Solar energy: solar film, the solar panel of the future?

The future might be thin film

The developement of technologies is accelerating at a high rate. Where only a short 30 years ago solar panels were largely unheard of and considered highly advanced technology, the first generation is already outdated and the second generation will soon follow suit. Many people have started their own solar farm, helped along by government stimulation programs and the enormous rise in the cost of fossil fuels. They have formed co-operative efforts and use smartgrids to share the energy thus collected off their rooftops and in sharing they have found that they can be selfsufficient much easier than when everyone has their own closed circuit. So sharing is the name of the game, with smart computer programmes measuring the relative use of everyone connected to the smartgrid. Still for a lot of people solar panels are prohibitively expensive. The market for renewable energy resources is ready for the next breakthrough in technology making gathering solar energy available to even low income homes and families. And it might just be thin film.

Red light, blue light, all can be used

Thin film is a layer thin as can be, we're talking nanometers here. I don't pretend to know everything about the technologie that produces these thing films, but it's the same type of process that I wrote about in the blog I did on Magnetron sputtering. A thin film has to have certain properties that allow it to convert speed of the sun's fotons into energy. Now the classic first and second generation solar cells use only the red light out of the whole spectrum that the sun sends down. Red light is less energetic than blue light, but less blue light reaches the earths serface, so that sorta balances out. The idea now, with these thin film technologies is to create layers of thin film in which both the red light energy and the blue light energy can be converted into useable energy. This would effectively increase the output of solar panels manifold. A single layer thin film could already mimic the results of the (relatively expensive) solar panels, but a multilayer thin film is expected to increase efficiency enormously.

Imagining the future now...

Thin film can be mass produced, simply, effectively and for all kinds of purposes including solar energy. You can go to the hardware store and buy solar film for your windows (they're so thin that they are see through anyway, so why not put them on all your windows or at least the ones that get the most sunlight). Then you plug your household appliances into your windows and of course, because we've already learned the advantages of sharing, we build a smartgrid for every office building, every block of housing. Every empty building is turned into a powerplant by covering it with thin solar film from Vergason for instance and because it's so cheap, we cut our cost of living radically (incidentally ending the world wide financial crisis we're now in the middle of)

I don't know the particulars, but wireless electricity seems to be the next necessary step to connect people without needing a world of infrastructure and wires going everywhere. Because of all this interdependent technology we're also getting to know our neighbors better and because of this we're investing in each other more, becoming less dependent on the money grabbers at the utility companies and at the same time let's also get smart and share our wifi instead of letting the telecom companies bleed us dry. The future then finds us interconnected on a global scale while being interdependent on a local scale. Now there's a twist on globalization!

Vacuum coatings as a way to improve durability

Coating for all your vehicle parts

Whether you're a hobbyist or a professional builder of bikes, trikes and other sporty vehicles, the best part about the designing process is getting yourself a custom paint job. For the ultimate in durable and beautiful but above all thin coating there is nothing that can beat vacuum coating. Instead of relying on paints and airbrush systems that can be tricky and have the risk of chipping the paint unless you're having it done by a (high paid) professional who layers on 5 ultra thin coats of paint, you can have the machines set to the finest details and layer on just one ultra thin layer that is more durable than anything your professional airbrush artist can. There's just no comparison.

What thin coatings make possible

Imagin being able to create a coat as thin as a few molecules and using it in aerospace technology. You could significantly reduce the amount of paint needed on an airplane which reduces the weight dramatically. On a jumbo-jet this would save on fuel expenditure, but in sleek fighter jets it could mean the difference between life and death as the lighter the plane, the more possibilities, the easier turns will be.

Refurbishing guns can really create a super fine coat that is resistant to the heat and other specifications that go with guns and gunpowder. A very specialized job that requires the utmost of care.

In aeronautics it could eventually mean space becomes more accessible to us. In lifting a spaceship out of our gravitational field every ounce counts.

In automotives it could help save energy in the same way, but the application can be used to lay a coating on the windows helping prevent being blinded by a low hanging sun, or even, in the future, garnering solar energy to feed the cars electrical systems.

Less use of materials, in particular the solvents that are so damaging to our environment that are generally used in the classic paintjob means we are doing less harm to our planet. As such it's a great way of caring for our environment as well. As you can tell, I'm a big fan of vacuum coating.

