Drink a lot of beer in the bottles and have too much recycling every week?

Don’t worry, you can turn your empty beer bottles into powerful solar-powered LED beer lanterns that will light up your house at night for free.

Al Gore and company have helped us to see that our planet is in peril. Lend a hand, make a toast, and help illuminate ways for saving Earth — all at the same time! It’s easy to do your part: recycle, refill, and recharge. Just take your fave beverage bottle (keep the cap), drop in a flexible solar panel, a step-up switching regulator circuit, a rechargeable battery pack, and a powerful LED, cap it, and you’ll have a self-sufficient garden lantern that is ideal for shedding some light on solving environmental issues. You will have to choose your bottle carefully, though. Clear glass rules. Also, wide-mouth bottles are easier to convert than narrow opening long-neckers. Like your grandfather who built ships in discarded bottles, put a modern spin on bottle building while being conscientious of your world. Cheers!

via popsci

Well, it took me all day to get all my sites running today, there’s was a massive DoS attack by some hackers I had to take care of.

With that cleared away, here’s how to make some inexpensive solar cell panels.

Mike Davis is an astronomer. To practice his hobby away from the light-pollution of cities, he bought some land in a remote part of Arizona. But there was a problem: No electricity…. But he’s a resourceful fellow. He built some home-made solar panels using inexpensive blemished and damaged solar cells from eBay!

via treehugger

The Dubai Ziggurat - Eco-Friendly Self-Sustaining Pyramid for 1 Million People!

Dubai seems to always spark the public’s interest with things like the tallest buidling in the world.

Well, here’s another great idea that might make it to production, an eco-friendly self-sustaining pyramid that can house 1 million people.

The size of the pyramid should be huge but shouldn’t be a hard task for Dubaians who are already building the tallest building in the world.

The Mayans and Egyptians constructed incredible feats of architecture able to weather the test of time, but they had no idea their pyramids would inspire the shape of the latest carbon-neutral super-structure to hit Dubai. Dubai-based environmental design firm Timelinks recently released some eye-catching renderings of the gigantic eco pyramid - aptly named Ziggurat - with plans for its official unveiling scheduled for the Cityscape Dubai event which runs October 6-9 of this year. The ginormous pyramid will cover 2.3 square kilometers and will be able to sustain a “community” of up to 1 million.

via inhabitat

Tree Solar-Charger for your iPhone/iPod Touch!

Though just a concept now, this solar tree is a customizable Tree Solar Charger you can build using artificial branches.  Once you build it, plug in your charger and you are ready to go.

This is a quite amazing concept.

Recharge your cellphone and camera with this universal & usb solar-cell tree charger.

Thanks to 54 tiny photovoltaic panels this device will store energy in a battery during the day, allowing you to reload your stuff whenever you need.

All wires are plugged and hidden under the electronic bonsai tray.

This object is made of several modules fitted together by a 3.5 jack connector.

You can rotate each part individually and produce an endless number of different shapes.

It’s ecological and decorative.

via gizmodo, Design Page

Yey, someone set a world record for the longest solar-powered UAV!

Zephyr’s reputation as the world’s leading solar powered high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been reinforced with a world-beating three and a half day flight at the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

The solar powered plane flew for 82 hours 37 minutes, exceeding the current official world record for unmanned flight which stands at 30 hours 24 minutes set by Global Hawk in 2001 and Zephyr’s previous longest flight of 54 hours achieved last year.

via wired, qinetiq

When it comes to building your own gadgets, nothing is better than a solar powered RC Car!

Of course, it only “charges” using solar cells, but this solar movement is helped greatly by DIYs like this.

Great job!

A rc car with two solar panels strapped up top for charging power. (Sorry no images) video coming soon. This is my first Instructable so be as honest as you can be

vi instructables

A PhD student in Australia has found a cheap way to make solar cells with household parts.  If this process works as well as thought-of, we might have solar cells popping up everywhere with DIYers who make their own solar cells.

An Australian PhD student has found a cheap way to make solar cells with nail polish, a pizza oven and an ink jet printer. 23-year-old Nicole Kuepper’s invention, named iJET, doesn’t require the pricey clean rooms and high-temperature ovens of traditional solar panel manufacturing plants, thus dramatically lowering the cost of solar and paving the road for introducing the technology to third-world countries.

via gizmodo

In todays’ world, a company should make things that are useful with a usable design.  In the case with this Solar Powered Necktie, we feel it’s been very poorly designed so no one would buy one.

Regardless, we do like the idea that you can charge your iPhone while walking down the street looking like an idiot.

Who knows, maybe no one will notice it though.

Now a group of researchers at Iowa State University have created a necktie using newly developed solar fabrics. The neat thing, is that the tiny solar panels are arranged in a grid that looks kind of like what you might see on a tie anyway. There’s even a pocket sewn into the back where you can stash the device you’re charging.

via dvice, gadgets7

RoofRay is a site that let’s you calculate your home’s solar power potential using the power of GoogleMaps.

It’s very interesting as the site will caculate the solar power potential based on the roof area and the slope of the roof.

It’s probably pretty accurate as most data is using direct satellite images off GoogleMaps.

The greatest part about this site is that you can find out how much energy you will be able to make with new solar power cells.  Then you calculate how much it is to install new solar panels on your roof to see how long it will take you to payoff the panels itself.

The RoofRay site allows you to specify location, size and slope of your roof via Google Maps. It then uses this info to estimate how much energy can be generated from your available exposure.

via make