The advance could eventually lead to vastly improved technology for capturing solar energy. In fact, it could literally reshape solar cells.
Scientists could potentially create ight antennasthin, pole-like devices that could absorb light from all directions,
Devices such as solar cells and photosensors work better if the crystals grow vertically because vertical crystals can be packed more densely in the semiconductor,
and for the wider use of renewable energy. OSU officials say they are seeking support for further research
#Next-generation perovskite solar cells made stable by metal oxide andwichucla professor Yang Yang, member of the California Nanosystems Institute, is renowned a world innovator of solar cell technology
whose team in recent years has developed next-generation solar cells constructed of perovskite, which has remarkable efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
Despite this success, the delicate nature of perovskite a very light, flexible, organic-inorganic hybrid material stalled further development toward its commercialized use.
When exposed to air, perovskite cells broke down and disintegrated within a few hours to few days.
This is a significant advance toward stabilizing perovskite solar cells. Their new cell construction extends the cell effective life in air by more than 10 times, with only a marginal loss of efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
The study was published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Postdoctoral scholar Jingbi You and graduate student Lei Meng from the Yang Lab were the lead authors on the paper. here has been much optimism about perovskite solar cell technology
Meng said. In less than two years, the Yang team has advanced perovskite solar cell efficiency from less than 1 percent to close to 20 percent. ut its short lifespan was a limiting factor we have been trying to improve on since developing perovskite cells with high efficiency.
Yang, who holds the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering at UCLA, said there are several factors that lead to quick deterioration in normally layered perovskite solar cells.
The most significant, Yang said, was that the widely used top organic buffer layer has poor stability
because electricity generated by the cell is extracted through them. Meng said that in this study the team replaced those organic layers with metal oxide layers that sandwich the perovskite layer,
The next step for the Yang team is to make the metal oxide layers more condensed for better efficiency and seal the solar cell for even longer life with no loss of efficiency.
Alternative energy Solutions/New Materials Research: Finding new and more efficient solutions to energy harvesting, nanoporous membranes for water desalinization, solar thermal fuels and more.
is central to most electric power plants, heating and cooling systems, and desalination plants. Now, for the first time, researchers at MIT have found a way to control this process, literally with the flick of an electrical switch.
which could improve the efficiency of electric power generation and other processes, is described in a paper by Department of Mechanical engineering Professor Evelyn Wang, graduate student Jeremy Cho,
The carbonic anhydrase would be immobilized with solvent inside a reactor vessel that serves as a large purification column.
when the plant turns the Sun energy into chemical energy and then transported to the seeds.
Several privately funded companies and small university-based research groups pursuing novel fusion reactor designs have delivered promising results that could shorten the timeline for producing a prototype machine from decades to several years.
but the outlines of such a reactor can now be perceived. Traditional fusion research has centered on large, doughnut-shaped machines called tokamaks,
the fusion reactors of today, such as the one at the International Thermonuclear Experimental reactor (ITER) project in southern France, use giant coils of electromagnets that consume much more energy than the machine actually produces.
ITER (pronounced ater, which combines scientists and funding from China, the European union, India, Russia, Japan, South korea,
and the United states, is projected to cost dozens of billions of dollars to produce a working reactor sometime in the 2030s.
Two recent developments, offering new and faster pathways to energy-producing fusion reactors, have galvanized the fusion community.
such as the Large hadron collider, to bear on the problems of fusion reactors. Specifically, the team has built a device, 23 meters long,
a professor of nuclear science and engineering and the center director, published a conceptual design in July for a machine called the ARC reactor (ffordable, robust, compact.
the ARC reactor can achieve magnetic fields with much higher energyhus enabling a reactor design much smaller than other tokamak-based machines.
and provide an efficient heat-exchange medium to produce electricity. Increasing the amplitude of the surrounding magnetic field raises the amount of fusion power produced in the plasma to the fourth power dramatic increase that could lead to a commercial prototype in a matter of years,
Now the advent of advanced superconductor tapes could enable a compact reactor that produces fusion continuously.
the ARC reactor paper stresses that, for the moment, it a conceptual design only. Whyte is hoping to attract funding to build an experimental machine over the next few years.
says that nine months ago surgeons implanted two bunches of silicon electrodes, called Utah arrays, into the volunteer motor cortex.
and translates the sensation into pulses of electricity that can be interpreted by the mammalian nervous system,
#Graphene's thermoelectric properties to help cars recover lost thermal energy Charging bateries or running air conditioning could be assisted by energy from fuel normally wasted as heat emissions One of the less well-known properties of graphene could enable the carbonaceous wonder-material to help combustion engine vehicles to make better use of the energy from their fuel by converting waste heat into electricity
to charge the batteries or power onboard systems, according to the University of Manchester. Graphene-doped strontium titanium oxide has the ability to generate electricity from relatively small amounts of heat
according to a team working with a Leicester-based thermal management specialist called European Thermodynamics. Thermoelectric graphene composite, with graphene fragments ringed in the 2 m-scale image Internal combustion engines lose about 70 per cent of the energy from their fuel as heat,
Freer said. he new material will convert 3-5%of the heat into electricity. That is not much, Freer conceded,
including power generation in wind turbines, memory storage, and medical imaging. However, only three metals iron cobalt and nickel-are naturally ferromagnetic,
This meant that more solar energy could be used by the electrode. ow we understand what going on at the microscopic level,
Splitting water into its constituent elements has long been touted as a potential source of clean and sustainable energy,
Our rechargeable aluminium battery generates about two volts of electricity. That higher than anyone has achieved with aluminium.
