Can you imagine installing solar panels by rolling them out, as you would do with a carpet? Roll-Array promises exactly that. Their flexible solar power system can be setup in two minutes flat.
 
Talking of solar power systems, if you are in the market for a house do check out Deltec’s solar powered prefab homes, which start at under $100,000. For more adventurous minded folks who prefer living off grid,  there is an amazing teardrop trailer featuring roof mounted photovoltaics, that is worth the mulla.
 
Speaking of building technology, Boeing has just introduced a self-cleaning airplane bathroom that uses UV light to obliterate the creepy crawlies.
 
Where do you think personal transportation technology is headed? If you were to ask BMW that question, it would show you its shape shifting car jammed with technological goodies, including artificial intelligence and autonomous technology that can take to the skies. Currently the Tesla Model S is the hottest zero emission car in the market. Ironically, a Singaporean man has been slapped with $15,000 carbon emission fine for importing one. It turns out Singapore tracks the source of the energy used to charge electric cars. By reading that if you decided to emigrate from Singapore, try Norway. The country has allocated $1 billion so as to build superhighways for bicycles.
 
The future of transportation technology is certainly looking up. Already there is a plan to bring about a working Hyperloop that connects three European cities.
 
In other tech news, Las Vegas has finally decided to go green and will be upgrading all its lights to solar powered LED lamps. I wonder what would happen if Las Vegas were to observe the Earth Hour.
 
 

For the last couple of decades, scientists have since long been grappling with the twin problems of how to efficiently store solar energy for later use and what to do with the carbon dioxide that has been captured and sequestered from coal plants.
 
Scientists working at General Electric may have possibly found answers to both problems at once. They have come up with the idea of using CO2 as a giant battery to hold excess energy. They want to heat salt using a concentrated mirror array like the one that exists at the Ivanpah solar plant in California while the CO2, which is stored underground is cooled to a solid dry state using excess power from the grid.
 
During peak hours, especially when the sun is down, the heated salt can be tapped to warm up the solid CO2 to a state which is neither solid nor gas. With the heated salt entering this "supercritical" state the substance is funneled into a purpose built turbines which will, naturally generate electricity.
 
A prototype made by GE dubbed as the "sunrotor" can generate enough electricity to power 100,000 homes, according to GE.
 
Significantly, this design could also make gas fired power plants more efficient. As per Stephen Sanborn, a senior GE engineer, this design could boost the output of an existing system by more than 50% and at the same time slash the current $250 per megawatt-hour to $100.
 
"It is so cheap because you are not making the energy, you are taking the energy from the sun or the turbine exhaust, storing it and transferring it," said Sanborn. Additionally, this system would also return 68% of the stored energy back to the grid, in comparison to the current 61%in gas-fired power plants.
 
The system that GE has come up with is obviously complex and demands a great deal of expertise in heat transfer technology, refrigeration, chemical engineering, and energy storage, all of which are with GE.

Looking ahead, Sanborn thinks this idea of GE could see commercial reality in as little as 5 to 10 years.
"We're not talking about three car batteries here. The result is a high-efficiency, high-performance renewable energy system that will reduce the use of fossil fuels for power generation," said Sanborn.
 

In efforts that further the realms of reusability, battery manufacturing giant Energizer has broken fresh grounds with the first of its kind disposable batteries from their recycled counterparts. This naturally raises the next logical question of what about their rechargeable cousins?
 
Well, as of today, they are here. Energizer has now introduced new rechargeable AA and AAA batteries made from their former selves.
 
The company has disclosed that 4% of the new rechargeable batteries are sourced from used power packs, including those from hybrid cars. This means the Toyota Prius that you own today could one day potentially power a kid’s toy.
 
Although the current reusability of 4% is a far cry from Energizer’s goal of manufacturing batteries which source 40% of their parts from recycled materials by 2025, it nevertheless is a start in the right direction.
However, keeping the concept of materiality in mind since reusing batteries from your wireless mouse does not make any material impact on the health of the planet, regardless being more ecologically conscious is certainly a step in the right direction.
 
Anything that helps fight e-waste and excessive mining is contributing, in its small way, in saving our precious planet.