Summer in Japan

Its been a while since I’ve posted anything here…

Google buzz and reader are to way to share the news but i guess to create news it would not hurt to use a good old blog post.

I’ve been in Japan for about 5 months now. I’ve been studying Japanese in a community center near by. Its quite fun, I can read and write hiragana a little, でもまだじょうずじゃありません.

I’m enjoying been in Japan quite a bit. I’m staying kind of in the country side near Tokyo/Yokohama. There are many old houses and farms.

Its not uncommon to buy vegetables directly from small producers who leave them unattended with the price next to them. The climate here is tropical so its very hot and humid and it rains a lot.

Sometimes its so hot i have to take 3-4 showers a day. Thats one of the reasons I came up with the “idea” to collect rain water and use the sun to purify it (trough distillation) so i came up with a small prototype which i call the water panel The cool thing about it is that it can keep the water evenly distributed even when it is tilted at an angle.

Japan is quite up there with  green energy appliances which they usually label ECO. I’ve uploaded couple of pictures of my prototype, a Solar water heater and a roof mounted Sollar PV pannels. I have not seen roof mounted Solar personal water purification system in Japan so far.

Bloom Energy seems cool. The article at Mashable gives some more details.

Solar in Las Vegas

I was in Las Vegas for a while and decided to upload some pictures of my home renovation solar experiments. This is a 500 feet black hose that is connected to an old water heater. The hot water should circulate using D5 Solar circulation pump. My goal eventually is to concentrate solar energy with computer controlled mirrors or by pointing an old C-Band satellite towards the sun.

It would be cool if one can find funding for organizing green development camps. For example a group of enthusiasts can get together once a year and dedicate 7 days to get their ideas into a working prototype. A demo session at the end should show the final  result. The funding is necessary for materials, travel and accommodation. Videos and pictures can be published so that the joy is shared

Algae take over beaches in northern France

I wonder if any company will be doing a partnership with the French government to use the algae as fuel. My understanding is that one can press algae and produce oil pretty much the way olive oil is produced. I can picture an old water powered mill pressing algae instead of grinding wheat and producing algae oil and fertilizer. Ahh, i guess it might not be as easy as one may think.

Today I read an interesting article about a new line of electric buses that uses ultracapacitors. These buses are now operational in Shanghai. It’s a beautiful and simple idea that results in energy saving and no need to use wires.

Here’s an interesting product from the Netherlands – a LED-based light bulb that consumes 6 watts of power and can replace a 60-watt bulb and has a life of 25 years. As the founder of the company says (who’s a grandchild of Philips original founder), this can have a much bigger effect on power saving than solar panels and other methods to conserve. You can read the CNET aritcle here.

A “new” way to store green energy

If you’re planing to produce electricity off-the-grid you may need to think about a way to store electricity until the time you actually need it. The first thing that comes to mind is batteries. Unfortunately deep cycle batteries are expensive and like many other batteries  their power reduces with time.  I think that flywheels have a great potential of becoming the short-time (6h-24h)  energy storage devices of future.  I’m quite exited about building a prototype based on the Top toy and “Bedini motor”.

Here are several companies that manufacture UPS using flywheels:
http://www.pentadyne.com
http://www.activepower.com

http://www.beaconpower.com/index.asp