The process of vacuum coating

You can choose all dimensions of the coating, ranging from thickness, complexity to color and shinyness. You can have a metalized coating or just layer of several molecules thickness of your favorite coloring agent. The possibilities are endless.

It's not just vehicles that you can customize in this manner. You can apply the coating on virtually any object. A great gift item is a metalized babyshoe. Art objects can be coated top to bottom to create a really shiny finish that can add to beauty of the object you've given shape. Another area where these coatings can be instrumental is the finish of medical equipment which needs to be strong, easy to clean and durable.

Buying coating equipment

Another option, if you're in manufacturing is to buy the coating equipment itself and have it set to create your particular coating for your specialized manufacturing item. Vergason sells the equipment for such operations as well als delivering the finest custom coating finishes on demand. Wether you're in sporting goods (weightlifting components) or the novelty industry (like the babyshoes or winners prizes, cups, etc.) or you're in the automotive industry (think about the shiny parts of the car, like the lights, the chrome). The finest, thinnest coat can be ordered at Vergason or made by your own sputtering systems.

Social responsibility in business: Ice cream and more!

It's not all about the $$$$ anymore

In todays world owning a business is not just about the bottom line anymore. Or at least, at the bottom line, it's not just dollars being counted. Environmental impact, social treatment of your stakeholders and providing opportunities for personal growth to your staff are counted equally as much when you're company is rated for social responsibility.

Creative names for icecream: Chocolate Therapy

Two Scoops

It all started I guess with Ben & Jerry's icecream. Two idealist hippies who didn't set out to change the world really, it just happened that they were doing what needed to be done. What they were about is not just making a buck, but actually helping their community. Getting their brownies from local ladies and making sure their chocolate wasn't harvested by child-slaves was a matter of course to them as well as making the best tasting icecream in the world. Somehow, against all odds, these two idealist created a multimillion dollar brand.

It's not just about the flavor

Sure, the icecream is good, some of the best ever, but only some off. That oddly named Haagen Dazs is at least equal in taste and well 31 flavors have some really good icecream as well. The thing that makes people buy B&J's icecream is the fact that they get to feel like they are making a contribution to something good in the world. For a couple of dollars they get to feel like they're saving the rainforest, promoting peace and helping a third world child go to college. What they're selling is not icecream, it's a whole new way of looking at the world.

Now, business has forever changed under the influence of these and others such hippies (think Google and don't be evil) and if you're going to promote your brand name you must do so in a way that reflects your brands responsible and environmentally concious way of doing things. A gift bag from Holden Bags might be just the way to communicate that. These bags are durable and when imprinted with your logo they say: This business cares about the environment enough to give durable stuff instead of less than useful plastic items that fill our wastebaskets.

Wine tote

Making the world a little better

For tradeshows or festive occasions, buying these tote bags bulk is made easy by the quick service at Holden Bags. Your design can be uploaded at their website and you can get a quote from them in under 15 minutes. One of my favorite bags is the cooler-bag, a supermarket necessity if you don't live real close to the store. It keeps your frozen items frozen untill you get home. Giving that away with some Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia icecream in it would be a great parting gift after a long day at a tradeshow. Or perhaps the wine-tote is the better choice, of course stocked with some fine California organic wine, red and white please.

Now, I'm not comparing the impact of reusable tote bags to the impact of Ben & Jerries icecream, but not all of us are meant to change the world so profoundly as those two did. Instead, we get to do our little bit for the environment and for social responsibility. We get to eat the icecream instead of making it and we get to choose environmentally friendly, reusable totebags for our next event. We do our part in making this world just a little better, one scoop or one bag at a time.

The sustainability of the vacuum elevator

The idea is simple enough

Years ago, in my local bank, I've already seen an elevator of the vacuum type. It wasn't a freight or people elevator, but rather it was meant to send pieces of paper from one place in the bank to the next. The medium was air. It was a contraption with see through plastic tubing and ingenious little egg-shaped containers that had rubber around the sides. The teller would put the paper (usually cheques or money) inside the little container, open a little door in the tubing, shove the thing in and press a button. Air then streamed into the tubing and pushed the little nestegg along the tubing. Possibly a vacuum was created along the other side of the tubing as well, i'm not clear on that.

