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Category: sustainability – Page 545

Alphabet’s Makani Tests Wind Energy Kites In The North Sea IEEE Spectrum

The idea is simple: Send kites or tethered drones hundreds of meters up in the sky to generate electricity from the persistent winds aloft. With such technologies, it might even be possible to produce wind energy around the clock. However, the engineering required to realize this vision is still very much a work in progress.

Dozens of companies and researchers devoted to developing technologies that produce wind power while adrift high in the sky gathered at a conference in Glasgow, Scotland last week. They presented studies, experiments, field tests, and simulations describing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of various technologies collectively described as airborne wind energy (AWE).

In August, Alameda, Calif.-based Makani Technologies ran demonstration flights of its airborne wind turbines—which the company calls energy kites—in the North Sea, some 10 kilometers off the coast of Norway. According to Makani CEO Fort Felker, the North Sea tests consisted of a launch and “landing” test for the flyer followed by a flight test, in which the kite stayed aloft for an hour in “robust crosswind(s).” The flights were the first offshore tests of the company’s kite-and-buoy setup. The company has, however, been conducting onshore flights of various incarnations of their energy kites in California and Hawaii.

Equity Group kick starts a 35 million trees planting campaign

You can protest about the Environment all you want, while some of us actually plant trees to heal it. Kenya is one country that has been instrumental in planting trees. Wangari Maathai had a coffin made of hyacinth, showing how real she was even in death. Ethiopia recently set a record planting trees. Some people talk, while others do. One Kenyan woman’s organization planted over 51 million trees, and still counting. #BeTheDifference

Equity Group has announced plans to implement an ambitious project to plant 35 million trees across the country within a year.

In an effort to conserve the environment, Equity has partnered with Kenya Forest Service (KFS) to promote Farm Forestry Initiatives.

The initiative is aligned to Kenya’s Big Four Agenda on Food Security and Youth Employment.

For years, scientists assumed mitochondria worked like household batteries: energy from chemical reactions inside a cell

Researchers now have shown that they are instead made up of many individual bioelectric units generating energy- like a Tesla Battery. https://embopress.org/doi/10.15252/embj.2018101056&h=AT3…nuqUCir7ik

https://bit.ly/2J4Tkho&h=AT1YJICM5AliiHbU1dzQWsUOBj2Pv4x…AZG5eAMbU–\-\DuoKFZH11ht3gbqMTwxduJkRJYCYZr7uE11trWGGCm-ecSp9kMw

Predicting fruit harvest with drones and artificial intelligence

Outfield Technologies is a Cambridge-based agri-tech start-up company which uses drones and artificial intelligence, to help fruit growers maximise their harvest from orchard crops.

Outfield Technologies’ founders Jim McDougall and Oli Hilbourne have been working with Ph.D. student Tom Roddick from the Department’s Machine Intelligence Laboratory to develop their technology capabilities to be able to count the blossoms and apples on a tree via drones surveying enormous orchards.

“An accurate assessment of the blossom or estimation of the harvest allows growers to be more productive, sustainable and environmentally friendly”, explains Outfield’s commercial director Jim McDougall.

Tesla Model Y: beautiful new bright red prototype spotted at Gigafactory 1

Tesla is rolling out more Model Y prototypes for testing and we are getting to see the new electric crossover in new colors, including now a beautiful new bright red prototype spotted at Gigafactory 1.

Earlier this month, a Model Y prototype was spotted being tested around Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto and since then, there has been a more steady stream of Model Y sightings.

This week, we reported on a bunch of Tesla Model Y vehicles with new wheels spotted on a carrier near the factory and later, a beautiful new Model Y Midnight Silver prototype was spotted in Fremont.

Watch Tesla with ‘Bioweapon Defense’ air system drive through scary wildfires

Tesla’s air filtration system with “Bioweapon Defense Mode” is proving useful for the owners affected by the current wildfires in California.

Watch an owner using the system while going through a hellish-looking road with scary air quality.

With the Model X, Tesla put a lot of effort into developing a more powerful air filtering system in order to not only contribute to the reduction of local air pollution with electric vehicles, but also to reduce the direct impact of air pollution on the occupants of its vehicles.

This City Bench Absorbs More Air Pollution Than A Grove Of Trees

London is the latest city to gain a city bench with the ability to absorb as much pollution as a small forest. The vertical garden, which doubles as a bench, is Green City Solutions’ CityTree. Using a vertical installation of moss, the bench can absorb as much pollution as 275 trees in 1 percent of the space.

The World Health Organization estimates that 7 million premature deaths occur each year from air pollution, making it one of the largest environmental health risks in the world.

It’s a crate motor, only electric, for EV conversions from Electric GT

Three years ago, an outfit called Electric GT (EGT), led by Eric Hutchison, hit the green tech radar by converting a 1978 Ferrari 308 GTS to an electric car. Out went the mid-mounted 2.9-liter V8 making 280 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque, in went 48 lithium-ion batteries powering three AC51 HPEVS electric motors that cumulatively produced 465 hp and 330 lb-ft. The company’s relocated from San Diego to Chatsworth, California, and is back on the scopes at Green Car Reports with what it calls an Electric Crate Motor. The innovation repackages the ICE crate motor methodology into a system making EV conversions easier for the weekend enthusiast. EGT promises a plug-and-play system with “high performance and near zero maintenance,” having packaged its one- and two-motor systems into a “motor block” and peripherals that look just like an internal combustion engine.

The block includes everything necessary for the swap to electric except the batteries and the mounting bracket, meaning” motor(s), controller(s), charger(s), sensors, relays and computer systems.” EGT has already designed a number of mounting brackets, and can design others to custom specs. According to the web site, the package is “pre-engineered, pre-built, and pre-tested,” so installation takes five steps: Bolt in the block, install the wiring harness and cooling system, connect the AC and DC power leads with the OEM-level touch-safe connectors, and route the internal cooling pump to a heat exchanger. Voila, silent running. Every e-crate motor comes with an installation manual, EGT provides tech support, and auxiliaries like electric AC compressors and heaters can be optioned.

Elon Musk: Tesla Pickup looks like ‘an armored personnel carrier from the future’

Elon Musk gave another hint about the Tesla Pickup truck design, which he now calls ‘Cybertruck’. The CEO says that it looks like ‘an armored personnel carrier from the future.’

The CEO shocked some when he said that the Tesla Pickup Truck will have a ‘really futuristic-like cyberpunk Blade Runner’ design without explaining what that meant other than saying that ‘it won’t be for everyone’.

On top of the comments not being clear, Musk didn’t really help anyone when he released a very cryptic teaser image for the pickup truck during the Model Y unveiling earlier this year.

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