Southern California’s San Gabriel/Pomona area is about to get a whole lot greener, as the Foothill bus company is upgrading their fleet of 12 with three all-electric buses built by the company Proterra, to the tune of a cool 5.6 million dollars. Impressively, they can fully charge in under 10 minutes, thanks to huge 72- kilowatt-hour battery packs. Let’s hope this is a growing trend across the country.

Read

Enphase Energy’s Environ Smart Thermostat may be the future of home energy monitoring. Owners can use a web-based application on their computers or smartphones to control thermostat controls, and importantly, solar panel energy production. It works through Enphase Energy’s Internet-connected microinverters, which work in conjunction with a a solar panel to convert direct current to household alternating current (instead of using a large centralized inverter). So it’s really the first system to allow you, the homeowner, to both produce and maintain the energy use in your home. Imagine being able to create and monitor enough green energy to power your entire home  – now that would be awesome. Pricing for the Environ Smart Thermostat is currently unavailable.

The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered single person plane that uses 12,000 solar cells to achieve flight, is in the middle of its first 24 hour flight attempt. If successful, it could pave the way for using solar energy as a viable energy source for long distance flights. The plane, which has had three other successful test flights before, will hit a max altitude of 27,900 feet. Let’s hope it makes it. Best of all, you can watch a live webcast of its flight here.

Read

Lexon’s line of aesthetically pleasing bamboo and bio-plastic gadgets is easy on the environment and cool on the eyes.  These solar powered and renewable energy mini-appliances will look positively earth awesome in your place.  No word on pricing or availability.  The LED solar flashlight is pictured above.

Crank-Powered Radio

Solar Powered Calculator

Solar-Powered Clock

Green energy is all well and good, it’s just finding enough of it to make it viable.  The Pelamis Wave Power project is the real deal and has the potential to power hundreds of thousands of homes.  The snake like tubes float in the ocean, fastened to the sea floor using cables, and capture the waves energy converting it through hydraulic pumps and into usable electricity.

Currently Portugal has 3 of these machines in their waters producing 2.25W of energy, enough to power just over 2,000 homes.  They have plans to add 22 more, which should power about 15,000 homes.  Combined with wind and solar power the potential for renewable energy is almost unlimited.

[Inhabitat]