As our dependence on fossil fuels will be reduced, we will need new ways of harnessing renewable energies. Actually, there are lots of ways to get energy – wind, solar, wave and tidal will replace oil in the future. The problem is that we have to find efficient and cheaper options to get power from the sun or from the wind.

Home Energy is a Swedish company which has designed a new wind turbine that is very silent and it’s based on six curved rotor blades attached to a rotor hub at both ends. The new and futuristic wind turbine is called Energy Ball and when it rotates it looks like a sphere and it creates a wind flow which resembles the rapids of a river – this wind flow pattern is called the Venturi effect.

Thanks to the Venturi Effect, the Energy Ball is more efficient aerodynamically as it also catches low-winds to generate electricity. Although the costs seem to be cheaper than for a conventional wind turbine, for the moment we don’t know when Home Energy will start manufacturing and when they will deliver the first Energy Ball wind turbines. Read More…

Now here’s a story that makes me feel profoundly unaccomplished: a 12 year old boy in Beaverton, Oregon recently developed a new type of 3D solar cell that makes other solar cells look inefficient by comparison. William Yuan’s 3D cell can absorb both visible and UV light. According to his calculations, solar panels equipped with his 3D cells..

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