and delivers vibrant color Light-emitting diodes (LEDS) are prevalent in everything from digital clocks to solar panels, traffic lights, electronic banners and signs, Christmas decorations,
#Evaporation engines using artificial muscles made from bacteria A team of researchers from the US have created evaporation-driven engines that can power common tasks like locomotion and electricity generation.
The engines are able to power an electricity generator to light up LEDS and drive a miniature car as the water evaporates please see the video on this page.
Places where access to electricity is limited to non-exist, would find this technology truly magnificent t
and today most solar cells are based on silicon. In theory, the success with simple transistors implies that this material could also help continue advances in solar cells.
What most exciting here after graphene has saturated headline space for so long, is that there was only a few months needed to take this purely theoretical 2d substance from a computer simulation to practical, working transistors.
#New material combines photons for big solar energy gains An innovative new approach to solar energy from University of California Riverside could dramatically increase the amount of light available to contemporary solar panel designs.
Rather than widening the absorption spectrum of the solar panels themselves, this new study looked at taking currently inaccessible infrared light and turning it into visible light.
They hope that by directing this newly fabricated light onto conventional solar panels, the efficiency of solar power could be improved greatly, for an affordable price.
Infrared light currently passes straight through most silicon solar cell technologies representing a substantial inefficiency in generating electricity from sunlight.
Much of solar research has worked to directly convert infrared light to electricity, but such technologies change the transistor design,
and thus the manufacturing process for solar panels. Their impacts tend to be limited by cost concerns, more than anything else.
These researchers chose to accept the absorptive abilities of current silicon transistors, and instead looked to make the light conform to the panels.
more importantly, it exists in a form that existing solar panels can absorb. By changing the incoming sunlight into silicon favorite for absorption,
the material could improve solar panel efficiency by as much as 30%.%And while the costs of the material itself are known not yet,
but isn capable of directly passing it into the electricity generating process. Instead, the light moves on to the organic phase of the material,
The resulting, lower-wavelength photons can move on to be absorbed by the transistors of the solar panel as normal,
and it is currently being missed by every solar panel outside of a research laboratory. In general, this sort of research into the manipulation of light could allow a wider rollout of solar power around the world.
and harder for modern solar panels to turn into power. Infrared radiation moves through and overcast sky quite well
as it would allow military members to cut off electricity supplies to enemy parties while keeping civilians out of the melee.
Researchers say that this could be useful in the creation of rust-free solar panels that capture the sun energy
and don have to be cleaned as often. ome potential applications for anti-icing surfaces include protection of aerofoils, power transmission lines,
Nanowires are extremely thin nanocrystal threads used in the development of new electronic components like transistors and solar cells.
"Currently, the most common nanofiber manufacturing technique, called electrospinning, uses high-voltage electricity and specially designed equipment to produce the polymer strings.
#New record efficiency for black silicon solar cells Researchers at the University of Aalto, Finland have broken the efficiency record for black silicon solar cells a type of cell that can gather sunlight even from tight
allowing solar cells that use it to trap light even when it's coming from very low angles.
This could be a good way to increase the yield of solar cells throughout the day
as they don't need the antireflection coatings used by many other types of solar cells. The main issue that has stifled the progress of black silicon cells is something known as carrier recombination.
When a photon hits a silicon atom inside a solar cell, the excess energy frees up an electron that is later used to generate electricity.
According the company, the new piezoelectric polymer converts pressure and vibration into electric energy with high efficiency,
Both are based on the principle of using mechanical strain to generate electricity and are used in electronics to provide power in specialized applications, such as vibration and pressure sensors.
"The fuel was created by Audi's project partner Global Bioenergies, in France. In late 2014, Global Bioenergies started up the fermentation unit for a pilot program to produce gaseous isobutane from renewable biomass sugars such as corn-derived glucose.
Gaseous isobutane is a sort of raw material for the petrochemical industry that can then be refined into a variety of plastics, fuels and other applications.
"says Global Bioenergies CEO Marc Delcourt.""It is the first time that we have produced real gasoline from plants."
"says Rick Bockrath, vice president for chemical engineering at Global Bioenergies.""It's basically how we're moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it."
"Audi and Global Bioenergies hope to tweak the production process in the future so that biomass is required no longer
and e-benzin can be created using only water, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and sunlight. We saw a similar project in Europe in 2014 that sought to make jet fuel.
At this point, the reactor exposes the air to electrical discharges separating nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) from the atmospheric air and transforming it into nitrous oxide (N2o),
and situations where access to electricity and resources are scarce. ny type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism,
including local wastewater, biomass or watersheds. Source: Binghamton Universit a
#3d printed flutes hit the right notes Researchers at Australia's University of Wollongong (UOW) have created a number of 3d printed custom flutes that can play microtonal tunings otherwise unachievable with standard flutes,
What happens here is that a tiny amount of electricity causes the charge carriers to deflect via a phenomenon called the Lorentz force,
#New energy cell can store up solar energy for release at night A photoelectrochemical cell (PEC) is a special type of solar cell that gathers the Sun's energy
and transforms it into either electricity or chemical energy used to split water and produce hydrogen for use in fuel cells.
