Power Switch News

I can't tell you how many times I've heard friends and seen people online dreaming of a simpler life. They talk about how nice it would be to leave it all behind and they post images of cabins in idyllic settings and express their dreams of a simpler lifestyle, free of the stresses of the modern-day rat race. Most of us at one time or another have fantasized about being able to live our lives without having to be shackled to a desk or machine all day, sometimes every day. We experience so man …

Ok, this right here is exciting!  We just love discovering all the ways people are using solar energy and this is one of the coolest we've seen so far!  When graduate students at the University of Virginia heard about the “Change My World in One Minute” competition being sponsored by World Cerebral Palsy Day in 2012, they jumped to the challenge and created something pretty cool: a solar-powered wheelchair! Check it out...you won't want these few minutes back! …

A Radar Inlet Observing System, or RIOS, is an mobile instrument package platform which remotely measures the position of inlet channels and shoals using X-band radar to continuously measure hourly wave conditions and breaking intensity, speed, period, angle and sand position. This information is then used to assess the navigability of inlets and river mouths. RIOS is an autonomous sensor platform using solar panels and an LPG generator to provide the electricity needed to power the rada …

Using the Sun's energy, whether it's solar heat radiation or the tiny molecules of energy called photons which are literally molecules of light, has come to be known generally as “solar power”. There are two types of solar energy, “solar thermal”, and “solar electric”. Solar thermal uses the Sun's heat radiation to concentrate heat for heating or to produce electricity. Solar electric, technically “photovoltaics”, uses photons of light from the Sun to generate direct current, or DC, electr …