#Safe drinking water Via Solar power Desalination Natasha Wright, an MIT Phd student in mechanical engineering, has designed a solar powered system that makes water safe to drink for rural, off-grid Indian villages.
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery or directly power a device,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell, which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage. Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
Scientists are also working on solar cells based on quantum dots, which rely on the dotsability to convert light into electrons.
and release electrical power in such bursts, which are needed for brief transmissions of data from wearable devices such as heart-rate monitors, computers,
#New Technology Could Transform Solar energy Storage Chemists at UCLA have developed a new technology that is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
To capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material. There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics
rather than silicon, but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
and keeps them separated for days, or even weeks. Once you make the right structure,
the process generates electrical energy. The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
The researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells. Yves Rubin, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author of the study,
pave roads with solar panels that could eventually provide power for street lights and traffic controls, and maybe even homes and electric vehicles.
What the engineers came up with was a system of prefabricated concrete covered by solar panels
and provide electricity for the grid or street lights. The netherlands is not a top producer of solar power,
Renewable energy now accounts for a little less than 9%of electricity used in the country. The project developers believe about 20%of the country roads would be suitable for solar panel installations.
A somewhat different approach in the U s. Idaho-based Solar Roadways has been working on a similar goal paving roads and other surfaces with solar panels.
And the company has plenty of supporters. Solar Roadways secured an $850, 000 Federal Highway Administration grant for a pilot project
In the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China, Itron deployed one network that runs three meters--water, electricity and gas.
"We are talking about 600 million people who do not have 24-hour access to electricity.
and the country's National Atomic energy commission (CNEA, in Spanish) is pushing forward with the design of a small, low-cost atomic energy reactor called CAREM.
#Where GE is putting its latest $10b investment GE announced it will invest another $10 billion into its green energy R&d program with an aim of boosting the output of its wind turbines (while cutting costs), increasing power plant efficiency and perhaps,
On the natural gas front an area that many environmentalists would argue is not a green energy source GE will work on developing alternative technologies to replace water in the hydraulic fracturing process.#
a technology that replaces the oil-based feedstock for part of the synthetic rubber-making process with renewable biomass.
healthcare, clean energy, public safety, and workforce development, including advanced manufacturing. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is investing a new round of $20 million toward this effort,
America cannot build a 21st century economy with a 20th century electricity system. By working with states, industry leaders,
national electricity system that will create jobs, reduce energy use, and expand renewable energy production. For more details on the U s. smart grid plans, read:
Administration Announces Grid Modernization Initiatives to Foster a Clean energy Economy and Spur Innovation Fact sheet:
#Why is Apple working on wind turbine technology? Filing a patent for a new energy storage and generation system,
it seems Apple may be looking at new ways to add clean energy to its manufacturing processes.
and Trademark Office in June 2011 details an alternative wind turbine design that generates electricity from converting heat energy instead of rotational energy made possible by the movement of blades.
which then converts this type of power into electricity through powering machinery or sending it to generators.
Described as the on-demand generation of electricity from stored wind energy, the patent application details a mechanism in
which rotational energy created by the turbine is used to generate heat, which is stored then in low heat capacity fluid.
which replaces electricity in order to power mechanisms or generators. As the energy is being stored, heat can be transferred selectively
The variable nature of wind may interfere with on-demand generation of electricity from wind energy.
For example, fluctuations in wind speed may hamper the adequate production of electricity from wind power during periods of peak demand,
or conversely, may produce excess electrical power during periods of low demand. In turn, such variability may limit the ability to incorporate large amounts of wind power into a grid system.
but as the firm is using clean energy in North carolina--where it plans to build a 20-megawatt solar farm covering 100 acres--it may be that the company is keen to add additional,
and Apple powering their data centers with solar panels and wind farms to retailers turning to rooftop solar and biogas to power their big box stores and distribution centers,
the number of U s. companies generating their own energy on-site is soaring. According to Wall street journal, since 2006 the number of electricity-generating units at commercial and industrial locations has quadrupled from about 10,000 to 40,000.
