Alternative energy is moving in some pretty exciting directions lately, and the AirEnergy 3D is a big step toward making clean, renewable, inexpensive energy available to everyone. The assemble-it-yourself device is a lightweight, portable wind turbine that can be folded up and carried in a backpack.

The AirEnergy 3D is powerful enough to charge several devices at once by plugging them directly into the turbine’s base. However, power can also be stored in an on-board battery for later use – or it can plug right into a home’s power system to provide supplementary electricity. The creators of the project will keep their design open-source, meaning that anyone with a 3D printer and some basic skills can construct their own.

One of the goals behind the project is to provide power where there is no grid, starting with communities in Africa.  Solar power is obviously only available in the daylight hours, but the AirEnergy 3D could continue providing energy long after the sun sets. It generates up to 300 watts of power, which may not sound like much but is enough to charge your phone or MP3 player, power a lamp, and keep your laptop running.

The portable nature of the AirEnergy 3D means that you can move and reposition it to catch the maximum amount of wind. It also fits nicely in a backpack, making it perfect for camping when you don’t want to be entirely removed from civilization. The Kickstarter project for the AirEnergy 3D topped its funding goal, with early adopters getting their own DIY kit for around $480. The initial investment might seem steep, but the money you would save on electricity over time would not only pay for the turbine, but for the 3D printer it was made on as well.

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Nikola Tesla was under-appreciated in his time, often eclipsed by his greedier and more business-savvy contemporaries. Tesla believed that electricity should be free and available to everyone in the world, and his wireless transmitter tower was supposed to make that happen. His Wardenclyffe Tower, a planetary energy transmitter, was meant to be a proof of his concept, but it was never fully operational before it was demolished in 1917. Now, two Russian physicists want to resurrect the Tesla dream.

Sergey Plekhanov and Leonid Plekhanov have studied Tesla’s research extensively and believe that, with modern materials and technology, the genius inventor’s energy transmission tower can be built and successfully operated. In short, the system works by harnessing the Earth’s inherent electrical conduction properties and distributing energy through the ground and the ionosphere. There are plenty of renewable energy resources already being utilized, but the lingering problem is distribution. Tesla’s proposed network of towers addresses that by using the planet itself to distribute the energy without the use of unsightly, expensive and dangerous wires.

The Russian researchers have spent five years studying Tesla’s notes, patents, and published works. They are confident now that they can recreate the iconic historical device, but with a greater degree of success than Tesla ever achieved in his lifetime. They have taken to crowdfunding on Indiegogo to raise a very ambitious $800,000. The money, according to the physicists, will help them prove once and for all that Tesla was right. Limitless clean energy is not only possible – it’s all around us every moment of every day and being wasted until someone harnesses it and distributes it with Tesla’s ingenious invention.

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Wearable electronic devices are the future, and they’re already being developed and manufactured. To make the batteries thin and light enough to fit into these small devices, engineers have had to come up with some novel solutions. A team of researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have invented a lightweight wearable generator that uses your body heat to provide low-power devices with electricity.

The flexible generator features thermoelectric materials embedded in a lightweight glass fabric. The result is a wearable generator that is hardly noticeable when it’s on, moves with your body, and generates a reasonably high power output. All it needs is the waste heat your body produces all day, every day.

A 4″ X 4″ wristband made of the material would weigh less than half an ounce and produce 40 mW of power at room temperature. That’s not enough to power a consumer device like a phone or tablet, but it should be more than adequate for lower-power devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches. The researchers also believe that the technology could be used in a number of other industries where large amounts of waste heat are produced.

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If you thought graphene was going to be the next do-everything material, we’ve got news for you: Multi-Use Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) has just taken its place. Developed by scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, this wonder material can do everything you might expect a wonder material to do – and more.

So far, TiO2’s uses include producing clean water, producing clean energy, generate hydrogen, kill bacteria, be formed into flexible solar cells, and even extend the useful lifespan of batteries. What’s more is that the materials used to make TiO2 are cheap and readily available, making its possibilities nearly endless.

TiO2 is made by forming titanium dioxide crystals into nanofibers, then forming those nanofibers into flexible membranes. The scientists who developed the material are hoping that it can help with two of the world’s biggest problems: a lack of clean drinking water and the need for clean, renewable energy. The seriously amazing substance needs some more research and work, but so far it looks to be extremely promising in the race for solving these problems.

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Surplus energy, a theoretical form of alternative energy, is the type of power that is always around us but never gets used. A perfect example of this is the Peltier Effect, which was one of the principle ideas behind a 15-year-old’s brilliant invention.

Ann Makosinski from Victoria, British Columbia, has created a body heat powered flashlight that takes the heat generated by your hand and uses it to power the flashlight’s bulb. She’s calling it the hollow flashlight. It uses a Peltier Plate and some special circuitry to create a steady beam of light.

Makosinski will take her invention to the Google Science Fair as one of only 15 students selected out of thousands of entrants from more than 100 countries worldwide. She will compete for a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

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