Much like how solar panels converts light energy into electricity, a SH box is packed with a special poly crystal that produces electricity from environmental heat. NRGLab has promised to send me additional details about the SH box, which should be coming next week.

In the meantime, below are some bullet points of publicly available information gleaned from various videos and publications that the company has released to date. For simplicity, I’ve divided it into what is known about SH box as a product, as well as the poly crystals that it is made of.

SH Box

• The SH box does not require any fuel or external input, and works up to 24 hours a day unattended.
• As the SH box is not dependent on weather conditions such as wind or sunlight, it can be installed indoors or under a roof.
• SH boxes are guaranteed to generate electricity for up to 20 years from the date of sale. Units will be replaced if they fail within this period.
• Standard capacity planned for the SH box is 30W, 40W, 50W, 60W and 500W and 1kW.

Poly Crystal

• The poly crystal is created using three secret components, and is mixed using distilled water under normal room temperature conditions.
• A standard poly crystal “cell” consists of the poly crystal sandwiched between an aluminum base and a carbon lid.
• Poly crystal cells can be stacked to increase the voltage, which makes the technology easily scalable.
• Cells can withstand temperatures of over 400 degrees Celsius – which is when the aluminum alloy that makes up the base starts melting.
• Generating 1KW/h will require cells weighing about 80KG

In my next blog, I’m going to share additional information about the properties of the poly crystal, which should make it clear how the breakthrough achieved by NRGLab puts it far ahead of other research projects aimed at developing a viable thermoelectric generator.

Moreover, the self-contained and environmental friendly characteristics of the SH box also lends itself for use in situations that may not be possible with active power generators, which we will also be exploring. Stay tuned and check back soon.

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Well, my perspective of clean energy generation certainly changed after a representative from NRGLab contacted me late last month. A science-driven company, the Singapore-based company researches and develops alternate-energy technologies to provide electrical power that is clean, reliable and affordable.

At the moment, the company’s portfolio include technology to boost the performance of gas turbine generator performance, as well as projects that entail recycling waste materials into usable diesel fuel. What caught my attention though, was a self-contained product called a “SH box” that the company says offers power generation that is environmentally friendly, efficient and affordable.

SH stands for Semiconductor Thermogenerator Module, and the poly crystal inside the SH box essentially makes use of the thermoelectric effect to exploit ambient temperature differences to generate an electric voltage. Because no fuel is required, NRGLab claims that SH boxes will enable the price of producing electricity to go down to just $0.03 per kW. As a comparison, my latest SP Services bill tells me that I’m being billed at a rate of $0.2670 per kWh.

I asked for, and was granted a visit to the company’s factory compound in Tuas, where I met up with NRGLab director Sergey Sorokin and Ana Shell – one of the discoverers of the crystal technology. They filled in the blanks on the technical aspects of the technology as well as showed me around the premises. While I did not see a working SH box on my visit, NRGLab has convinced me that it has indeed created a working room-temperature thermoelectric generator.

I will be writing more about SH boxes, as well as other alternative-energy technologies from NRGLab in the weeks to come. For now, you may want to watch the YouTube video below. It showcases an auction that was conducted at the Raffles Hotel Singapore on Feb 5 earlier this year, and shows the crystal being created and being stress tested in extreme conditions.

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Indeed, Ultrabook™ incorporates a range of technologies and characteristics that are crafted to ensure they deliver a highly usable experience in spite of its compact and lightweight form factor. I highlight a trio of them below.

Performance

The specifications for Ultrabook™ called for ultra low voltage versions of Intel® processors. Because they have lower power requirements than traditional mobile processors, Ultrabook™ can be slimmer than ever while offering excellent battery life. Under the hood, Intel® Smart Response and Rapid Start Technology makes clever use of solid-state drives (SSDs) to speed up normal hard disk drive responses times and boot-up speeds, delivering SSD-like responsiveness and usability, but at hard disk drive (HDD) prices.

