Grinstead Electric

As technology becomes more and more interwoven in our lives, this is an innovation that should makes it much easier to stay up and running.

The 'power fabric' that could charge your phone whenever you hold it (and will even give you a power Researchers have developed a way to turn body heat into electricity meaning your mobile will never go dead again. Power Felt can keep your phone going for up to 20 per cent longer just through the power of touch.

The aurora borealis (the Northern Lights) provide a brilliant light shows in the earth's atmosphere. The auroras occur when highly charged electrons from the solar wind interact with elements in the earth's atmosphere. Solar winds stream away from the sun at speeds of about 1 million miles per hour. When they reach the earth, some 40 hours after leaving the sun, they follow the lines of magnetic force generated by the earth's core and flow through the magnetosphere, a teardrop-shaped area of highly charged electrical and magnetic fields.

­As the electrons enter the earth's upper atmosphere, they encounter atoms of oxygen and nitrogen at altitudes from 20 to 200 miles above the earth's surface. The color of the aurora depends on which atom is struck, and the altitude of the meeting.

Green - oxygen, up to 150 miles in altitude
Red - oxygen, above 150 miles in altitude
Blue - nitrogen, up to 60 miles in altitude
Purple/violet - nitrogen, above 60 miles in altitude

All of the magnetic and electrical forces react with one another in constantly shifting combinations. These shifts and flows can be seen as the auroras "dance," moving along with the atmospheric currents that can reach 20,000,000 amperes at 50,000 volts. (In contrast, the circuit breakers in your home will disengage when current flow exceeds 15-30 amperes at 120 volts.)

“There’s no fundamental reason that we know of why we cannot get up to the same efficiencies with CZTS as we do with CIGS,” he says. “It’s one of the key goals for the field for the next year or two.”

Gobbledegook to you? What it means, actually, is a significant jump not so much in efficiency of solar cells, but in the abundance and availability of raw materials used in the manufacture of solar cells.

IBM Breaks Efficiency Mark with Novel Solar Material - Technology Review An IBM-led research teams says that a combination of copper, zinc, tin, and selenium (CZTS) could meet current thin-film efficiencies with more abundant materials.