In an effort to reduce electricity consumption, General Electric Company is going to combine energy-efficient lighting and energy-efficient appliances with energy management systems and renewable power generators. The systems – named ‘Net Zero Energy Home’ – involves photovoltaic cells and thin-film solar cells as well as advanced energy storage products that help save energy.

General Electric said in a press release that it is working with utility and government partners to help improve the power grid – “which has not changed much since the days of Thomas Edison” – in ways that will not cause consumers to “compromise their lifestyles.”

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There are times, when we think we’ve done enough bad and it’s time for some good. A couple of years ago when I didn’t care much about the planet, pollution and stuff like that, I realized that I’ve never planted a tree in my life. So what happened? I bought one and planted it in my parent’s garden, at their house outside the city.

Since then, technology advanced, and for those that won’t plant a real tree we have the solution. The solar tree. Designed by Vivien Muller and using 54 photovoltaic cells (when blooming) it has a bonsai tree aspect (with some sort of solar “leaves”?) and is both a great piece of decoration and a pretty useful eco-gadget; doesn’t require watering and will power at least some of your electronics by using solar power.

So what are you going to do, buy a solar tree for your gadgets or seed a real tree? I’ll go for the latter.

via Gizmodo

Silicon photovoltaic panels are the most expensive solar installations at the moment but things are about to change because IBM claimed they have the technology to reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun’s energy for electricity, down to $2 / W.

The company announced in a press release on Thursday, that using a large lens that concentrates power to around 2300x, they managed to capture a record 230 Watts on a square centimeter of solar cell which was later converted into 70 Watts of usable electric power. The main problem with such a power concentration is cooling down the silicon cell but I guess IBM engineers are experts in doing it, though not for photovoltaics.

“Specifically, the IBM team used a very thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that they applied between the chip and a cooling block. Such layers, called thermal interface layers, transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept low.”

If IBM’s technology turns out to be true and the company is able to cool the solar cell efficiently, concentrated photovoltaic systems may become the cheapest type of solar energy available on the market. This would be a very big step in going mainstream, don’t you think?