Inventions

Cars

 * 1) India's Tata Nano the $6000usd car. It isn't sold in the US because it doesn't meet US safety regulations, which will increase the price. Wikipedia entry.
 * 2) $6800 Elio gets 84mpg

Batteries

 * 1) 2015-0601. Batteriser extends battery life 800%. Batterroo, the fake battery extender. It sounded promising but didn't work out. The new part of this idea was to miniaturize a voltage booster. Nothing more.
 * 2) Joule Thief

Fuel Cells

 * 1) Bloom energy uses natural gas to make electricity. Major customers listed here. Wikipedia article here. The Bloom Box can use a wide variety of sources of hydrocarbons, from natural gas to liquid or gas hydrocarbons. The capital cost of a Bloom Box is $.08-.10 per kwh, compared to $.09 per kw in my area.

Graphene

 * 1) Graphene-Uses.com

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
Generate electricity from radiation. Problems: theft of radioactive material, accidental exposure to material, power slowly decreases over time, low watts per kg, about 1.3 to 5.2 watts/kg.

1. Wikipedia RTG.

Solar

 * 1) Nanopillar solar cells absorb 99% of visible light compared to 85% for other cells. (No login needed when I was there.)
 * 2) 2008 Concentrated PV cells focus sunlight on a small PV cell. From IBM.
 * 3) 2008 Flexible solar cells.
 * 4) 2008 Cheaper cells are more efficient at 17% energy conversion. Industry standard is 14% efficiency.
 * 5) Triple junction cells (gallium arsenide) are 3x more efficient than other PV cells.
 * 6) 2015-05-13 Solar cells get 34% efficiency.
 * 7) 2015-10-30 Using solar to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
 * 8) 2015-12-23 Low cost solar cells from lead via discarded batteries.
 * 9) 2016-01-06 New record efficiency with dual-junction solar cells: 29.2%.
 * 10) 2016-01-18 Cheaper solar cells with 20.2% efficiency.

Misc

 * 1) Project Ara from Google. Modular open source cell phone.