Solar Meters Make Parking Easier
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By Trenton Daniel, The Miami Herald  Sep. 17--City parking might rank up there with seeing the dentist or paying bills as one of life's bigger hassles.
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Ultracapacitors will prevent the need for jump starts in chilly weather. In Autopia.
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Boston's new high-tech parking meters may be running afoul of Visa and MasterCard rules that prohibit vendors from imposing minimum purchase requirements on their customers.
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By Anonymous  COMBINING WEATHER FACTORS
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Upstart NRG Dock shows off a general-purpose solar panel and battery to power electronics.
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(InfoWorld) - Google on Monday turned on the solar panels covering nearly all the roof space on its corporate campus and announced that its philanthropic arm plans to dole out over $10 million in grants to support hybrid cars. The announcements follow one last week made from Google's offices in Mountain View, California that launched an industry-wide initiative around improving the energy efficiency of PCs and servers. The solar panels, which make up the largest solar installation on a corporate campus in the U.S., produce 1.6 megawatts of energy, enough to supply about one-third of Google's energy use on the campus, said Jacquelline Fuller, a Google spokeswoman. In addition to the solar panels, Google has also unveiled a new employee parking garage where drivers can charge their plug-in cars, powering up their batteries using solar energy. Plug-ins are hybrid cars that users can drive in all-electric mode for around 30 miles before relying on the gas engine. Because automobile manufacturers aren't producing plug-ins, Google is converting hybrid cars into plug-ins. So far, it has converted four Toyota Prius and two Ford Escapes, Fuller said. On its RechargeIT Web site, Google is posting data on the performance of the cars. Eventually, the company plans to have 100 such plug-in cars that employees who take public transportation to the office will be able to use to run errands during their work days as part of a car-sharing program. The announcements about the changes to the corporate campus were part of the launch of the RechargeIT Initiative by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the company, on Monday. The plan includes several efforts mainly around plug-in cars, starting with grants already dispersed to a variety of groups. Google.org has given $200,000 each to the Brookings Institute in support of a conference next year about federal policy to promote plug-in vehicles and CalCars for the continuation of its educational initiatives about the cars. The Electrical Power Research Institute, Plug-In America, Rocky Mountain Institute, and a professor at the University of Delaware all have also received grants for their plug-in car projects. In addition, Google.org has earmarked $10 million for investments in companies and projects that support alternative transportation that reduces the use of fossil fuels and emissions. Later this summer the company plans to formally request proposals for the grant money. Last week, Google hinted at the impending launch of environmental initiatives when it hosted the introduction of theÂ Climate Savers Computing Initiative. That group, which includes a who's-who list of the technology industry such as Intel, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard, is setting a series of standards that will incrementally improve the efficiency of power cords used on PCs and servers through 2010.
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Blog: Google street-level view on maps can help San Franciscans avoid parking tickets by remotely monitoring street signs
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A metal pad that can recharge devices placed on top of it has come to market.
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Shining a light on the solar industry.
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Wellington City Council will this week start replacing 1300 parking meters with 300 pay-and-display machines that can accept payments from mobile phones or credit cards.
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As parking spaces go, it's nice enough. While it's outdoors, the smooth brick paving is immaculate.
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WEARABLE solar panels that help charge mobile phones or music players are likely to come on sale within three years, the New Scientist says.
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Parcxmart Technologies has developed a smart card that can be used for parking that would send coin-operated parking meters the way of pay phones.
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London - European scientists have developed light, flexible solar panels that could be sewn on fabrics and placed on surfaces to charge objects ranging from cellphones and DVD players to batteries.
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Richard Thompson, who began powering his home with solar power in 2001, has found that power is the easy part. Generating interest takes work.
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Researchers are harnessing solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which can be used to make fuels.
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Someday your silicon solar panels may not have to be pure bloods, if CaliSolar can perfect how it isolates impurities.