And the new design could be used to store renewable energy of the electrical grid, the researchers suggested.
he missing piece it said, in the transition to a sustainable energy world. The batteries, which will retail at $3,
and store up to 10kwh of energy from wind or solar panel. The reserves can be drawn on
when electricity costs are highest. The smallest owerwallis 1. 3m by 68cm, small enough to be hung inside a garage on
Musk also unveiled a larger owerpack a 100kwh battery block to help utilities smooth out their supply of wind and solar energy
He said on Thursday about two billion Powerpacks could store enough electricity to meet the entire world needs. hat may seem like an insane number,
says the turbines will in time produce electricity more cheaply than offshore wind farms. It hopes to install its new design in
what is called a tidal energy fence, one kilometre long, in the Bristol Channel#an estuary dividing South Wales from the west of England#at a cost of £143m.
each of which will start generating electricity as it is completed, until the whole array is producing power.
And just to visualise that, it like one small nuclear reactor worth of electricity being generated from the tides in the Bristol Channel. he new Transverse Horizontal Axis Water turbine (THAWT)
There is more good news for proponents of renewable energy after the UK government #which is no longer encouraging onshore wind
and solar energy#gave the go-ahead for a large offshore wind farm that could provide power for up to two million homes.
The new wind farm is to be built near the Dogger Bank in the North sea and will have 400 turbines.
with the new development, will form one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world. But the fossil fuel industry is far from abandoning its own interest in British waters as the energy giant BP has announced that it is to invest about £670m to extend the life of its North sea assets.
The hover engine essentially creates"swirls of electricity"that form magnetic fields both within the hover engine and the conductive surface.
"Using pervaporation eliminates the need for electricity that is used in classic desalination processes, thus cutting costs significantly."
solar power inverters, industrial motor controllers, and other electronics will produce $900 billion in energy savings annually by 2025.
Underneath the hood though they are investing in the ishares S&p global clean energy index fund. The app lets users choose from some 30 types of investments
TRU-D's system analyzes the variables of the room and floods the space (both line-of-site and shadowed spaces) with the proper dose of UV light energy.
In a paper published online October 15 2014 in Nature research groups from the two institutions demonstrate the mechanical generation of electricity from the two-dimensional (2d) Mos2 material.
This material--just a single layer of atoms--could be made as a wearable device perhaps integrated into clothing to convert energy from your body movement to electricity
Zhong Lin Wang and his research group pioneered the field of piezoelectric nanogenerators for converting mechanical energy into electricity.
They monitored the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy and observed voltage and current outputs. The researchers also noted that the output voltage reversed sign
It will help us make parts that are stronger lighter and function better for more energy-efficient transportation and energy production applications such as cars and wind turbines.
The research was supported by the Advanced Manufacturing Office in DOE's Office of Energy efficiency and Renewable energy.
Switching lighting to LEDS over the next two decades reports the U s. Department of energy could save the country $250 billion in energy costs over that period reduce the electricity consumption for lighting by nearly one half
Research for this project was conducted at ORNL's National Transportation Research center and Manufacturing Demonstration Facility DOE user facilities with funding from DOE's Office of Energy efficiency and Renewable energy.
and gives scientists a way to potentially produce high amounts of oil and biomass. In terms of human medicine this discovery gives scientists a promising new model to study tumor suppression and growth.
when consuming a unit amount of electric power which is an important index to compare the energy-efficiency of different lighting devices Shimoi said.
The world's rapidly growing demand for energy and the requirement of sustainable energy production calls for an urgent change in today's fossil fuel based energy system.
#Balancing renewable energy costs and optimizing energy mix Increasing reliance on renewable energies is the way to achieve greater CO2 EMISSION sustainability and energy independence.
In a new study in EPJ Plus French scientists have come up with an open source simulation method to calculate the actual cost of relying on a combination of electricity sources.
Bernard Bonin from the Atomic energy Research Centre CEA Saclay France and colleagues demonstrate that cost is not directly proportional to the demand level.
The authors consider wind solar hydraulic nuclear coal and gas as potential energy sources. In their model the energy demand and availability are cast as random variables.
This mix contains a large amount of nuclear power and a small amount of fluctuating energies: wind and solar.