In an advance that could help this clean energy source play a stronger role within the smart grid, researchers at the University of Texas,
Arlington have found a way to store the electricity generated by a PEC cell for extended periods of time
and allow electricity to be delivered around the clock. Currently the electricity generated by a PEC cell could not be stored effectively,
as the electrons would quickly"disappear"into a lower energy state. This meant that these cells were not a viable solution for a clean energy grid,
as the electricity had to be used very shortly after being produced. That is, on sunny days, at a time when standard PV panels would already be producing energy at full tilt.
Now, researchers Fuqiang Liu and colleagues have created a PEC cell that includes a specially designed photoelectrode (the component that converts incoming photons into electrons.
Unlike previous designs, their hybrid tungsten trioxide/titanium dioxide (WO3/Tio2) photoelectrode can store electrons effectively for long periods of time,
paving the way for PEC cells to play a bigger role within a smart energy grid.
While there's a healthy selection of compact solar panels to keep our mobile gadgets charged up light permitting the vast majority of these are either too small to be effective or too bulky for carting around.
while the actual solar panels are only 1. 5 mm thick. But Solar Paper has more going for it than just its form factor.
But thanks to a new Kickstarter project you may not have to worry about your smartphone dying before the electricity comes back on.
and the difference in temperature generates the electricity (though the device can also be used to sterilize water).
The semiconductor device converts the temperature gradient (the heat of the candle against the coolness of the water) into electricity.
constant and usable flow of electricity is generated without any special setup, as long as there's a candle in the home.
Both have been utilized individually by researchers to boost sunlight conversion to electrical current in solar cells, and to increase the efficacy of electrically-generated light.
which then super-efficiently convert electricity to light. Merging these two materials has solved also the problem of self-absorption that occurs
#Smart low-carbon Solcer House generates more electricity that it uses A Welsh university claims to have built the UK first low-cost, low-carbon, energy-positive house.
Electricity is imported also from the grid when required and exported to the grid when there is a surplus.
Electricity is generated by way of a 4. 3 kwp glazed photovoltaic solar panel array. This is fully integrated into the south-facing roof of the house
Electricity generated and stored is used to power the heating, ventilation, hot water system and household appliances. The Solcer House took 16 weeks to build
and Wind Incentives Permanent President Obama just unveiled a $3. 99 trillion budget for 2016 that asks Congress for a permanent extension of tax credits for the solar and wind industry.
In a section titled Improving Incentives for Research and Clean energy the 2016 budget proposal includes a request for $7. 4 billion for clean energy technologies along with a shopping list of funding and incentives for the renewable sector
and nuclear power industries. Although the Republican-controlled Senate and House will not approve this budget or enact permanent extensions of the tax credits the proposal signals that the administration will support some preservation of the solar Investment Tax credit (ITC) and the wind power Production Tax credit (PTC).
$44 million to establish a 10-megawatt scale pilot Supercritical Transformational Electric power facility Subsurface Engineering:
including R&d for transformational clean energy technologies $907. 6 million for nuclear energy for R&d in advanced reactor
as well as technical support for the licensing of small modular reactors $560 million for fossil energy R&d to advance carbon capture
and storage and natural gas technologies $270. 1 million for electricity delivery and energy reliability grid modernization activities $257 million for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to operate
About three-fifths of those Hawaiian solar systems use microinverters from Enphase, the company that leads the market for DC-to-AC devices that sit at the solar panels themselves, rather than in one big box next to the power meter.
Third-party solar provider Solarcity, for example, has worked with HECO and Department of energy researchers to show that smart inverter technologies can allow more solar per circuit--an important concession for HECO,
requiring careful management of just how much electricity is being used to receive and respond to the constant signals being passed back and forth amongst meshed devices.
but can effectively use that electricity to run digital devices, at least not without expensive alterations.
Former Opponent Touts Nuclear power at Chicago Event Not too long ago, Carol Browner would have sided with the activists clad in white hazmat suits protesting nuclear power outside the City Club's lunch Tuesday in downtown Chicago.
a speaker touting the benefits of nuclear power. With 6 percent of nuclear power in the U s. under financial threat, nuclear proponents are attempting to win over environmental activists.
