Search Results for: solar power
Solar Powered Super Trees in Singapore
photo by Munshi Ahmed These incredible constructions at Singapore’s Gardens By the Bay have caught our attention. Designed by Grant Associates, these 25-50 meter tall super trees function as combined: vertical garden, PV panel, air venting tower, and rainwater collection … Continue reading
Airlight Energy’s Monuments to Concentrated Solar Power
The Precasted Fiber Reinforced Concrete Collector by Airlight Energy is a refreshingly different design for CSP technology. It employs flexible pneumatic mirrors below and ETFE foil above, both stretched within a rigid concrete frame to create a parabolic trough system … Continue reading
Nature Offers Another Lesson to the Solar Power Industry (go biomimicry!)
image from Torresol Energy We’ve written about Fibonacci Series before here on bLAGI. So it does not come as a great surprise to us that the layout of heliostats (solar-tracking mirrors) around a solar power tower could benefit from the … Continue reading
Surface Area Required to Replace Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining with Solar Power
click on the image for a larger version. Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) is a form of surface mining that involves the removal of a summit or ridge. Acres of wilderness habitat is deforested and the wood burned. Explosives are then … Continue reading
Modern Solar Power Towers by RAFAA
Some nice alternative designs for the BrightSource Energy Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. From the article by Bridgette Meinhold at inhabitat: BrightSource is holding a competition to come up with designs for the solar towers and Zurich-based RAFAA Architectue … Continue reading
Small Town Switches 85% to Solar Power
Credit: Skyline Solar Nipton, California will soon be powered 85% by a new High Gain Solar (HGS) array in the Mojave desert. With just short of 1,000 residents, Nipton is a small railroad outpost town. But such small steps are … Continue reading
LIFE Magazine Online: History of Solar Power
Great historic shots of early solar power technology in this photo essay. Seems that if we hadn’t had been so “lucky” to have had “inexpensive” access during the 20th century to ready supplies of fossil fuels, we would have come … Continue reading
Solar Powered Camels Carry Medicines to Remote Desert Areas
via inhabitat What a great idea for medicines and vaccines that require refrigeration. According to the article, the number of people that this could help is in the range of 300,000.
The state of solar power technology
There have been some detractors to the idea that we can fuel the world entirely with solar energy by 2030. It seems to me from the numbers that this is possible and it’s important that we all recognize that it … Continue reading
Solar-Powered Sun Lanterns Light Up The Night in Scottsdale
A new solar-powered public artwork is lighting up the night in Scottsdale, Arizona. Designed by Tempe-based artist Eli Richard, Sun Lanterns is a temporary exhibit comprised of 23 multicolor solar-powered lamps made with plexiglass and steel. Scottsdale Public Art commissioned … Continue reading
Sun Stomp solar art could power a Baltimore home for one year
It’s been a big week for us with the announcement that Rio Iluminado won the LAGI Willimantic design competition in Connecticut. We’re floored by the community’s will to transform their town into an exciting new destination for people from all walks of life, and look forward to … Continue reading
Rio Iluminado: Solar-powered arch wins LAGI Willimantic design competition
Rio Iluminado by Pirie Associates, Lindsay Suter, and Gar Waterman. The winning team of the most recent LAGI design competition was presented with their award today at Connecticut Arts Day. The artwork, called Rio Iluminado, has won the design … Continue reading
Surface Area Required to Power Bitcoin with Solar
Click on the information graphic above to see a high resolution version. Or click here to download a PDF version Have you heard that the electricity used by Bitcoin will exceed 33 terrawatt-hours (TWh) in 2017? That is a lot … Continue reading
Solar Flower Power
click image for source Haim Dotan Architects helped to design this concentrated solar power flower by Aora, inspired by the shape of a tulip. The first one pictured above was constructed on 0.5acre (2,000sq.m.) of land at Kibbutz Samar. They … Continue reading
Area Required to Power the UAE with Solar
The above image is a comparison of concentrated solar power with the recently awarded nuclear power contract for the UAE. Admittedly, there are far more variables at play than are shown in this simplified graphic. But it is interesting to … Continue reading
Poster Size Version of The Area Required to Power the World with Solar
click to enlarge We have been delighted at the popularity of the graphic that we posted a month ago. Now it is available in a poster size pdf for download! Click here, or on the thumbnails to the right to … Continue reading
How dye-sensitized cells revolutionized the solar industry
Professor Michael Grätzel’s future flashed before his eyes in 1973 when OPEC stopped supplying the United States and Western Europe with oil. Foreseeing a time when fossil fuels would be depleted, and freshly armed with a PhD from the Technical … Continue reading
Powering Places
Powering Places is the beautiful hardcover book that catalogs the LAGI 2016 design competition for Santa Monica. It is available at many bookstores, museums, and online at the usual outlets. Here is a good list. The book contains engaging essays … Continue reading