With the technological advancement in computing, money became more and more obsolete, at least in it's paper and coin shape. Nowadays payments at my local bank can be done from anywhere with my smartphone and/ or computer and there's no need for a tubing system at the bank as for the most part, there's no more paper being shuffled around. I was surprised therefore, to see that in the US this system is still largely in place in drive through teller banking. A lot more of money transactions in the US are appearantly still in cash.

Anyway, the idea of shuttling little eggshapes with content in them though vacuumpowered tubing is in a nutshell the idea behind residential vacuum elevators. The residential elevator manufacturers make an inhome elevator a possibility for anyone who needs it. No longer the bulky seats that are hoisted up a flight of stairs, instead an elegant vertical tubing system that hardly takes up any inhome space at all.

Less materials, less dependence on fuels

The first way in which the vacuum elevators beat the classic staircase chair hoisting system as well as the traditional elevator for in home use is the use of lighter materials, less materials. Less bulk means less dependence upon materials that have to be produced and transported. This is of benefit for the environment but it also adds to the possibilities of putting an elevator in the home. The expensive alternatives are hard to install, difficult to realize and simply take up a lot of space, most notably the motor-house takes up a lot of space in the basement. (if you have a basement, if not, the installation of an elevator used to be nigh impossible.) But there's more: the actual shaft of the elevator, the counterweight mechanism, everything takes up space.

The alternative, a chair being hoisted alongside the staircase usually makes the staircase itself difficult to navigate for people actually taking the stairs. There's an unsightly aspect to it as well, a heavy chain pulling the chair upwards. And then there is the comfort, or rather the discomfort of the passenger to consider. If you're in a wheelchair, in order to go up the stairs you have to get yourself out of the wheelchair, into the seat, buckle up and frankly a ride in one of these is rather scary! Then upstairs you would need either another wheelchair or someone needs to bring you your wheelchair from down below. All in all a difficult and wearing process during which you lose you independence. Many people who live with the fact that they are in a wheelchair fiercely seek independence for as much as possible. Not to mention the cost of a nurse or other professional to get you from one floor to the next in your own home.

Much better than is the comfort of a vacuum elevator, which comes in different sizes, large enough to accomodate up to 4 people and certainly large enough to hold a wheelchair. It doesn't require any more space in the home than the actualy shape of the elevator (which is by nature round) and it's a see-through tubing that is both esthetically pleasing and space saving. In it you zoom up to the next floor (up to 4 floors) in comfort and style.

Tools are always sharp with ceramic coating

Some tools don't wear

Many tools are just fine without any protection whatsover. They'll stay sharp almost forever and look as shiny as the day you bought them for years on end.

Those are the tools that rarely get used, that are just sitting pretty in your toolshed while you and your mates play poker and have a beer. For the rest of us, tools are something that get's used a lot and most tools, in particular anything with a sharp edge on it tends to be subject to a lot of wear and tear. Protecting these tools would mean a serious step forward in the enjoyment of the use of sharp tools.

Now there's some new technologies out there that can actually make this come true! It's called vapor deposition and it's a way of depositing a ultra thin coating of a hard material onto almost any surface. The process is a specialty of the folks down at Vergason and they cater to the needs of a variety of industries, from the medical to the molding industry. With their vacuum coating process they can coat pretty much anything without having to heat the objects very much which allows them to coat metal objects without having to be concerned about the shape or hardness of the material changing.

You've probably seen these types of instruments in the kitchen. Kitchen knifes that won't wear out, made with a ceramic edge. Ring a bell? Yes, these things actually do work and they do stay sharp for a long long time.

How do ceramic coatings work?

One of the cutting tools we're all familiar with that has a hard ceramic-like coating sit's right in your mouth. Yes, I am talking about teeth. We all know that the teeth are reasonably soft and boney on the inside and if it weren't for the thin layer of dental enemal on them we would all lose our teeth very early on in life. The thin layer of something hard protects them from harm and gives them that nice, clean bite.

In much the same way putting a ceramic coating on, let's say a sawblade, can keep it from becoming dull very fast. A necessary innovation in particular since cutting the new MDF type of materials (which is really hard pressed cardboard) can dull an ordinary sawblade in an awful hurry. Any housewife worth her salt can tell you that cutting paper or cardboard with a pair of scissors will make the scissors unfit to cut anything else with them. This is why people have special scissors for fabrics. These are not so much special scissors, but basically they are scissors which are never to be used for cutting paper. Cutting only fabric keeps them sharp for a long while.