Who better to send the message that nuclear power is a"clean"form of power and worth saving than Browner
who changed her mind and began advocating for nuclear power in 2011. Washington post: White house Opens Up Southern Atlantic coast to Offshore Drilling The Obama administration on Tuesday outlined a politically fraught plan for allowing oil drilling in U s. coastal waters,
announcing steps to open parts of the southeastern U s. coastline for oil leasing while imposing new restrictions on environmentally fragile waters off Alaska North Slope.
Researchers Tout Solar panels Made With erovskitemineral A new generation of solar panels made from a mineral called perovskite has the potential to convert solar energy into household electricity more cheaply than ever before, according to a study from Britain Exeter University.
they can both shade windowsnd at the same time produce electricity, he said e
#The Case for Long-Duration Storage: Net Electricity Load in Calif. Is 5 Years Ahead of Schedule On January 11, 2015, a rather unremarkable Sunday earlier this month,
the California Independent System Operator daily duck curve was approximately 1, 500 megawatts below where it is projected to be in 2020.
Scale drives cost reduction for storage We are already witnessing the impact of manufacturing scale on cost for lithium-ion batteries being bid into the electricity market.
we have the abundant solar and wind resources, the innovative companies, and the open energy storage procurement proceeding that can, at a modest scale, kick-start the long-duration energy storage market.
The U k. Electricity Storage Network is expecting a Minister from the Department of energy and Climate change (DECC) to participate in its annual meeting.
Anthony Price, director of the Electricity Storage Network, explains: The UK electricity and natural gas regulator Ofgem has calculated that it will cost £50 billion $76 billion to rewire Britain.
This will be to provide flexibility in the grid and allow the integration of more renewables,
Price organization is lobbying for a minimum 2, 000 megawatts of new network-connected electricity storage by the year 2020.
REDT is developing a vanadium redox flow battery for storing wind and wave power in Scotland. And Isentropic is building a demonstration project for its cryogenic energy storage technology.
SMA launched its Sunny Boy Smart energy PV inverter and battery system. Sharp followed suit at the end of last year by offering a solar-and-storage device that uses Samsung batteries.
Green energy Storage was founded and secured exclusive licensing rights for the technology and the products it yields in the 28 European union nations,
Green energy Storage has attracted already around half a million dollars of share capital and is close to securing tens of millions more, Aliquò revealed.
Green energy Storage is in negotiations to sign up suppliers in Europe and the U s. for the various component parts that will be needed
which markets will Green energy Storage's organic flow system be aimed? First, the company plans to attack the domestic storage market with systems of 5-to 20-kilowatt-hours,
designed to hold around four hours of electricity. These should be on sale in 2017, according to current plans.
And unless the Green energy Storage team substantially modifies Harvard's technology, the battery will also use other inexpensive elements, such as carbon electrodes.
green energy storage, harvard, organic flow battery, redox flow batter l
#Can $4b in Clean energy Investment Come Fast enough? The White house announced more than $4 billion in commitments at a Clean energy Investment Summit on Tuesday to scale up clean energy companies and address climate change. here not a single reason...
that by 2020 renewables can be 20 percent of U s. energy, said Vice president Joe Biden. nd that the floor, not the ceiling.
One of the reasons that hasn happened yet is because of funding limitations facing early-stage cleantech companies.
The committed funds are more than double the goal of the President Obama Clean energy Investment Initiative that was announced earlier this year.
it is imperative that we find ways to incentivize the global capital markets to invest in clean energy,
In simple terms, t a fluid that can conduct electricity. A friend of mine referred to it as a liquid wire
and emergency management officials protect those patients who rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment. The empower Map from HHS'Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness
wheelchairs depends on a steady supply of electricity. The online tool shows the monthly total number of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries'claims for electricity-dependent equipment at the national
state, territory, county and zip code levels. It then incorporates that data with real-time severe weather tracking services from the National oceanic and atmospheric administration in a GIS.
The empower Map could be used by electric utility companies to determine priority areas for restoring electrical service based on the location of the largest concentrations of electricity-dependent individuals,
whether emergency shelters might experience greater electricity demand due to higher concentrations of electricity-dependent Medicare beneficiaries,
"For people who rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment, prolonged power outages can mean life or death,"said Lurie."
finding cures to Alzheimer and other diseases, developing new clean energy technologies, and promoting new advanced manufacturing opportunities.
You can touch it without it breaking. he team then coated this spongy material with an ink that conducts electricity within the aerogel,
Offshore wind turbines could benefit from selfhealing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes (AFP/Getty) Professor Wass team at the University of Bristol has been focusing on the creation of self-healing versions of carbon fibre composite materials,
*Offshore wind turbines could also benefit from self-healing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes.
because it uses light rather than electricity as the processing medium, it is much more energy efficient than classical processing devices.
