Cool Earth has designed a simple and extremely cheap ’solar balloon’ that concentrates sunlight onto a photo-voltaic cell producing up to 400Xs as much electricity as the average photo-voltaic cell generates.
The Cool Earth Balloon
The solar balloon is made from thin film plastic that costs about $2/balloon. They are already working on launching a mini-plant using the technology and depending on its success they will be developing a full scale power plant in the near future.
Congrats to the Cool Earth team for producing a simple cost effective way to make solar power more efficient.
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James Thoburn (twitter: @you_count) is the founder of Backyard Politics. Comment here or @reply you_count on twitter to join the conversation.
If you think this is cool, there’s a massive project underway in the vicinity of Hawaii that’s trying to use deep ocean thermodynamics to generate MASSIVE amounts of energy. Definitely as expensive project, but frankly i’d rather see government money going to science than condom companies.
Great page,, hope to come back again,,
Thanks Vek!
Exactly where might I come across a lot more info on this area?
Apple now has Rhapsody as an app, which is a great start, but it is currently hampered by the inability to store locally on your iPod, and has a dismal 64kbps bit rate. If this changes, then it will somewhat negate this advantage for the Zune, but the 10 songs per month will still be a big plus in Zune Pass’ favor.