Clean Energy | The Ferris Files

The Weekly: Light Bulbs that Last Forever, Glaciers that Don’t, Solar Planes that Try

This week’s cleantech and sustainability news from around the Matter Network. […]

The Weekly: Obama Drills, the Grid Lobby Powers Up, ConAgra Sees the Light

Top News: This week, President Obama startled both his allies and critics with a plan to permit drilling for oil off the Southern Atlantic states and in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile the Secret Service, in a stroke of karmic justice, denied the president’s request for a hybrid limo. […]

A Visit to India’s Largest Wind Plantation

At the southernmost tip of India lies the Muppandal Wind Farm, the biggest source of wind energy in India and one of the largest in Asia. I drove through it by accident a few days ago and and can report that Muppandal is as curious and multilayered as India itself. […]

How India Puts Itself on a Power Diet

On a recent trip to India, I came to understand one reason why India’s per-capita electricity consumption is 15 times less than that in the United States. […]

Three Ideas in Wind Power That Might Actually Fly

The most visible class of finalists were those with ambitious plans for “kite power” — harnessing the powerful and consistent winds that blow high off the Earth’s deck. […]

The Wind Turbine’s Tiny Cousin

Why is it that many solar panels are the size of a hallway rug, while a typical wind turbine is the size of an office building? I’ve always wondered whether we would ever learn to harvest wind on a smaller, simpler scale. Turns out we can. […]

The Treadle Pump: An Exercise in Productivity

Farmers in Bangladesh have long had an irrigation problem. Water is often plentiful in ponds or in the shallow water table underfoot, but getting that water onto the crops is no easy task. A solution has appeared in the form of the treadle pump, a sort of Stairmaster that pumps water. […]

A Refrigerator Powered by the Sun

The very idea of a solar refrigerator is a contradiction: Use the hot sun to keep things cold. How could such an oxymoron possibly work? […]

The Thermoacoustic Engine, Explained

The thermoacoustic engine is one of the weirdest forms of renewable energy I’ve heard of, and I had to have it explained to me several times before I started to get it. No description I read on the Internet made any sense. After consulting with John Barrie, an inventor who is designing a low-cost model for use in rural Guatemala, I created a description the rest of us could understand. […]

Energy Crowds the House

The University of Arizona's Water Wall

Near the Smithsonian building in Washington, D.C. stands a house with a wall of Coke-bottle plastic. Sandwiched between two layers of plastic is water. The wall’s surface conserves heat and also plays tricks with the light, so you can’t help but reach out and touch it.

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