In 2013, solar was the second-largest source of new electricity generating capacity in the U s,
. exceeded only by natural gas 1. A USA Sunshot Vision Study suggests that solar power could provide as much as 14%of U s. electricity demand by 2030 and 27%by 2050 2. Currently,
but it reduces the amount of electricity demand they observe. The growing aggregate output from all these resources across our region will increasingly change the daily demand curve,
#Technology Fuel cells provide electricity for homes Kyoto-based Steven Rogers is the business development executive for Ceres Power, a British venture company that specialises in solid oxide fuel cells.
This technology can supply 80%of a modern home electricity and heat up all of its water. ost of our money comes from investors,
000, will provide most of a home electricity. At the same time, he says, the fuel cell process produces heat,
a typical house gets its electricity, already generated, from a distant power station. But Rogers says that
Then, the electricity has to travel by cable and pylon to the consumer, with an additional 20%of energy lost along the way.
By the time the electricity reaches the home, only 40%of the original energy remains. eat is wasted always
you can only send electricity. If you compare that to everyone having a power station in their own home, even a little one,
both the user of electricity and the user of heat are there. he Ceres system,
as a small proportion of the electricity generated must be used to power the system own blower,
"a steam-powered sewage processor that burns up solid waste and creates both potable water and electricity.
and built by the Washington-based engineering firm Janicki Bioenergy, which is now receiving funding from the Bill
The generator creates electricity that is used to power the machine. There's even a little extra electricity left over that can be transferred into the power grid.
This self-sustaining machine will soon be launched in a pilot project in Dakar, Senegal, where Janicki engineers will study the Omniprocessor's operation in a real-world setting.
The device is a pocket-size rectangle that unfolds to reveal three solar panels. These panels can absorb enough sunlight in 90 minutes to charge a standard smartphone
and Pakistan has started reportedly operating a third plutonium reactor, Squassoni said. She said the United states has good rhetoric on nuclear nonproliferation,
Harvesting Power from Vapours The clean energy sources have got an addition on their list, with the researches at the University of Columbia devising the world's first evaporation-driven engine that runs by harvesting energy from the evaporating water.
For instance, the basic principle here could be used to build power plants over bodies of water that generate electricity as the water evaporates.
000 islands in the Philippines lack access to electricity. This technology can turn the ocean into their power source,
a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines:
To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity. But it goes about it in an entirely different way.
Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what known as vorticity,
This kinetic energy is converted then into electricity via an alternator that multiplies the frequency of the mast oscillation to improve the energy-gathering efficiency.
Based on field testing, the Mini ultimately captures 30 percent less than conventional wind turbines, but that shortcoming is compensated by the fact that you can put double the Vortex turbines into the same space as a propeller turbine.
which Suriol is actually happy about. e can say anything bad about conventional wind turbines; theye great machines, he says. ee just proposing a new way, a different way. ource:
"Graphene conducts electricity better than graphite. It conducts better than silver or gold, "Sanchez-Yamagishi says.
and it can still conduct electricity basically as well as if it was still a single sheet of graphene,
"A big focus of our lab is just studying electricity in the form of how electrons move around
Since a diode acts as an electricity valve, its structure needs to be asymmetric so that electricity flowing in one direction experiences a different environment than electricity flowing in the other direction.
In order to develop a single-molecule diode, researchers have designed simply molecules that have asymmetric structures.""While such asymmetric molecules do indeed display some diode-like properties,
Nanofibers-polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells to water filtration to fuel cells.
where you would be able to individually control each emitter to print deposits of nanofibers. angled talenanofibers are useful for any application that benefits from a high ratio of surface area to volume solar cells, for instance,
Nanofibers-polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells to water filtration to fuel cells.
where you would be able to individually control each emitter to print deposits of nanofibers. angled talenanofibers are useful for any application that benefits from a high ratio of surface area to volume solar cells, for instance,
#Chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today's 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,
#Chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today's 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,
To prove the efficacy of this new mosquito-sized reaction chamber-called a micro-reactor-the scientists tracked the performance of a platinum catalyst during the conversion of ethylene to ethane, a model reaction relevant to many industrial synthesis processes.
low-pressure vacuum-but the micro-reactor allowed the TEM to operate in the presence of an atmosphere of reactive gases."
"But with the micro-reactor, some signals were too small to detect. Particles smaller than a single nanometer were hidden behind
and deposits energy as it passes through the micro-reactor. The sample then emits secondary x-rays,
"Versatile micro-reactorthe new micro-reactor was designed specifically and built to work seamlessly with both synchrotron x-rays and electron microscopes."
"Brighter, faster experimentsthe collaboration has extended already this operando micro-reactor approach to incorporate two additional techniques-infrared
but other new micro-reactors can operate at up to 800 degrees Celsius-more than hot enough for most catalytic reactions
In the near future, this same micro-reactor approach will be used to explore other crucial energy frontiers,
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