What all can you get a ceramic coating on?

Anything that is sharp and meant to stay that way is in principle a good candidate for a ceramic coating like the ones they make at Vergason. This goes way beyond your toolshed and into the medical field as well. In addition the ceramic coatings are heat resistant and for want of a better word they "glide" better. You've all seen seamstresses cut through swatches of cloth hardly even moving the scissors? Well a good seamstress would simply love a ceramic coated scissor because it would "glide" through the material with very little friction. Because of these special qualities ceramic coatings are also useful in the injection molding industry.

Not only is it good for cutting through wood, cloth or paper (or MDF) but it is esspecially useful in cutting though tougher materials like metal. Used on drills, saws, taps and a myriad of other instruments it helps prevent damage to the tools and keeps things sharp and easy to work with.

How to let your old clunker go (and why)

Selling or giving away

These are difficult times and a bit of extra cash can go a long way. The financial crisis has been around long enough to clear out most of our savings and put our family finances past it's stretching point. To make ends meet we have to find ways of cashing in on stuff we've gathered over the years and that are perhaps less than useful in todays economy and that can be converted to cash, like that old clunker sitting in your driveway gathering rust. There's a lot of things that still hold value to others sitting around your home. Selling them to family car buyers can be a great way of simplifying your life and getting your clutter back in control.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

In Europe today the trend is to arrange things without money. Trading and giving away things is a good way of bypassing the flailing money system and it helps to recycle and reuse things. One of the more succesful sites in the Netherlands is “free stuff” where people can list things they are done with, like furniture that is no longer in use and people can come and pick this up for free. Doing it for free has the advantage that a things find their ways to peoples home. In spite of the crisis in money, people still own a lot of things and rather than paying for storage or for having it removed it's an easy and fun way to get to know people and lessening the pressure of garbage on our environment.

Recycling can be profitable as well. That old wreck that is cluttering up your driveway or garage can be sold a a profit. This way you can convert something that is a hindrance to you into something that can enhance your life, like cash. Selling your car can be done profitably at http://www.familycarbuyers.com/

Ask and you shall be given

There's also a trend, coupled with the free stuff initiatives that is called: “Ask for it”. People who dare to ask for what they need have a much greater chance of getting it than those who don't, is the simple filosofie behind the idea. There's a great many things that go from hand to hand because of people asking for it. And it's not all just junk either, I've seen people ask for Ipads and planetickets and get them, because someone had what they were looking for and didn't need it anymore.

Giving away stuff you're done with is also a way of contributing to a better standard of living for people who are down on their luck. In the past few months I've gotten a fat-boy from someone who no longer needed it and I've gotten rid of several cookbooks which I don't need because I allready know how to cook. I've gotten a wonderful stylish lamp and an end table from some nice people who didn't want it anymore and I've given away a bicycle that needed just a bit of repair, like new tires and a new lock.

Spiritual cleansing

Spiritually it's a good thing for the soul to clean out stuff that you don't need. A good practise in letting go, letting go of your attachment to stuff. There's a classic piece by American comedian George Carlin about stuff. Giving up our attachment to stuff is a very buddhist, new age, spiritual cleansing sorta thing which means that George was probably way ahead of his time on that point.

Some things have intrinsic value though and although giving stuff away is good for the soul, making money is also a concern. In particular getting some cash for your junk car can help meet the bills. There's a lot of components to a car that can and should be reused and selling your junker to www.familycarbuyers.com. They even come and pick it up at your home and give you a good price for it.

How to quite paying for gasoline, buying an electric car

A new car for the new year

If you're still driving an old vehicle that is drinking gasoline like water and perhaps even burning oil, pay attention! You're burning money and killing the environment! Time to sit down at the kitchen table and look over the options for a new car. Now I don't know your wallet so I don't know what kind of money you have to spend, but you can look at a few options for getting money as well. Selling your old car to family car buyers for instance, instead of trading it in, might be a good way to add some money to your pocket book.

