Have a vision for our clean energy future? Students (grads or undergrad) here is your opportunity to prove it! MIT is holding a clean energy business plan competition with a grand prize of $200,000. This will be a great opportunity to get a tremendous amount of attention on your brilliant ideas! Head over to http://www.mitcep.org/ to find out more.

I can’t belive it is already time for Earth Hour again, the years are just flying by. Earth Hour is a world wide event where for one hour from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM  your local time you shut off all your lights to show your support for the Earth. This year the WWF is hoping for a billion people to participate and put in their vote supporting action to protect the Earth. They plan to present the results of how many people put in a vote to protect the environment  to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. Be sure to sign up at earthhour.org so that your vote is counted and to get more information.



Earth Hour 2009 by WWF – Sign up for Earth Hour!

This compact device called the YoGen Max from a company called Easy Energy allows you to charge up your laptop anywhere in the world with the power of your foot. If you are at an airport with no outlets in sight or on a plane and you don’t mind looking a bit silly and getting weird looks this could be perfect for you. More importantly this can keep your laptop going in rural parts of the world where you won’t look silly at all foot pumping your laptop.

Folded up it is small enough to fit into most laptop cases and easily go with you anywhere. The YoGen Max produces 60-80 watts of power when in operation and when your foot and leg cramp up  it can also hold 12 rechargeable AA batteries to keep the power flowing. Easy Energy claims this is enough to keep a typical laptop going.

This isn’t for sale quite yet, but they say they have a working protype and are starting to take orders from distributors. I also don’t see any information about how much this retail for, but hopefully it will be reasonably affordable. This portable charger could help many people that need power on the go.

For more information head over to Easy Energy’s site.

Here’s a video demonstration of the YoGen Max.

This is a great discussion on  KJZZ about renewable energy in Arizona with Greater Phoenix Economic Council president and CEO Barry Broome and Arizona Corporation Commission chairwoman Kris Mayer.

( Phoenix, AZ ) KJZZ’s Here and Now examined Arizona’s renewable energy policies with Corporation Commission Chair Kris Mayes and Barry Broome, President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. Economics Professor Robert Michaels explained why he is opposed to renewable energy standards. The show also touched on the potential of wind power.

http://kjzz.org/news/arizona/archives/200901/hereandnow-renewableenergy

Renewable energy such as wind and limitations of the U.S. powergrid  have been in the news lately. It seems the power grid isn’t setup for this technology. Here’s a New York Times article about this here. The following press release details some of ASU’s plans to research ways to expand the grid to support this.

ASU to play role in crafting power systems to expand use of renewable-energy sources

TEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State University researchers will help create a framework for re-engineering the nation’s power grid to make it adaptable to renewable electric-energy technologies such as solar and wind power.

A team of faculty members in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and School of Sustainability are part of a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center formed to develop technology to transform the United States’ centralized power grid into a “smart grid” that will be able to store and distribute energy produced from wind farms, solar photovoltaic panels, fuel cells and other alternative energy sources.

“The goal is to enable greater use of renewable energy sources to make us a more green-energy-based society,” says Gerald Heydt, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

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