MojoKid writes “We hear about green deployment practices all the time, but it’s often surrounding facilities such as data centers rather than retail stores. However, Walgreens is determined to go as green as possible, and to that end, the company announced plans for the first net zero energy retail store. The store is slated to be built at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Keeney Street in Evanston, Illinois, where an existing Walgreens is currently being demolished. The technologies Walgreens is plotting to implement in this new super-green store will include solar panels and wind turbines to generate power; geothermal technology for heat; and efficient energy consumption with LED lighting, daylight harvesting, and ‘ultra-high-efficiency’ refrigeration.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store
ananyo writes “Transistors, the simple switches at the heart of all modern electronics, generally use a tiny voltage to toggle between ‘on’ and ‘off.’ The voltage approach is highly reliable and easy to miniaturize, but has its disadvantages. First, keeping the voltage on requires power, which drives up the energy consumption of the microchip. Second, transistors must be hard-wired into the chips and can’t be reconfigured, which means computers need dedicated circuitry for all their functions. Now, researchers have made a type of transistor that can be switched with magnetism. The device could cut the power consumption of computers, cell phones and other electronics — and allow chips themselves to be ‘reprogrammed” (abstract).” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Zothecula writes “Scientists based at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have set a new efficiency record for thin-film copper indium gallium (di)selenid (or CIGS) based solar cells on flexible polymer foils, reaching an efficiency of 20.4 percent. This is an increase from a previous record of 18.7 percent set by the team back in 2011.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
dcblogs writes “The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper within five years. DOE is creating a new center at Argonne National Laboratory, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that’s intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories and World War II’s Manhattan Project. ‘When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,’ said U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, on Friday. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research isn’t designed to seek incremental improvements in existing technologies. This technology hub, according to DOE’s solicitation (PDF), ‘should foster new energy storage designs that begin with a “clean sheet of paper” — overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost.’ Other research labs, universities and private companies are participating in the effort.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