There's many ways to go about buying a new car and many things to consider, so I'm going to focus on buying an electric car because I care about the environment. Now we all know that electric cars are better for the environment and get a lot better milage for your money, in particular if you go ahead and put some solar panels on your roof as well to recharge the battery with. Also recharging is offered in a growing number of places. If you're an average Joe, driving a maximum of 50 miles to work and maybe to the lake on the weekends, the average electric car will get you there and back on one charge.

Hybrids?

If you're not that average and have to drive long distances in your vehicle, a hybrid might be the way to go. This you can run on gasoline when necessary and on electricity when available. In addition running the car on gas allows you to recharge your batteries, in the smartest of cars they even store the energy you waste on braking. Also, the technology is relatively new so expect improvements to be made on your vehicle for some time, making our dependence on fossil fuels drop dramatically, with all the political advantages internationally.

If you have to go more than 50 but less than 100 miles to your place of employment (where you have to spend 8 hours earning your keep) you might want to talk to your employer about putting a recharging station in the parking lot. That way you can still use your car to go to work and back and half the electricity will be on your employers tab. With a little investment in solar panels this could work out very well for both of you. And 8 hours is ample time to recharge your batteries! This might eliminate the need for a hybrid and give you the option of buying a fully electric car.

Picture perfect: an electric car and solar panels

So let's make some calculations. Let's say you're driving 100 miles a day on average, going to work and back, etc. This means you drive a total of 36.500 miles yearly. Give or take a few miles, let's say it's 40.000 a year (for easy calculation)

Gasoline is $3,60 a gallon now, and more likely to become more expensive than less so, but for the sake of argument let's say it's going to be an average of $3,50. Your current family car, that old clunker you are going to sell tohttp://www.familycarbuyers.com get's about 20 miles to the gallon? You should be so lucky you say? We'll go with 20 MpG anyway...

This means you buy 2.000 gallons of gasoline each year. At $3,50 that means you're spending 7.000 dollars a year on gasoline alone! Average family, average use, average expenditure on a family car, am I right? Your situation may be a little or a lot different so you best do your own math on this one. If you have the money to invest in an electric car in combination with solar panels your average expenditure goes down to zero.

The electric car is free!

Buying an electric vehicle isn't cheap. However driving it is going to be a lot cheaper, up to zero expenditure in combination with solar panels (and a good deal with your boss for charging during the daytime). So how can you afford nót to buy the electric car?

What's the cost of a new electric car? You can purchase one round about 35.000 dollars, which would mean that if you had the money in cash you would start saving yourself 7.000 a year. The solar panels to feed your car would run about 7000 dollars as well. This means in only six years time you will have saved on fuel the full cost of a car and solar panel system. Put a different way: If you drive this car for 6 years it's essentially a free car.

If you have to get a car loan the interest on that is all you pay on top of what you would normally pay for gasoline alone. Selling your old car at family car buyers will give you a bit of capital and perhaps you have some savings so you won't need to loan the full amount. Interest is steep but remember, you'll be saving yourself 7000 a year (almost 600 a month) in gasoline cost.

Worth considering ain't it?

Green is hot! Environmentally friendly, sustainable grocery bags

Going Green

Companies are doing it all over the world, because Green is hot! Thank goodness we the concerned consumers have finally gotten through to major corporations! Green and environement friendly is beginning to spread! More then ever we are learning that the choices we make affect our environment and we are learning to make responsible choices, choosing things that last over things that are fast.

I was at a trade show last night which consisted solely of fashion made responsibly. Fashion with a story attached. Fabrics of today don't destroy our environment, but are made of renewable sources: bamboo, hemp, soy and even fast growing trees. Every article in the show had a unique story to it. There is so much to tell about just the fabrics. Organic cotton, now just 5% of the worlds cotton production is made without pesticides. Regular old cotton uses about a kilo of pesticides to produce 3 ounces of cotton. Ridiculous amounts right, but that's what the lady there told us. Even if half of that is true it's still an enormous amount of pressure to put on our environment. At the end of the show she handed us all a cotton tote bag with some natural soaps and detergents, a lipbalm and some coupons in them.

Environment friendly little green bag

In Holland recently George Baker had a hit with a tune called “Little Green Bag”. Not high culture, it was just a little ditty, but the fact that he had a huge hit with it means that he's got his fingers right on the pulse of contemporary society. Green it hot and green tote bags are not just for hippies anymore. Now everyone can make a green, environment friendly choice. Green is fashionable, ecofriendly is in.

