#Graphene Shines in World's Thinnest Light bulb Back in April, we covered news that graphene was going to make a commercial breakout of sorts as a coating in an LED light bulb to reduce its energy consumption
what is essentially the world's thinnest light bulb, says Hone, a professor at Columbia Engineering,
The grids linked to two metal edestalsthat jutted out of Sorto skull. Within one month of surgery, Sorto was ready to get to work.
#Chemical Battery Can Recharge Itself With Light Batteries, 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.
Under artificial light, this prototype battery has a capacity of 77.8 mah/g. Itl quite happily power a small fan or LED light for about 30 seconds,
and then if you give it a break for 30 seconds while shining a light on it,
Over 100 cycles, the battery retained a bit over 70 percent of its discharge capacity, which at least suggests some potential for longevity and usefulness.
this battery design offers other benefits, including sustainable and economical anode material which will not be consumed as a part of the discharge reactions,
and safety concerns commonly encountered in the state of the art anode materials in aqueous rechargeable batteries. ccording to a press release from the American Chemical Society,
he researchers say their design is a promising first step toward a more sustainable and safer battery technology.
but getting your hopes up for a light-powered battery in your cell phone might be premature by a decade or so.
When combined, they create a metamaterial, capable of bending light in unusual ways. The team also varied the height of the cylinders by a small amount,
a newer version of metamaterials that has generated recently some interest. ne tenth of the wavelength is essentially like 0 in height,
#Wind turbines Power Liquid-air Energy storage One startup energy company is looking to reinvent not only wind energy, but also energy storage.
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.
Keuka turbine is a pinwheel of aluminum blades that sits atop a floating V-shape platform containing liquid air.
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.
Liquid-air energy storage, also sometimes called cryogenic energy storage, is a long-term energy storage method: electricity liquefies air to nearly-200°C and then stores it at low pressure.
When the energy is needed, the liquid air is pumped to a high level of pressure and heated to a gas state.
The gas then drives a turbine. Although it is an attractive energy storage technology because of its long duration,
liquid-air energy storage requires a significant amount of electricity to make the liquid air, limiting its usage by utilities.
Keuka claims that because its design substantially reduced the cost by supplying the power directly from the turbines to the liquefaction equipment.
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.
Even if the technology is effective and can come in at lower costs, Keuka will likely face a long road to acceptance by the notoriously risk averse utility industry.
Keuka is not the only startup looking to advance liquid-air energy storage. In 2014, General electric signed an exclusive global licensing deal with Highview Power storage,
a U k. startup that makes utility-scale liquid-air energy storage systems. Another similar technology that has gained more traction is compressed-air energy storage
which does not have the energy density of liquid air, but so far has proven more cost effective.
Compressed air, while a cheap form of energy storage once built, is still expensive to build and geographically limited;
Other startups are also looking offshore for cheap energy storage. Bright Energy is developing a system that would use offshore renewable energy to store compressed air in vessels in the ocean.
Canadian startup Hydrostor also has a design to store compressed air underwater. If Keuka 125-kilowatt prototype is successful,
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,
The research group,"Fuel cell Based Power Generation (FCGEN), "which includes researchers from Volvo Technology (Sweden), Johnson-Matthey (United kingdom), Modelon AB (Sweden), Powercell AB (Sweden), Jo ef Stefan Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Forschungszentrum
diesel-fueled fuel cell system that has operated flawlessly for 10,000 hours. The extraction of the hydrogen from the diesel fuel happens through autothermal reforming, a catalytic reaction in
In addition to lowering CO2 EMISSION, the units produce little noise, making them suitable as mobile electricity generators in places, like field hospitals,
#Nanowires Boost Hydrogen Production from Sunlight Tenfold Using the energy of the sun to split water into hydrogen
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.
Gap is also able to extract oxygen from the watero you then actually have a fuel cell in
#Porous Silicon Battery electrodes from Reeds Natural structures in reed leaves could find use in advanced lithium-ion batteries,
which could lead to a more sustainable way to create sophisticated energy storage devices, scientists in China and Germany say.
Silicon-based materials can theoretically store more than 10 times charge than the carbon-based materials most commonly used in the anodes of commercial lithium-ion batteries,
The constant swelling and shrinking as the battery charges and discharges causes the anode to crack.
But synthesizing these structures is commonly a complex, energy-intensive, and costly process. Now scientists have developed 3-D porous silicon-based anode materials using the kind of reed leaves that are abundant in temperate wetlands.
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
such as high power consumption and the need for more space on a chip. To date, to be able read the spin of the electrons,
#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.
The energy from every two infrared rays they capture is combined 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, which help combine the energy from these photons together into an upconverted photon.
In experiments lead selenide nanocrystals captured near-infrared photons, and the organic compound rubrene emitted visible yellow-orange photons.
high-energy photon has potential applications in biological imaging, high-density data storage, and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS) L
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,
#Lessons From ESOS Energy Legislation In The UK The U k. recently announced compliance guidelines for the government new Energy savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), a mandatory energy assessment and energy saving identification
scheme in response to the requirement or all Member States of the European union to implement Article 8 of the Energy efficiency Directive.
