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Pierre Grand, an architect from Caussens, France, wrote in to share this interesting greenhouse watering system that he created in Sketchup.

(B)ased on the fixing system developed by Bill Young (100kgarages.com), the GYRO green house recovers rainwater for broadcast in different vegetable bins arranged circular manner around the central axis. The system is under development to provide a kit of panels to easily cut by CNC machine and make even by itself. It is possible to change the scale of the greenhouse to suit the size of the family to feed. We will be glad to hear your ideas for improving the sytem.

Also be sure to check out Ekkoflex, Grand's cool flat-pack building system that we recently featured on the blog. Like the Gyro project, it's Community Commons licensed with all files available for download.

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Inspired by Sam Redfield's rural alt.energy work in hydro-electric power, featured here on MAKE, "Fishboy," working out of the Vancouver Hacker Space, created this micro-hydro plant in a plastic bucket.

The power generator in the system is a Permanent Magnet Alternator (PMA) with a pelton wheel directly attached to the shaft. Water is sent through four jets which strike the wheel causing it to rotate.

The bucket and lid components were initially assembled at the Vancouver Hackspace. The first version of the bucket lid had the water distribution system assembled from 1 inch PVC parts. After on-site tests failed, I found that this system was too inefficient to distribute the high-pressure water needed to spin the pelton wheel. Version 2.0 of the water distribution system was more successful. Version 2.0 consists of a manifold which evenly distributes the water between the four 1 inch pipes.

He's preliminarily measured it at 56V with the value fully open and processing approximately 1.7 liters per second.

Micro-hydro power bucket

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Nissan has responded to rumors that high demand for its Leaf EV in Japan could cause the company to limit delivery in the United States to just around 3,000 units by the end of March, 2011. That rumor sprang from comments made by a Mossy Nissan general manager, and luckily for electric vehicle lovers in the States, seem to be wholly untrue. Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning says that the statement from Mossy Nissan was "purely speculative," and that product allocation is decided based on customer orders. Furthermore, he says the company is still targeting around 25,000 units for the US by the end of 2011. So now we can all sleep better: the nightmare has seemingly ended.

Nissan rep confirms delivery of 25,000 Leaf EVs to US by the end of 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For as spectacular as hydrogen fuel cells are on paper, they haven't been able to replace combustion engines in vehicles. Or much of anything else, really. But thanks to Signe Kjelstrup at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, the tried-and-true fuel cell is getting a serious boost. Kjelstrup's crew determined that by using less platinum in a cell, a substantial increase in efficiency and a significant decrease in cost could be achieved. The new design relies on an architecture that's "modeled on the bronchial structure of the lungs to supply hydrogen and oxygen gas to their respective electrodes," which is said to help "spread the gases more uniformly across the catalyst than current channel designs and provides a greater surface area so less platinum is needed." It's still early on in the discovery process, though, and there's certainly no solid word on when this will reach a point where widespread implementation is feasible. Seventh-generation Prius, perhaps?

Lung-inspired hydrogen fuel cell skimps on platinum, sees efficiency boost originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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