The strong growth can be explained partly by the falling prices of solar panels. Take Walmart for example:
Since 2007, when the first solar arrays went up on its store roofs in California, the installed costs of Wal-mart Stores Inc. s solar systems have dropped from $6
or $8 per watt of capacity to about $3. 50 per watt, said David Ozment, the company s senior director of energy management.
Even though on-site electricity generation accounts for about 5 percent of U s. electricity production a trend towards a more distributed electricity grid is challenging the current business model for utilities.
And as prices continue to fall for solar panels and other energy sources it looks like utilities will be forced to innovate e
estimates the country's peak electricity demand will hit 121,000 megawatts in the next two decades.
With demand for electricity and fresh water increasing, Saudi arabia is seeking out other sources of power including solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear.
Another 25 GW of capacity would come from concentrated solar plants, which use thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun onto heating liquid,
or seek out other established solar panel makers to establish factories there. Photo: Flickr user zigbphotography, CC 2. 0 Related:
Cables sent three years ago from the U s. embassy in Beijing express concern that China aggressive nuclear power expansion leans heavily on the country own PR-1000design
when the tsunami knocked out backup diesel generators and reactors overheated.""As the CPR-1000 increases market share, China is assuring that rather than building a fleet of state-of-the-art reactors,
they will be burdened with technology that by the end of its lifetime will be 100 years old,
"says one cable dated 7 august 2008. hina is vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet.
and that 20 of 22 nuclear plants under construction in 2009 used the design. Contrary to the tone of the cables
some nuclear experts believe that China will play a leading role in the future of nuclear power by develoiping
and deploying modern technologies as it constructs as many as 100 nuclear reactors over the next 20 years nearly a quarter of the total of all reactors in the world today.
It is currently building four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, which deploy passive cooling (the Pstands for dvanced passive.
including molten salt reactors, thorium, fast neutron reactors, pebble bed reactors and fusion. Some of these could be potentially safer and more effective than conventional designs e
Collective-Evolution notes that the solar panels embedded in the concrete bike path are not as efficient as panels installed on homes
the solar panels on the smart highway cover about 75 yards of roadway which is slightly more than you can fit on a roof.
Nanofibril films may be used in photovoltaic cells and also in displays because they have better light-transmission properties than glass,
in an e-mail interview with IEEE Spectrum. hile it is true that electrical resistive heating is almost 100-percent efficient in converting electricity into heat,
In research published in the journal Nano Letters, the MIT team addressed one of the basic elements of steam-generated electricity:
The turning of the turbine produces electricity. In this process, the steam is condensed back into water
so that an overall power plant efficiency could be improved by as much as 2 to 3 percent based on figures from the Electric power Research Institute."
by definition, convert chemical energy into electricity. Once youe sucked them dry, you have to reverse the process to convert electricity into chemical energy,
and for that, you need a source of electricity. It not like it hard to do this,
but it is certainly a minor annoyance that could do with a fix. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, India, have skipped the annoying step by developing a battery that charges directly from light.
Wee not talking about a battery with a solar panel on it: it a hoto batterywhere the anode itself is made of titanium nitride and ambient light.
Keuka Energy recently launched a 125-kilowatt prototype vessel that uses its novel floating wind turbine design paired with liquid-air energy storage to create a steady source of electricity.
The Florida-based company claims that its wind turbine design allows for larger turbines that could produce far more electricity.
The world largest single offshore wind turbine is currently about 6 megawatts; Keuka says its full-size turbines could produce at least double that amount.
electricity liquefies air to nearly-200°C and then stores it at low pressure. When the energy is needed,
liquid-air energy storage requires a significant amount of electricity to make the liquid air, limiting its usage by utilities.
The company also says its wind turbine design is more cost effective thanks to elimination of the gear box and the use of lightweight aluminum blades that cost less than 10 percent the price of traditional composite blades.
The cost of the electricity to power these behemoths has played also a role in slowing the speed of supercomputer development. an somebody make a computer that has higher performance?