The objective of ESOS is to reduce energy consumption, help address climate change, increase energy security and improve the competitiveness of U k. businesses.
and administered by the Environment Agency intended to trim excessive energy use as a means to cut carbon
while mitigating organizational energy waste. In short but not-so-simple terms, qualifying businesses are required to a) measure total energy consumption, accounting for 90 percent of usage across all buildings, transport and industrial activities;
b) conduct energy audits to identify cost-effective, energy-efficient recommendations; c) ensure that the ESOS assessment has been conducted
or reviewed by a board-level director and approved by a lead assessor; and d) report compliance to the Environment Agency by December 5, 2015.
certain caveats exists there is no obligation to implement these energy saving measures internally identified in the audit,
Though the legislation notable feature appears spineless by failing to require businesses make any of these recommended changes to save energy,
participants must demonstrate an authentic and rigorous attempt to examine opportunities for reducing energy use and have reviewed these findings at the board level.
The Challenge to Measure and the Burden of proof While companies may find motivation for implementing the recommended energy saving measures of the audit solely for financial benefit,
the ESOS directive is as much about enforcement as it is about the need for companies to understand power consumption.
Uncovering pockets of energy waste requires appointing personnel familiar with the scheme; the only other option is to outsource,
the vast majority of businesses lack the technology to accurately track such energy consumption. Measuring the energy consumption of a Macbook Air compared to that of a Dell Desktop PC,
for example, will prove to be difficult. While some organizations already have the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) in place
allows companies to reference the power consumption of each device, along with the actual power usage when on and off.
taking into consideration that the U s. wastes an approximate $2. 8 billion in PC energy every year, the U k. may need to take a more effective approach to energy security.
Recognizing the additional administrative pressure placed on energy managers with ESOS which will have many similarities to existing U k. policies the government is proposing that enterprises be allowed to utilize data from other schemes,
such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy efficiency Scheme. Of the 7, 000-plus businesses required to participate, as many as 6,
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
Although energy efficiency in the U s. has been a buzzword for years, when it comes down to it,
According to the American Council for an Energy-efficient Economy, even China and India have fared better on the list than the U s as American energy regulations for power conservation have been particularly scarce in recent years.
Although the Obama administration and the now Republican-dominant Congress continue to be at odds over legislation that not only addresses energy efficiency
Ideally, a partnership between U s. government and industry is essential for an energy policy to have a significant impact on the future of businesses and the environment.
The state-by-state approach indicates great strides in U s. energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, but at what cost to businesses?
As the U s. continues to rank among the top three energy consumers in the world,
There only a speakerphone, microphone, battery pack, and a small piece of hardware that connects to the cloud. s a connected device,
As part of the deal, Apple will get electricity from the farm at a fixed rate for 25 years.
There even a built-in 37-watt lithium-ion battery and a USB plug so you can power your smartphone up to six times while on the go.
But should the battery lose power it comes with a TSA-approved master key that will help you
#Scientists Make Energy-Generating Keyboard That Knows Who#s Typing On it Passwords continue to be a glaring weakness in digital security.
and typing style the nonmechanical keyboard is able to generate energy to power itself and self cleans thanks to a dirt repellent coating
How much energy can be generated by typing on the smart keyboard? Enough to charge mall electronics at arbitrary typing speed greater than 100 characters per minaccording to the team
#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.
but Pattern Energy notes that this is a 13-year agreement. As Amazon announced last November, its long-term goal is o achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure footprint.
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
When a constant current is applied to an LED light bulb a constant stream of photons are emitted from the bulb
high speed information can be transmitted from an LED light bulb. The company has begun already shipping actual product in the form of
coupled with a battery powered Lifi mobile unit attached to a laptop screen, allows users to roam within a room,
Companies like Realtymogul in the $2 trillion real estate industry and Noesis in the $18 billion commercial energy equipment market have seen rapid growth despite a narrow focus. nlike some industries,
A personal craft that can lift off vertically, fly 200 miles and land vertically, all on battery power.
Battery power and battery weight will have to improve dramatically safety systems will have to be developed and anti-collision infrastructure will have to be deployed.
Drones could spur demand for lighter batteries or a different kind of power source. Drones need to see where they are going
Interestingly there is no mention here of using these tiny bits of working muscle muscle that twitches in response to electricity
Sony notes that the phone has a two-day battery life. Sony says the phone is waterproof under a few conditions.
#Kraftwerk Is A Power plant That Fits In The Palm Of Your Hand It looks and acts like a battery pack but kraftwerk is actually the first hand-held fuel cell generator that can regenerate energy in less than 3 seconds.
And it can power all your mobile devices for weeks. kraftwerk which translates to ower stationin German is the product of ezelleron an engineering team that spun out of German research firm Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.
