Massive and expensive, most wind and sun-powered innovations have not found a cost-effective way to penetrate those markets.
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We've been tracking the sun-powered plane known as Solar Impulse for years as it roved hither and yon.
Speaking of sun-powered planes, the Solar Impulse just made its final test flight around the San Francisco Bay Area before embarking on a cross-country voyage next week.
Considered the world's most advanced sun-powered plane, the Solar Impulse took off from Moffett Field in Mountain View at first light for a two-hour practice run in advance of a planned multi-city, cross-country tour.
This week Inhabitat shined a light on the future of high-tech architecture as we brought you 20 stunning sun-powered homes that are getting ready to battle it out in this year's Solar Decathlon - including Team New York's prefab Roof Pod, Canada's TRTL solar shell house, and China's Y Container home.
ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: sun-powered homes, retro robots and a solar laptop chipset
Early this morning at Moffet Air Field in Mountain View, California, Solar Impulse finally took off on the first leg of its barnstorming tour across the US. Of course, this isn't the first time the sun-powered plane and its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, have flown long distance, but it is the first time it's taken wing through American airspace.
Similarly, solar thermal energy--which harnesses the heat of the sun to generate steam-powered turbines--consumes more than 2, 600 liters of water per megawatt hour, 200 liters more than coal-powered generation needs to produce the same energy.
But some of our favorite designs are the ones that do social good, like Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun -- a portable solar-powered lamp that's being distributed to people who live without electricity worldwide.
As more consumers buy electric-powered cars, more vehicle charging stations are popping up which are powered by the sun.
One is the proliferating use of cheap servers powered by commodity chips--a trend that has made Dell four times bigger than Sun and has given Google a cost edge over its rivals.
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