks that can be printed using a roll-to-roll printing process on a plastic substrate or even stainless steel. The light-absorbing nanomaterials are 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair and because of this microscopic size they carry better physical properties that can enable their use in higher-efficiency devices.

For now the efficiency is not high enough, but the team is already working on it with great optimism!

Via: University of Texas At Austin [Press Release]

A simple way to reduce your personal carbon footprint is making use of services such as buses and trains to go to your office and back home.  However, tempting car owners to leave their luxuries at home and wait for a bus to their destination to arrive seems a tough ask. MIT architects are envisioning a future where people won’t only be encouraged to travel by a bus, but will also ensure that their relationship with the most modern of technologies is not disturbed in any way.

Passengers waiting for a bus at the “EyeStop” would be able to check their mailboxes, get the latest updates on weather, watch news and even get in touch with their Facebook friends. Other than this, riders can also plan a bus trip on an interactive map and monitor their real-time exposure to pollutants.

The EyeStop also keeps the riders aware of the current status of the bus they’re waiting for and glows at different levels of intensity to signal the distance of an approaching bus. The best feature of the EyeStop is that all those hi-tech features don’t consume a single watt of electricity from the grid as it is powered by electricity generated from the rooftop solar panels.

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Solar industry growing fast

In the span of a few short years, the solar-energy business has elbowed its way from the fringe of the global energy game to become its fastest-growing segment, according to a report published by the Paris-based Renewable Energy Policy Network (REN21).

Installed grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity grew by 5.4 gigawatts (GW) — a rate of 70% — to reach a total of 13 gigawatts (GW). Annual PV-module production capacity grew at the even faster rate of 90% last year to hit 6.9GW, as nearly every significant global solar firm expanded existing facilities and began building new ones.

“The recent growth of the sector has surpassed all predictions – even those made by the industry itself,” says Mohamed El-Ashry, chairman of REN21.

In contrast to the wind-power industry, which is dominated by a handful of first-mover countries, the solar-power business is more diversified and globalised – both in terms of its major players and markets. The industry remains frenetic and liquid, with new companies and fresh markets wrestling with each other for prominence.

In a testament to the industry’s rapidly evolving nature, last year China edged out Japan to become the world’s PV-cell production king, while Spain blasted past Germany to become the leading market for PV panels.

One defining trend of 2008 was the industry’s rapid pivot to embrace utility-scale solar farms, with somewhat less focus on outfitting individual homes and businesses. By the end of 2008 there were more than 1,800 solar-fired power plants larger than 200 kilowatts around the world – up 80% in just one year, according to the report.

These new plants generated a combined 3GW of electricity – a stunning 1.9GW of which came from Spain alone. A number of huge solar projects were completed in Spain during 2008, including the 60-MW Olmedilla de Alarcon plant, the world’s largest PV farm, and the 50-MW Andasol-1 plant, using concentrated solar power (CSP) technology.

Difficulty raising project financing may depress that growth in 2009, but many solar firms now consider the development and construction of large-scale solar plants a pillar of their future business.

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