By a pipeline system fecal sludge of the hospital enters a two-stage unaerobic reactor where it is mixed with biowaste.
Grasslands support more species than cornfields In Wisconsin bioenergy is for the birds. Really. In a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE University of Wisconsin-Madison
whether corn and perennial grassland fields in southern Wisconsin could provide both biomass for bioenergy production and bountiful bird habitat.
These grassland fields can also produce ample biomass for renewable fuels. Monica Turner UW-Madison professor of zoology and study lead author Peter Blank a postdoctoral researcher in her lab hope the findings help drive decisions that benefit both birds
and biofuels too by providing information for land managers farmers conservationists and policy makers as the bioenergy industry ramps up particularly in Wisconsin and the central U s as bioenergy production demand increases we should pay attention to the ecological consequences says Turner.
when UW-Madison's Carol Williams coordinator of the Wisconsin Grasslands Bioenergy Network and the DNR's David Sample approached Turner
of which are used already for small-scale bioenergy production--and 11 cornfields in southern Wisconsin. Over the course of two years the researchers characterized the vegetation growing in each field calculated
and estimated the biomass yields possible and counted the total numbers of birds and bird species observed in them.
According to Blank and Turner the study is one of the first to examine grassland fields already producing biomass for biofuels
and is one of only a few analyses to examine the impact of bioenergy production on birds.
and other types of vegetation the new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
Our study suggests diverse bioenergy crop fields could benefit birds more so than less diverse fields.
new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
By locating biomass-producing fields near existing grasslands both birds and the biofuels industry can win.
They also add that the biomass yields calculated in the study may represent the low end of
We really can produce bioenergy and provide habitat for rare birds in the state. Story Source:
The ability to mold inorganic nanoparticles out of materials such as gold and silver in precisely designed 3d shapes is a significant breakthrough that has the potential to advance laser technology microscopy solar cells electronics environmental testing disease
It is so strong that the binding energy of the proton gives a much larger contribution to the mass through Einstein's equation E=mc2 than the quarks themselves. 3 Due in part to the forces'relative simplicity scientists have previously been able to solve the equations behind gravity
Similar but more powerful transformers are used in electricity substations to convert the high voltages of the transmission grid into the standard AC power supply delivered to households.
this area of research could revolutionise renewable energy production. Working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield,
and replace them with synthetic components to create a new generation of solar cells. Evans concludes:"
and conduct both heat and electricity. This scanning electron microscope image shows the network of conductive nanoribbons in Rice university's high-density graphene nanoribbon film.
The basic concept behind resistive memory devices is the insertion of a dielectric material--one that won't normally conduct electricity--between two wires.
While the idea of concentrating solar energy is not new transmitting it flexibly to a customizable location via fiber-optic cables is the really unique aspect of this project.
and solar energy work environmental engineers for waste treatment and stabilization mechanical engineers to build actuators and moving parts and electrical engineers to design control systems Linden said.
In late December tests at CU-Boulder showed the solar energy directed into the reaction chamber could easily boil water
because we have a high interest in developing countries and expertise in all of the renewable energy technologies as well as sanitation.
#New Technique Increases Nanofiber Production Rate Fourfold Nanofibers polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells
Tangled tale Nanofibers are useful for any application that benefits from a high ratio of surface area to volume solar cells, for instance,
or produce electricity has remained largely untapped until now. In the June 16 online issue of Nature Communications, Columbia University scientists report the development of two novel devices that derive power directly from evaporation a floating,
piston-driven engine that generates electricity causing a light to flash, and a rotary engine that drives a miniature car.
it could one day produce electricity from giant floating power generators that sit on bays or reservoirs,
or from huge rotating machines akin to wind turbines that sit above water, said Ozgur Sahin, Ph d,
Coupling that piston to a generator produced enough electricity to cause a small light to flash. e turned evaporation from a pool of water into light,
and more spores could potentially generate even more power per unit area than a wind farm. The Columbia team other new evaporation-driven engine the Moisture Mill contains a plastic wheel with protruding tabs of tape covered on one side with spores.
A larger version of the Moisture Mill could also produce electricity Sahin said, suggesting a wheel that sits above a large body of water
and generate electricity. This development would steadily produce as much electricity as a wind turbine, Sahin said
#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.
When graduate student Natasha Wright began her Phd program in mechanical engineering, she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable,
She designed a village-scale desalination system that runs on solar power. Since her system is powered by the sun,
and provide backup for renewable energy sources that produce intermittent output, such as wind and solar power. But Chiang says the technology is suited also well to applications where weight
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.
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,
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,
though, the UCLA research has proven that inexpensive photovoltaic materials can be organized in a way that greatly improves their ability to retain energy from sunlight.
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,
although installed solar capacity jumped 50%last year, according to estimates. 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,
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,
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:
#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,
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,
880m euros'worth of wind power orders since July Google invests $75 million in U s. wind far r
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,
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
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