#Diesel-Powered Fuel cell Produces Clean electricity Although several options to store hydrogen as a fuel for cars have been investigated,
In addition to lowering CO2 EMISSION, the units produce little noise, making them suitable as mobile electricity generators in places, like field hospitals,
and oxygen gives you access to a completely carbon-free energy source for transportation. But so far, the efficiency of the process has been a bit disappointing,
even when using systems called solar fuel cells solar cells immersed in the water it splitting. Now researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology in The netherlands and the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) report in the 17 july issue of Nature Communications that they have improved tenfold the hydrogen producing capacity of a solar fuel cell.
While LED-based lighting produces up to about 150 lumens per watt of electricity, lasers could produce more than 400 lumens per watt,
whether they can excite these lasers with electricity instead of with light pulses. They detailed their findings online 27 july in the journal Nature Nanotechnology N
#Solar cells Could Capture Infrared Rays for More Power Nanocrystals and organic materials convert low energy photons into visible light that a solar cell can capture.
Cadmium selenide nanocrystals with one kind of organic coating left produced violet light, while cadmium selenide nanocrystals with another type of organic coating right produced green.
Solar cell efficiencies could increase by 30 percent or more with new hybrid materials that make use of the infrared portion of the solar spectrum,
solar infrared rays normally passes right through the photovoltaic materials that make up today's solar cells.
or pconvertedinto a higher energy photon that is readily absorbed by photovoltaic cells, generating electricity from light that would normally be wasted.
The hybrid materials are combinations of inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals, which capture the infrared photons, and organic molecules,
Earlier this year, Hack Reactor launched the online version of its immersive curriculum, Remote Beta, a web-based ALP.
and the President of the United states. Against this backdrop, the market forces are so strong and clear that they have reshaped Codecademy, Hack Reactor,
based on a conservative prediction that only 6 percent of potential energy-saving opportunities identified will be implemented. However, real benefits for businesses are likely to be two
As part of the deal, Apple will get electricity from the farm at a fixed rate for 25 years.
#Amazon Invests In 150mw Indiana Wind farm To Power Its Data centers Amazon today announced that it is working with the Pattern Energy Group to construct
and operate a 150 megawatt wind farm in Benton County, Indiana. The new wind farm will go online in about a year
and the expectation is that it will supply at least 500,000 megawatt hours of wind power annually.
but the mazon Web Services Wind farm (Fowler Ridge) that the full name of what was called previously the owler Ridge IV Wind Projectwill only be used to power Amazon AWS data centers.
US WEST (Oregon), EU (Frankfurt) and its AWS Govcloud. mazon Web Services Wind farm (Fowler Ridge) will bring a new source of clean energy to the electric grid where we currently operate a large number of datacenters
Interestingly there is no mention here of using these tiny bits of working muscle muscle that twitches in response to electricity
It works by converting chemical energy into electricity instead of needing to plug it into the power grid.
This means kraftwerk units can be taken all over the world including vast regions of Earth that aren connected to electricity
Instead, it uses tiny pulses of electricity to stimulate the skin at your temple, which then activates the instinctual fight-or-flight response in your brain to indirectly affect emotional response.
and assumed that China would accomplish ambitious near-term goals for expanding nuclear power and renewables,
solar, and hydropower, could help hundreds of millions of people who live beyond conventional grids get reliable electricity.
Batteries can store power from solar panels or wind turbines to provide round-the-clock power. Alternatively, diesel generators can be used.
By making solar power cheaper than diesel fuel in many places, it could help bring clean power to some of the more than one billion people in the world without reliable electricity (see Billion People in the Dark.
#Will a Breakthrough Solar technology See the Light of Day? The power unit is a rectangular slab about the size of a movie theater screen.
and an equal number of even smaller solar cells, each the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.
000 of these devices, utilities would produce electricity at less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is even cheaper than today least expensive option:
and has set records for solar-cell efficiencyeaning the amount of energy in sunlight that is converted into electricity.