An example of a great performing Ultrabook™ would be the Dell Latitude 6430u, a rugged 14-inch Ultrabook™ that comes with either a 3rd gen Intel® Core™ i3, i5 or i7 processor, and up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM. Despite its weight of just 3.7lbs (1.69kg), the Latitude 6430u, featuring 3rd gen Intel® Core™ processors, measures a mere 0.82-inch (20.9mm) thick. Designed for businesses in mind, it delivers up to 10 hours for a “full day” battery life. Other business-centric capabilities would be its HDMI and VGA ports for working with external monitors and projectors.

Form Factor

Performance aside, Ultrabook™ devices are also available in a wide variety of form factors to take advantage of touch screen support found in Windows 8. This is in part enabled by the lower power requirements of the new, more power efficient microprocessor. As battery packs get pared down, the result is greater versatility on the design front.

Current form factors include rotating and detachable screens, as well as dock-able Windows 8 tablets such as the Latitude 10, featuring Intel® Atom™ processor Z2760. I’ve previously reviewed Ultrabook™ devices such as the Dell XPS 12 featuring 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ processors with its rotating screen too, which I’ve found to be a classy and highly flexible Windows 8 Ultrabook™.

Security and Management

All laptop security was at one point in the past an easily bypassed system password. Thankfully, various hardware security capabilities have made their way into laptops and Ultrabook™ devices since then. Ultrabook™ today incorporates a number of security capabilities not found in older laptops. Intel® Anti-Theft (AT) Technology, for example, makes it possible to remotely disable a lost or stolen Ultrabook™. Should the device be found or returned, reactivation of the Ultrabook™ is possible without any harm to its data. In addition, Intel® Identity Protection Technology (IPT) built into current Ultrabook™ platforms offer an additional layer of protection against password theft.

To further illustrate the point, the Latitude 6430u Ultrabook™, featuring Intel® Core™ processors mentioned earlier also comes with optional Intel® vPro™ systems management technology. This allows administrators to manage and perform software updates remotely; the remote management capability extends down to monitoring of battery health and the ability to manage the BIOS out-of-band.

This is a paid post in conjunction with IDG, Dell and Intel®

With this in mind, I outline a trio of practical ways that Ultrabook™ devices and tablets can be deployed.

Ultrabook™ devices as main work machines

Though desktops are still required in situations where greater computing and graphic processing capabilities are needed, there is little doubt that laptops are the more popular option today. On this front, businesses may want to consider purchasing Ultrabook™ computers over “traditional” laptops as primary work machines for their employees in order to take advantage of the various advances incorporated into them.

For one, Ultrabook™ devices are generally powered by Intel® Core™ processors for excellent battery life without compromising on its performance. Moreover, standards defined by Intel® mean that Ultrabook™ devices are also lightweight and slim despite the full complement of interface ports found in most of them. In addition, Intel® has promised that the next-gen Haswell processor due in September will bring all-day computing to Ultrabook™ computers.

Tablets for ultraportable access

One of the original premises of tablets when they were first made available was the ability for workers to access work documents and other reference materials from a highly portable device. Unfortunately, users soon discovered that they have to jump through multiple hoops just to view files such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Indeed, certain formats such as Access databases and PowerPoint slides are not accessible due to the lack of suitable viewers.

The availability of tablets such as the Dell Latitude 10, featuring Intel® Atom™ processor Z2760, renders such problems a thing of the past. This is due to the tablet’s ability to run the same PC applications as on a desktop or laptop. With their ability to offer half a dozen hours or more of runtime, tablets effectively allow workers and executives to access the same information right from an affordable tablet.

Kiosk access terminal

One possible use for tablets is to serve as an access terminal for workers that may not require a dedicated PC for their work, doing away with the need to deploy expensive laptops or clunky desktop machines. Businesses that will benefit the most from this are likely to be hospitality and service related industries such as hotels and retail outlets.

Workers in this instance can use the tablets to access e-mail messages and other internal business applications. Examples of work-related usage include human resource centric apps to apply for a day off, check duty shifts, or look up pending instructions from their supervisors or teammates. Depending on the expected frequency of access and number of work shifts, a single tablet “kiosk” may easily serve 10 to 20 workers. The touch screen keyboards on the tablets serve to eliminate the need for separate keyboards, helping to keep the footprint of the devices small.

This is a paid post in conjunction with IDG, Dell and Intel ®