#More than 80%Efficiency Attained in New Ultralow-power Circuit Researchers at MIT developed a new ultralow-power circuit that improves efficiency of energy harvesting to more than 80 percent.
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge.
Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it,
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.
Moreover, the researcherschip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
Nonetheless, the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low
since the rate at which it dissipates energy as heat is proportional to the square of the current.
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,
because there a fixed amount of energy that consumed by doing the work, says Brett Miwa,
and the technique is much more detailed by looking at energies involved scientists can see many other things about the molecule,
re-emitting the energy as infrared light, and thus they both constrain what astronomers can see
and control much of the energy balance in the interstellar medium. Not least, in the early stages of a star evolution the dust can coagulate into large clumps the first step towards forming planets.
such as studying atomic processes and energy levels in physics, or analyzing tissue samples for biomedical research and diagnostics.
Scientists are also working on solar cells based on quantum dots, which rely on the dotsability to convert light into electrons.
one of their biggest limitations is the capacity of their tiny batteries to deliver enough power to transmit data.
and release electrical power in such bursts, which are needed for brief transmissions of data from wearable devices such as heart-rate monitors, computers,
At the moment, the coin-sized batteries used in many small electronic devices have limited very ability to deliver a lot of power at once,
Small batteries are suited generally poorly for such power needs, he adds. e know it a problem experienced by a number of companies in the health-monitoring
So an alternative is to go to a combination of a battery and a capacitor, Hunter says:
the battery for long-term, low-power functions, and the capacitor for short bursts of high power. Such a combination should be able to either increase the range of the device,
The new nanowire-based supercapacitor exceeds the performance of existing batteries, while occupying a very small volume. f youe got an Apple Watch and
because other energy storage technologies such as fuel cells, batteries, and flywheels tend to be less efficient, or simply too complex to be reduced practical
it would be desirable to have a high volumetric power density (the amount of power stored in a given volume) and high volumetric energy density (the amount of energy in a given volume).
However, with the new device, e have fairly high volumetric power density, medium energy density, and a low cost, a combination that could be well suited for many applications.
and challenging to make autonomous because most motors, pumps, batteries, sensors, and microcontrollers are rigid.
our soft robots typically have some rigid components things like batteries and control electronics. This robot is a demonstration of a method to integrate the rigid components with the body of the soft robot through a gradient of material properties
#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.
The new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
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,
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. The two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
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.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
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,
and by the Center for Molecularly Engineered Energy Materials, an Energy Frontier Research center funded by the U s. Department of energy (DE-AC06-76rlo-1830.
Ferreira received support from the Clean Green IGERT (grant DGE-0903720) 3
#Nanoparticles and UV LIGHT Clean up Environmental Pollutants A new study from MIT shows how nanoparticles can clean up environmental pollutants,
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
Just as the smart grid is the new reality for the energy industry, smart water networks are the new face of the water utility industry.
In the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China, Itron deployed one network that runs three meters--water, electricity and gas.
Council Lead Partner Itron, meanwhile, completed installation of smart water, heat and gas meters and communication modules as well as its fixed network for Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China.
"We are talking about 600 million people who do not have 24-hour access to electricity.
Oregon-based writer specializing in technology and energy
#Argentine greenhouse robot brings automation to the masses BUENOS AIRES--The new Trakür agricultural robot does not have the brains, firepower or complexity of one of the Transformers,
not including battery), the robot is built entirely from off-the-shelf parts. The robot's operator watches the Trakür's progress through a cheap security camera mounted on its hood, for example."
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.
and renters implement energy efficiency in their shared property with templates and a step-by-step guide to help cut out the paperwork.
biotechs race to develop acute radiation drugs Since the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power station,
#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,
natural, renewable energy and power plants. 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.#
#Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, is a technique drillers use to reach vast tracts of previously untouchable gas trapped in shale.
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,
#White house unveils smart grid strategy, $250 million in loans WASHINGTON, D c.--If Thomas Edison could drop into 2011
and would likely be puzzled at how little his creation had changed would be our electrical grid. That's the narrative that White house officials used to help sell the idea of revolutionizing the U s.#electrical grid at an event for the press
energy industry leaders, and technology industry executives on Monday in Washington. Led by the Secretary of energy Steven Chu and federal CTO Aneesh Chopra,
the White house unveiled its strategy --and $250 million in loans--for building a 21st century'smart grid'as a catalyst to make power less expensive,
minimize outages, unlock next generation power sources, and empower citizens to monitor and manage their own usage.