Fuel cell technology has been bandied about since the 1950 (Wikipedia says the first reference to it was in 1838)
but gas and other fossil fuels have eclipsed it as a preferred energy source. The reasons for low adoption of the tech are varied
but it does hold the promise of a cheap clean and efficient source of energy.
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
There have been a few other fuel cell Kickstarters for powering cellphones but none look as slick as kraftwerk.
The Devotec Micro Fuel Charger a key ring sized fuel cell cellphone charger added about 20-30 minutes of extra talk time
There was also the unsuccessfully funded HALO fuel cell charger. Touted as emergency preparedness for the outdoorsy type with an ipad it was a bit clunky looking.
and turn off your unit to conserve energy and save money. The unit itself is even monitoring temperature and humidity locally,
and Energy for checking what drawing power and switching them on and off remotely. Using Homekit, ios device users with 8. 1 or above can check on all the stats gathered by the Eve from their devices,
Sensors are sold individually at $79. 99 for Eve Room, $49. 95 for Eve Weather, $49. 95 for Eve Energy and $39. 95 for Eve Door & Window,
letting you save energy and maximize comfort in every area. With Homekit ecobee3 owners can group actions together for control via Siri,
or boost your energy with controls on your smartphone. As we reported back in October, the Los Gatos-based startup has raised $13 million to change your mood using electrical stimulation.
calm and energy. Once you begin, you can dial the intensity of the experience up
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.
I didn have time to try out the Energy mode, but if it works as effectively as the Calm mode, it should make users wired.
I could see myself using it to get that initial boost of energy needed to get to the office
or merchants can charge the reader battery and then connect wirelessly. Charge the battery and connect wirelessly,
or plug it into the Square Stand USB hub. The partnership announcement came during Apple WWDC conference keynote,
and other battery-enabled devices on the go using something that is already abundantly flowing all around us radio waves.
Nikola Labs presented at Techcrunch Disrupt a couple years back with the same idea turning radio frequency signals into battery power.
China also pledged that 20 percent of its energy would come from sources other than fossil-fuels by 2030.
and director of the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project. But economic growth has slowed (it was 7. 7 percent in 2012
and in turn so has growth in demand for energy. Also, this year China government has announced already a plan to reduce air pollution by taxing and limiting coal use.
and assumed that China would accomplish ambitious near-term goals for expanding nuclear power and renewables,
#A Battery to Prop up Renewable Power Hits the Market A new kind of battery that stores energy from solar
long-lived batteries that could make it possible to rely heavily on intermittent, renewable energy sources. Aquion Energy, a company spun out of Carnegie mellon University,
recently delivered the first of its batteries to operators of small power grids, or icrogrids, that can operate independently of the centralized grid.
Microgrids, which typically use local energy sources such as wind 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.
Aquion batteries use sodium ions from saltwater as their electrolyte. Electrical current moves through this brackish liquid from positive electrodes based on manganese oxide to negative ones based on carbon.
The batteries are large and operate slowly, but they are manufactured also cheaply, using repurposed manufacturing equipment.
Last week Aquion announced $34. 6 million in funding to help it scale up production. The batteries cost about as much as lead-acid ones
which are used sometimes now, but they last twice as long, effectively cutting the long-term costs in half (see emo:
Storing the Sun. Other long-lived batteries exist, but they cost far more than lead-acid batteries. The new energy storage technology could be crucial to making renewable energy more viable, especially in remote locations.
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.
As costs come down further, the batteries could find new applications beyond microgrids, including stabilizing conventional power grids as they come to rely more heavily on renewable energy.
The company isn disclosing where its batteries are being usedxcept to say the projects are international a
#Police in California and Texas Test Networked Guns When a police officer draws a firearm he
or she often doesn have an opportunity to radio for backup. Yardarm, a California-based company, is building technology that will automatically alert headquarters in such situations.
The company makes a chip that goes into the handle of a regular firearm and transmits data over a cellphone network connection.
The data transmitted includes the location of a gun and whether it has been discharged unholstered or.
The company is also working to track the direction in which a gun is pointing.
#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.
claims that the next generation of this power unit will make solar power the cheapest option for utilities installing new power plants.
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
allows Semprius to improve upon a type of solar power called concentrated photovoltaics, which has been around for decades (see ltra-Efficient Solar.
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,
convincing Siemens to get out of the business, ending the partnership and marking the beginning of hard times for Semprius.
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,
and that the opportunity for Semprius. The U s. Energy Information Administration estimates that new solar power plants will produce power at just under 15 cents per kilowatt-hourar higher than the 6. 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas power.
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,
its technology could be attractive to those planning new power plants. o invention is required, just good, solid engineering,
Burroughs says. So Semprius continues its search for a new investor to scale up its technology.
and contains a wireless modem and eight-hour rechargeable battery which means it could be carried around a store or restaurant if needed.
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