Inventions

From Raw Data for News Issues

Cars[edit | edit source]

  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

Energy[edit | edit source]

Batteries[edit | edit source]

  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[edit | edit source]

  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[edit | edit source]

  1. Graphene-Uses.com

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator[edit | edit source]

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[edit | edit source]

  1. 2008 Concentrated PV cells focus sunlight on a small PV cell. From IBM.
  2. 2008 Flexible solar cells.
  3. 2008 Cheaper cells are more efficient at 17% energy conversion. Industry standard is 14% efficiency.
  4. Triple junction cells (gallium arsenide) are 3x more efficient than other PV cells.
  5. 2015-05-13 Solar cells get 34% efficiency.
  6. 2015-10-30 Using solar to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
  7. 2015-12-23 Low cost solar cells from lead via discarded batteries.
  8. 2016-01-06 New record efficiency with dual-junction solar cells: 29.2%.
  9. 2016-01-18 Cheaper solar cells with 20.2% efficiency.
  10. 2010-0716. Nanopillar solar cells absorb 99% of visible light compared to 85% for other cells. (No login needed when I was there.)

Misc[edit | edit source]

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