Sounds a bit weird and anti-green, but for some reason now you can charge its 4,000 mAh battery using a USB adapter or a car cigarette lighter. Why would you like to do a single charge with an external power source when you can just leave it by the window to have it fully charged is beyond me.

According to the company, one hour of sun and wind will provide you with 30 minutes of talk time in a cellphone. Fully charged, the K3 can load the battery cells for an average mobile phone five times, or an MP3 player more than ten times.

At $100 it is a bit on the expensive, but if their specs are correct, it looks pretty useful for emergencies. [CNET]

Can you see them? Look in the holes. There are workers inside that turbine. Not little people, but full-scale humans. So no, it's not an airplane propeller: It's gigantic propeller waiting to be mounted on power windmill turbine by people working from inside the turbine itself.

The windmill is one of the two currently being installed in the city of Hamburg, Germany, and it's officially rated at 6 megawatts of power. Not enough to travel in time, but amazingly cool anyway.

And you thought the one that required an helicopter to reach its top was big. [Big Picture celebrates Earth Day—Thanks reader Faiz for the wider shot]

New wind projects made up 42% of the U.S.'s total new power-producing capacity added last year, adding 8.4GW of new facilities into the grid. That brought the U.S. total up to 25GW, one more than Germany's 24GW.

These figures are coming in from even before the “Obama bounce” expected from the new president's vows for more clean energy initiatives. Last week, the Senate Finance Committee approved $31 billion in tax breaks to boost alternative energy supplies and efficiency. [Ars Technica and Scientific American]

That's an Eurocopter EC135, which is being used by Bond Air Services to do windmill farm maintenance in the United Kingdom. I'm sure they stop the windmill before going up-unless the stop mechanism is the thing that is broken-but looking a the scale of that little man going down, it's quite scary anyway.

And here I was, thinking they had elevators or really long stairs inside.

Update: As you can see in the crazy video, the reason is that these wind turbines are in the middle of the sea. [Flight Global-video thanks to GitEmSteveDave]

The Army plans to increase efficiency and serve as a model for the military and the nation when it comes to the operation of our housing, buildings, and forward operating bases. The Army will use its considerable purchasing power to push green projects that might not otherwise receive needed money.

One of these projects is the installation of a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in Ft. Irwin, an Army base located in the Mojave Desert. Another, the purchase of 4,000 Small Neighborhood Electric Vehicles similar to the Peapod, which will always beat the SUVs currently in use at these bases.

The effort will have to be really serious, as their energy costs have increased a full 40% during the last seven years, even while they have cut consumption by almost 8%. According to their latest numbers released this week in Washington, D.C., right now they are spending $2 billion on fuel every year. However, most of it goes to feeding the generators that power the temporary bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, so no matter how much money they spend on saving energy at home, they still will have to feed the monster around the world. [DODBuzz]

The Kazadokei is made by One Percent products, so only 100 units will be produced at probably some insane price. [Dezeen]

Product Page [I Want One of Those]

The prototype operates quietly in wind speeds from 7mph to 120mph, twice the range of conventional wind turbines, plus it's a lot smaller and easier to maintain. Install two of them next to each other and they'll look like a pair of eyes peering into the wind. Meanwhile, you'll be looking at selling power back to the electric company. – Charlie White

Silent wind turbine is ultra-efficient [Engineer Live, via treehugger]

Micro windmill for generating energy [Nifindia.org via New Launches]