As part of the event, the National Science and Technology Council released a new report called A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid:
Enabling Our Secure Energy Future. This report, along with the rest of the White house's smart grid materials and its presentation on Monday, are packed with details on the current challenges
and obstacles and the ways the U s. can overcome them. But a lot of the information is locked away in bureaucratic and legal language.#
A better grid: Upgrade the U s. electrical infrastructure to drastically improve storage and transmission. Creating standards will be a critical part of the plan.
Enable consumers to have easy access to their own energy usage and better ways to control and self-regulate it
in order to save money and energy. Smart meters are key. New energy: Prepare the'smart grid'to better handle new forms of power--wind, solar, geothermal, etc.
--that are going to be an increasingly larger proportion of the pie. Two big obstacles that the U s. has to overcome:
Innovator's dilemma: Since the U s. is where the modern#electrical grid was born, this country has an old,
well-established infrastructure with a large installed base. Changing the stuff that is already in use and is critical to daily life is painful and expensive.
and companies have control and regulation over the way the electrical grid works across the U s,
when he first came into office the smart grid issue was wanted something he to move quickly on.
and federal agreement on energy and grid standards so that utilities don't have to guess when they are dealing with different jurisdictions to upgrade the grid.
This was confirmed by Bob Shapard, CEO of the Texas utility#Oncor, who said that energy companies were ready to invest in upgrading the infrastructure.
This doesn't take government money, he said. If we have the clarity, the utilities can raise all the capital.
and convince citizens of the benefits of self-managing their own energy use. It's no wonder that small countries like Ireland
and totalitarian governments like China are moving a lot faster that the U s. in modernizing their energy infrastructure.
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:
The President's Plan for a 21st Century Electric grid A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid:
Enabling Our Secure Energy Future Author's note: Enthusiasm may be the best thing the U s. has going for it in facing the two major obstacles to the smart grid.
The participants in the event--from officials in various agencies to business leaders in energy and technology to a couple high school students who've pioneered smart meters in their school--all spoke with the enthusiasm you don't typically see at government events.
They all seemed to have a sense that a big opportunity is standing right in front of us.
And, a lot of people want to get in on this opportunity. One indicator of that was the huge line to get into the event itself (see photo below.
Keep in mind that this wasn't a public event. Twenty minutes before the event was supposed to start,
Based on line chatter, these were mostly government officials and leaders from the energy industry. Once I got in,
and they want to pour all their energy into fewer products. For Google, RSS was small beans.
#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.
In standard turbine design, wind energy is used to turn the unit's rotors, which then converts this type of power into electricity through powering machinery
or sending it to generators. However Apple's patent design takes this one step further, and accounts for a problem faced by any system reliant on wind energy--the natural element's variability.
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.
This energy is transferred then into a working fluid which creates steam, which replaces electricity in order to power mechanisms or generators.
As the energy is being stored, heat can be transferred selectively whenever there is a lull in wind activity,
keeping machinery going and reducing reliance on backup power systems. Apple describes the benefits of the system within the patent application,
where the firm says such designs could reduce costs related to wind variation: 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.
How might this kind of technology relate to ipad and iphone maker Apple? The patent application is not a huge indicator,
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,
renewable energy sources to power its manufacturing chain. Image credit: Apple Insider Related:''Cliff'bill winners: wind, rum,
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.
He said he expects the retailer to be paying as little for solar power as utility power in less than three years,
opening the floodgates to solar expansion. 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
#Why no one can be a'passive consumer'in today's API economy Increasingly, innovative businesses are being built around application programming interfaces (APIS)
--which provide pre-built cloud resources for the underlying forms and functions for new businesses and concepts.
This is helping to accelerate the time new businesses and new concepts get to market, versus reinventing the wheel every time someone gets a new idea.'
But an increasing amount of that crude is staying in the country where it's used run to desalination and power plants.
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.
The government plans to install about 16 GW of solar photovoltaic power plants. Another 25 GW of capacity would come from concentrated solar plants,
which use thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun onto heating liquid, which creates steam that turn power turbines.
The solar PV will meet total day time demand year-round, according the al-Sulaiman's presentation.
geothermal and waste-to-energy plants will meet baseload demand up to night and the CSP with storage will meet the maximum demand difference between PV and baseload technologies.
The estimated $109 billion plan isn't just about building solar power plants. Instead, the government wants to build a solar industry, according to al-Sulaiman's presentation.
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
Growflex is a machine-to-machine network solution that includes battery -or solar-powered sensors that are distributed in a greenhouse or field.