This year it demonstrated that it could use a version of its technology to make a novel kind of solar cell that,
some believe, could convert half of the energy in sunlight into electricity, about three times better than conventional solar cells.
Semprius must scale up the production of its solar cells significantly. Right now it can make enough solar units to produce six megawatts of power per year,
In the heyday of the solar technology bubble, the ill-fated startup Solyndra raised about $1 billion from venture capitalists
The idea is that you can increase the amount of energy any solar cell gathers by putting lenses over the cell to focus light into it.
Existing versions of this technology might use a lens with an area of about 400 square centimeters and focus it on a one-centimeter solar cell, for a concentration ratio of 400.
Semprius stamp makes it possible to make arrays of solar cells that are far smaller and thinner than the ones that had been used in concentrating photovoltaics.
For the concentrating technology to work the solar cells need to be picked up and arranged in an array
and transfer thousands of the tiny solar cells at once without breaking them, completely changing the economics of using small solar cells.
Small cells have many advantages; because they require little material, they can be made of expensive types of semiconductors that are far more efficient than silicon.
and real estate to generate the same amount of power as a typical solar cell. These advantages,
hat we saw is a way to get to very low costs of electricity. The plan had been for Siemens
but also flooded the market with cheap solar panels. Given the supply of cheap solar panels, it became nearly impossible for companies with alternative technologiesuch as thin film solar
or concentrated photovoltaicso compete. Dozens of promising solar startups failed and the projected market for concentrated photovoltaics shrank,
conventional silicon solar panels still have room to become significantly cheaper and more efficient. New ways of manufacturing silicon wafers, the most expensive part of a solar cell, could cut wafer costs in half
or more (see raying for an Energy Miracle. New solar cell designs are edging up their efficiencies.
Such advances might eventually make solar power cheaper than fossil fuels, even without Semprius technology. But silicon-based solar power is not yet there,
Thus, if Semprius is right that it will soon have technology to make solar panels capable of producing electricity at around 5 cents per kilowatt-hour,
In addition, the amount of electricity generated using natural gas dropped 10 percent between 2012 and 2013,
including jobs that involve handling delicate materials such as thin semiconductors for new, advanced solar cells. But the technology also offers a cheap way to pick up just about anythingabric, bags of chips, 50-pound boxes of paper, single pieces of paper, mobile phones.
Lockheed martin s announcement last week that it had developed secretly a promising design for a compact nuclear fusion reactor has met with excitement but also skepticism over the basic feasibility of its approach.
Nuclear fusion could produce far more energy far more cleanly than the fission reactions at the heart of today s nuclear power plants.
Tom Mcguire project lead of the Lockheed effort said in an interview that the company has come up with a compact design called a high beta fusion reactor based on principles of so-called magnetic mirror confinement.
Lockheed said the test reactor is only two meters long by one meter wide far smaller than existing research reactors.
In a smaller reactor you can iterate generations quicker incorporate new knowledge develop faster and make riskier design choices.
If successful the program could produce a reactor that might fit in a tractor-trailer and produce 100 megawatts of power he said.
The small team developing the reactor at the company s skunkworks in Palmdale California has done 200 firings with plasma Mcguire said
The company is even talking about how fusion reactors could one day power ships and planes.
Ian Hutchinson a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT and one of the principal investigators at the MIT fusion research reactor says the type of confinement described by Lockheed had long been studied without much success. Hutchinson says he was only
Lockheed joins a number of other companies working on smaller and cheaper types of fusion reactors. These include Tri-Alpha a company based near Irvine California that is testing a linear-shaped reactor;
Helion Energy of Redmond Washington which is developing a system that attempts to use a combination of compression and magnetic confinement of plasma;
and Lawrenceville Plasma physics in Middlesex New jersey which is working on a reactor design that uses what s known as a dense plasma focus.
and other stimuli such as light and electricity have been around for decades. You can find them in cars airplanes robots and medical implants.
Thermoelectric materials which convert heat into electricity have been around for decades but they have always been too expensive to use outside extreme situations in spacecraft for example.