Now, shifting our societies from “use-em-up and throw-em-out” to completely “cradle to cradle, let's throw out our garbage-bins alltogether cause we don't need them anymore” is a daunting task which has been set in motion by the forces of concerned consumers. Now it is time to jump on the bandwagon and make sure your customers see you as green, environment friendly and with concern and care for our planet. One of the ways you can do this is by buying bulk tote bags. Tote bags have a high visibility as they get used and reused, over and over untill completely torn and tattered. And having your logo imprinted on one of these tote bags is now easier than ever! If you click the link above you can see many examples of what is possible for promotional purposes .

Trade shows, non profits, big or small everyone goes friendly to the environment

The best part about buying bulk tote bags like these at Holden bags is that it's really simple and fast. Their website is absolutely clear and they have a great customer support service which means that you have a real person to speak about your order with on the telephone within minutes and most of their tote bags are in stock so they can have the product ready to ship to you in three days! Think of a great promotional activity today and implement it this week. Show the world you have a heart for the environment.

The service is awesome and proof that environement friendly doesn't have to mean slow and oldfashioned. Plus you don't have to order thousands of bags to get a decent price-quote. Orders can be as low as 100 pieces and you can be assured of the same type of service that the big guys get and for many products you can get a price quote within 15 minutes! Holden bags has been in bussiness since 1975 and growing ever since. They show the same care wether you're huge, like Coca Cola or the Humane Society or just a small shop like the one giving the trade show I was at yesterday.

Paper or plastic? Neither! Durable sustainable grocery bags!

Green choices

If you care about health the environment and just plain taste, grocery shopping can be an enjoyable task these days. In most markets these days there's a good supply of the kinds of foods that really feed you, both your body and your soul. Factory food, fast food and sugary snackfoods are hollow, devoid of wholeness and goodness. They may squelch your hungerpangs but do very little to really satisfy your actual dietary needs.

Finding the right produce to feed your family can be fun! Checking around for some nice eggplant or bell peppers, squeezing the oranges to make sure they're nice and juicy, choosing the best organic potatoes for a casserole. Rice from organic farms in India, slave-free chocolates in dark, milk of hazelnut, cheese in many flavors, rolls, meat substitutes, milk substitutes made from rice or soy: with so much to choose from, isn't it odd that at the register we still have only one choice: Paper or Plastic?

Drawbacks of Paper and Plastic

There is much to be said about the drawbacks of paper and plastic bags. Paper has the rap for being the more ecological choice of the two, but America alone uses 10 billion paper bags each year. That's 14 million trees, used for a product we tend to throw away after one use. In addition in producing the bags a whole lot water and chemicals are used. Plastic bags are made of finite resources of course. Recycling would be an option for both, but in reality less than 15% of all paper and plastic bags are recycled. The rest is landfill and litter.

Viable Alternative

Fortunately there is a viable alternative. Now you can buy wholesale reusable grocery bags with a choice of logo imprints. In Europe, most supermarkets now offer you a choice of plastic or reusable (paper never really caught on over here. The reusables can be bought right at the counter and because they are relatively expensive to buy, most people bring their own bags to the grocery store. This is great advertizing for the store as people walk around toting their bags and this means it gets a lot of views.

Xmas Dinner in a bag

These grocery bags come in a variety of sizes. They're great as a promotional item too. Aside from just having it on say at the register so people can be offered an alternative to paper or plastic, think about buying the wholesale reusable grocery bag as an item for creating special offers in.

Think about a Christmas special: A beautiful, reusable grocery bag with your logo on it, filled with goodies that will make a wonderful Christmas dinner. Organic yams and marshmallows, pumpkin and even a turkey so your customers can have a merry Christmas without the need for shopping! Invite people to sign up for just such a package and watch the orders come in for “X-mas dinner in a bag”. You can find the bag to fit your needs at Holden Bags .

Of course, with Xmas dinner in a bag a great succes, consider Easter breakfast in a bag, with some nice chocolate croissants, eggs and rolls, some of those yummy hot cross buns: you know what your customers like to buy. Prebagging it for them is a great way to drive your sales to new hights, get your logo out into your community and better serve your customers!