Futurist Foresight - Applied Technotopia
Stretchable batteries could offer, if not affordable (unsure on that one) but at least comfortable battery power.
Clever Battery Completes Stretchable Electronics Package
Northwestern University’s Yonggang Huang and the University of Illinois’ John A. Rogers are the first to demonstrate a stretchable lithium-ion battery — a flexible device capable of powering their innovative stretchable electronics.
No longer needing to be connected by a cord to an electrical outlet, the stretchable electronic devices now could be used anywhere, including inside the human body. The implantable electronics could monitor anything from brain waves to heart activity, succeeding where flat, rigid batteries would fail.
Huang and Rogers have demonstrated a battery that continues to work — powering a commercial light-emitting diode (LED) — even when stretched, folded, twisted and mounted on a human elbow. The battery can work for eight to nine hours before it needs recharging, which can be done wirelessly.
The new battery enables true integration of electronics and power into a small, stretchable package. Details are published by the online journal Nature Communications.
“We start with a lot of battery components side by side in a very small space, and we connect them with tightly packed, long wavy lines,” said Huang, a corresponding author of the paper. “These wires provide the flexibility. When we stretch the battery, the wavy interconnecting lines unfurl, much like yarn unspooling. And we can stretch the device a great deal and still have a working battery.”
Huang led the portion of the research focused on theory, design and modeling. He is the Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The power and voltage of the stretchable battery are similar to a conventional lithium-ion battery of the same size, but the flexible battery can stretch up to 300 percent of its original size and still function.
(via thescienceofreality)
A very innovative solution to a major problem in the developing world.
This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now
The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.
The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy.
Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope.
“This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews.
In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated.
(via fastcompany)
Power Cell: A self charging Lithium Ion Battery
Self-Charging Lithium Ion Battery – Thank You Georgia Tech - Gas 2
Georgia Tech has made a self-charging lithium ion battery. This could be a major breakthrough for the electric vehicle (EV) industry, if it can be economized and applied to the auto industry.
Researchers at Georgia Tech started with a simple, coin sized, lithium ion battery and replaced the dividers between the electrodes with a polyvinylidene difluoride film. The films piezoelectric nature makes a charging action inside that gap through just a little pressure with no outside voltage required. Basically, you push on the battery and it charges itself.
The developers tested the battery by placing it in the sole of a shoe; just walking kept the battery charged.
Think about integrating this self-charging lithium ion battery technology into an EV. This takes the idea of regenerative braking to a whole new level. There would be no need to worry about finding a charging station. Hybrids and other fossil fuel vehicles would be a thing of the past. You could continually drive without having to stop to fuel up. The fuels costs for shipping would no longer exist. The list goes on.
Gas 2.0(via emergentfutures)
Satellites: Micro-thrusters for micro-sats.
A penny-sized rocket thruster may soon power the smallest satellites in space.
The device, designed by Paulo Lozano, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, bears little resemblance to today’s bulky satellite engines, which are laden with valves, pipes and heavy propellant tanks. Instead, Lozano’s design is a flat, compact square — much like a computer chip — covered with 500 microscopic tips that, when stimulated with voltage, emit tiny beams of ions. Together, the array of spiky tips creates a small puff of charged particles that can help propel a shoebox-sized satellite forward.
Wireless powered drones. Impressive.
Wireless power system keeps UAV airborne for 48 hours.
Lockheed Martin have demonstrated a wireless power system that uses lasers to beam energy to an unmanned aerial vehicle. The ground-to-air recharging system was demonstrated for 48 hours before being shut off - but only as all the required tests had been completed, and could likely have stayed airborne for much longer. At the conclusion of the test the battery on the ‘Stalker Unmanned Aerial System’ had more energy stored than it did at the beginning.
The laser power system was developed by LaserMotive, who won NASA’s Power Beaming Challenge in 2009, winning the US$900,000 prize.
While this test was conducted in a controlled indoor environment using a wind tunnel, the next step will be to demonstrate it outdoors to prove it is ready for commercial and military applications.
(via emergentfutures)
. An accurate map of global power, influence, and connectedness would include a wide range of countries (orange), cities (blue), companies (yellow), and communities or other types of organizations (green), all of whom can form ties directly with each other. Via Fast Company Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation
(via emergentfutures)
Though just for the USA, the graphic does show just how small the current contribution of renewable energy is.
Image description: This graphic describes the sources of electricity generation for the United States in 2011. Coal provided 42 percent of electricity, followed by natural gas at 25 percent, nuclear power at 19 percent and renewable sources at 13 percent.
Of renewable sources, hydroelectric power (mostly from dams) lead the way at 63 percent. Learn more about the use of renewable sources of energy in the U.S.
Infographic courtesy of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
(via abcstarstuff)
An impressive array.
cnce:
“Les Mees” solar park in France spreads across 15 ha, joining several nearby plants for a total array producing around 100 MW (Photos by Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images) via beconinriot
Transparent solar panels could replace your windows, great!
Transparent solar panels could replace your windows.
German startup company Heliatek are testing their flexible, transparent solar panels which could one day be built into houses to act as power-generating windows.
The panels are only able to convert around 8% of available energy into electricity, compared with around 12-17% for traditional solar panels, but the company claims that they are able to make up for that by providing better performance in low light and high heat to provide almost the same energy production overall.
The technology works by depositing a layer of organic molecules on polyester films, in a similar way to how OLED displays are produced.
The company recently started making a small amount of panels on a “proof of concept” production line, and say that within four to five years the cost should come down to around 40 to 50 cents per watt, which will make them competitively priced compared to conventional solar panels. The new technology would also work out cheaper to install in new houses, as opposed to having to install windows as well as conventional solar panels on the roof.
(via 8bitfuture)
Authenticated electricity: Sony power outlets will charge you for charging
Sony is building a new kind of power outlet that raises a not entirely pleasant prospect—in the future, plugging a phone into a public wall socket might require authentication and take a chunk out of your bank account. But the technology will have many important uses, Sony says, from managing payments for recharging electrical vehicles to avoiding blackouts by intelligently regulating the use of power.
Announced by Sony last month, and demonstrated today in a video posted by Tokyo news site DigInfo TV, Sony’s authentication outlet manages electricity use on a per-user and per-device basis with NFC (near field communication) and RFID (radio-frequency identification) tools.
The technology may be years away from commercial release, but a prototype demonstration shows a handheld dryer being plugged into an outlet that has the ability to authenticate devices. The dryer doesn’t need to be modified because it attaches to the outlet through a plug containing an NFC chip.
» via ars technica