Matt Scullin the CEO of Alphabet Energy the startup that developed the new device says connecting it to the exhaust pipe of a 1000-kilowatt generator will yield enough electricity to save 52500 liters of diesel fuel a year for a reduction
The company is also developing another thermoelectric material based on silicon nanowires that could convert a higher percentage of the energy in waste heat to electricity.
#A Promising Step Toward Round-the-clock Solar power If solar power is to become a primary source of electricity around the world,
Switzerland, along with colleagues in Korea and Singapore, built a device that uses electricity and catalyst materials to make hydrogen and oxygen from water.
relatively high-voltage solar cells to generate the needed electricity, along with inexpensive new catalyst materials based on nickel and iron for two electrodesne produces hydrogen
The solar cells use an inexpensive and easily manufactured material known as perovskite, which has been generating excitement in the research community
but consider that most solar cells convert only 16 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity,
For one thing, it only lasts a few hours before the solar cell performance quickly drops off. Researchers aren sure why perovskite materials degrade quickly
or improving the way the solar cells are sealed against the elements. Researchers recently demonstrated a perovskite solar cell that lasted over a month
#The Coming Era Of Self-Assembly Using Microfluidic Devices When it comes to building microscopic devices,
and distribution infrastructure already used for natural gas and eventually turned back into electricity via combustion or fuel cells.
and the hydrogen can be used to replace fossil fuels not only in electricity production but also in industry and transportation
Even so it has long been considered a relatively lousy way to store energy because of its low efficiency about 65 percent of the energy in the original electricity is lost.
Cheap electricity makes electrolysis far more competitive. Electrolysis remains more expensive than producing hydrogen from natural gas at least in the United states where natural gas is cheap.
When experts talk about future solar cells they usually bring up exotic materials and physical phenomena. In the short term however a much simpler approach stacking different semiconducting materials that collect different frequencies of light could provide nearly as much of an increase in efficiency as any radical new design.
The startup Semprius based in Durham North carolina says it can produce very efficient stacked solar cells quickly
Conventional solar cells convert less than 25 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity. Semprius has come up with three key innovations:
In its designs Semprius uses tiny individual solar cells each less than a millimeter across. That reduces costs for cooling
but also stacks several different combinations resulting in a solar panel that can capture more energy from sunlight. Semprius has demonstrated cells made of three semiconductor materials stacked on top of a fourth solar cell that would not have been compatible otherwise.
It has made two versions of the device this year one with an efficiency of 43.9 percent
In addition to being fast and precise the approach also makes it possible to reuse the expensive crystalline wafers that multijunction solar cells are grown on.
The U s. Energy Information Administration estimates that new natural-gas power plants will produce electricity at 6. 4 cents per kilowatt-hour r
cheaper solar cells. But this is usually done with lenses or mirrors, which must be moved precisely as the sun advances across the sky to ensure that concentrated sunlight remains focused on the cells.
where a small solar cell is mounted to generate electricity. As the day goes on, the beam of light from the lenses moves and the material adapts,
compared to eight cents per kilowatt-hour for the best conventional solar panels. This month, the company received the first installments of a $2. 2 million grant from ARPA-E. The ARPA-E funding will allow the company to scale up from prototypes just 2. 5 centimeters across to make 30
a program director at ARPA-E, says the main remaining challenge is increasing the amount of sunlight that makes it to the solar cells,
or reflected en route to the solar cells r
#Cheap and Nearly Unbreakable Sapphire Screens Come into View This fall, rumor has it, Apple will start selling iphones with a sapphire screen that is just about impossible to scratch.
so it could also lead to better and cheaper electronics and solar cells. Sapphire, or crystalline aluminum oxide, is made in nature
#Thermoelectric Material to Hit Market Later This Year California-based Alphabet Energy plans to begin selling a new type of material that can turn heat into electricity.
Thermoelectric materials can turn a temperature difference into electricity by exploiting the flow of electrons from a warmer area to a cooler one.
But an efficient thermoelectric material has to conduct electricity well without conducting heat well, because otherwise the temperature across the material would soon equalize.
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