It grows on its own so energy costs are one 10th of the costs to create foam.
so it requires much more energy and creates more waste. We re using waste materials and using the entire organism.
It s a New york state Energy Research and development Authority-funded program. We re also doing building materials as well--replacing foam insulation.
Its current biofuel roadmap demands that at least 5. 75%of all energy sold on the market of any member country be biofuel
the bike path will also provide energy to the town. Collective-Evolution notes that the solar panels embedded in the concrete bike path are not as efficient as panels installed on homes
because they cannot be adjusted to the position of the sun. Of course, the solar panels on the smart highway cover about 75 yards of roadway which is slightly more than you can fit on a roof.
The netherlands TNO research institute also gave the road a nonadhesive finish and built it at a slight tilt
and will be able to produce enough energy to power three homes. The smart highway, officially called Solaroad by TNO, is just the beginning of Netherland solar transition.
combined with an electrolyte could cause the liquid metal to spread or to contract, depending on
extremely sensitive seismic sensors that detect energy waves, along with GPS sensors to detect permanent ground movement due to the motion of the geological fault that triggers the earthquake.
energy to power sensors and electronics integrated into smart clothing. Smart fabrics, which incorporate different types of sensors into garments,
although relatively small, use a solid battery which is less than ideal both from an aesthetic and functional perspective.
At the time these fibers were said to obtain the highest volumetric energy density reported for carbon-based microscale supercapacitors (6. 3 microwatt-hours per cubic millimeter,
which is comparable to a 4-volt-500-microampere-hour battery). However carbon nanotubes are still expensive not to mention the fact that there is still some debate about their possible toxicity.
Trying to create a textile that can store energy without the use of exotic, expensive materials,
using an area of about 3000 cm2 (about the size of the center back panel of a shirt) it is possible to store the equivalent energy of a 4 cm2,
V coin cell battery. In order to reach this energy density, the Drexel team used a technique called natural fiber welding or NFW.
This technique was invented chemistry professor Paul C. Trulove research team at the U s. Naval academy and Hugh C. Delong of the Air force Office of Scientific research.
but they all had attached solid battery packs to the shirt, rather than incorporating an energy storing fabric.
Her ultimate goal is to produce an energy storage device that can seamlessly power these kinds of technologies
including diverse types of knitted sensors and low energy communication devices o
#Molecular electronics Takes Large Stride Forward Molecular electronics has promised long a day when individual molecules would serve as the basic building blocks for electronics.
and has low RF energy loss, "he adds. The cellulose nanofibril (CNF) aperhey used is about 200 micrometers thick.
Nanofibril films may be used in photovoltaic cells and also in displays because they have better light-transmission properties than glass,
#Graphene Heating system Dramatically Reduces Home energy Costs Breakthroughs in energy generation using nanomaterialsike their enabling of better supercapacitors
But it is unheralded in the area of energy savings that nanomaterials are perhaps making the biggest inroads.
A startup in the UK called Xefro is bridging this divide between energy generation and energy savings through its development of a heating system that the company claims marks the first time that the onder materialgraphene has been used as a heating element.
Depending on the kind of heating system currently used in a home the company estimates that this graphene-based heating system can reduce energy costs by anywhere from 25 to 70 percent.
Xefro uses graphene-based ink that can be printed on a variety of materials and into just about any configuration.
and leverages graphene large surface area so that energy isn wasted in heating up the heater itself. he innovation is all about getting useable heat where it is needed,
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,
placing the heating element inside a metal box that reflects back most of the infrared energy,
and ensure that most of the heat is emitted out into the room rather than simply heating up the wall behind the heater. hile graphene does offer some attractive properties for reducing wasted energy,
says Harper. he energy savings come when the heaters are deployed as a system throughout a building. The heaters are linked with the control system via Wi-fi,
#Graphene coating Could Save Millions in Power plant Energy costs Earlier this week, we covered a company, Xefro,
producing energy savings over traditional systems. Now research out of MIT is showing that coating power plant condensers with graphene could make them more energy efficient.
In research published in the journal Nano Letters, the MIT team addressed one of the basic elements of steam-generated electricity:
heat transfer in water condensation. In a steam-powered power plant, water is heated up to create steam that turns a turbine.
The turning of the turbine produces electricity. In this process, the steam is condensed back into water
and the whole process begins again. The MIT team looked at these condensers and found that by layering their surfaces with graphene they can improve the rate of heat transfer by a factor of four.
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."
"That translates into millions of dollars per power plant per year, "said Daniel Preston, one of the MIT authors of the paper, in a press release.
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