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With fuel prices reaching epic levels this summer, here are some of the more interesting proposals cropping up to help solve the energy crisis.
Smart Bike
A new self-serve bicycle-rental service called Smart Bike is launching in the nation’s capital. Docking stations for the bicycles will be placed at 10 locations around Washington, DC. To use the bikes, people will have to buy a $40 annual membership. Subscribers will get an ID card that they pass in front of the reader on a docking station. The station will then unlock one of the bikes so it can be used. The bikes may be returned to any of the docking stations, and may be used for up to 48 hours at a time. If a bike is not returned in that timeframe, the subscriber will be billed $200 for the bike.
Solar Power Paint
The Materials Research Center at Swansea University, in Wales, has announced that they can collect energy from the sun with paint. They claim they could produce 4,500 gigawatts of electricity from the 100 million square meters of steel building cladding that their partner, Corus Colours, manufactures per year. The panels would also qualify for green tax credits, making them even more cost effective.
Pulse Plug
Enerpulse claims its Pulstar spark plugs will provide up to three additional mpg and 5 percent more acceleration for the Toyota Prius. These powerful new plugs store the incoming electrical energy from the ignition system and release the stored energy in a pulse of power. Instead of the 50 watts of peak power typical of other spark plugs, pulse plugs deliver up to 10 times more peak electric power, which lights the fuel and burns it more efficiently.
Dress for Success
Want to make your own electricity? It is now as easy as wearing one of Amanda Parkes’ Piezing dresses, which converts your natural motions to electrical energy. The dresses are made of piezoelectric material, which generates electricity that is then stored as voltage in a small battery that can be used to run devices such as music players.
Parkes’ work is cur-rently on display as part of a show called The San Francisco Exploratorium 2nd Skin: Imaginative Designs in Digital & Analog Clothing. Parkes is also the co-founder of Bodega Algae LLC, which is developing algae as a biomass energy source that could potentially replace high-carbon fossil fuels. Certain strains of microalgae contain a high percentage of oil, making them more efficient than other crops to make biomass for biofuel. Bodega is about developing an efficient way to grow the algae by managing light distribution.
