Another application could be in wind turbines, where films of water on the blades can, if they freeze in cold weather, lead to catastrophic failures.
#Novel solar photovoltaic cells achieve record efficiency using nanoscale structures Here's how to make a powerful solar cell from indium and phosphorus:
Exposed to the sun, a solar cell employing such nanowires can turn nearly 14 percent of the incoming light into electricity#a new record that opens up more possibilities for cheap and effective solar power.
#and validated at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar energy systems#this novel nanowire configuration delivered nearly as much electricity as more traditional indium phosphide thin-film solar cells
That suggests such nanowire solar cells could prove cheaper #and more powerful#if the process could be industrialized,
At the same time the novel cells could be built into so-called multijunction solar cells#compound devices that incorporate several different types of semiconductor material in layers like a sandwich to absorb as much of the energy in sunlight as possible.
Such multijunction cells have converted more than 43 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity#currently
Such multijunction solar cells are also the most expensive type of photovoltaic, but they can be made cheaper by combining them with low-cost lenses to concentrate the sunlight onto smaller versions of the cells.
Borgstr#m, for one, suspects that nanowire solar cells will stand on their own once the production process can be simplified,
such as ultra-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDS) and solar cells, but the technology has found mainly niche applications.
Quantum dots have shown promise for electronics, too#for example in solar cells in which a mix of quantum dots tuned to absorb different wavelengths of light could capture more of the energy in the solar spectrum.
giving materials scientists a new tool for investigating the behaviour of light in the interiors of the complex nanostructures used in lasers, light-based circuits and solar cells."
The team has mapped also the distribution of light in the silicon nanodiscs that are used as a coating on solar cells to improve efficiency,
Lukas Novotny, an optical physicist at The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich, says that cathodoluminescence could be a useful tool for improving the performance of light-emitting devices and solar cells,
but proponents of a hydrogen economy say that it could be produced in vast quantities from water using excess electricity from wind turbines and solar plants.
That means that it may be possible to combine a methanol-hydrogen reaction with a fuel cell that guzzles up the gas to produce electricity.
batteries will be key to energy transport and to small-scale storage of electricity from solar panels. Long-term, large-scale storage of wind energy could best be achieved by simply storing compressed hydrogen underground.
Where methanol-hydrogen systems might have a role, says Hall, is in communities that are isolated from the electricity grid
but rely on harvesting renewable energy and storing it as hydrogen, and want to move the gas around."
"Methanol would be ideal for this application, since it could be transported easily by road, he says r
But this year, the government offered some support for clean energy companies. Sustainable development Technology Canada, a foundation that supports clean technology startup companies, will get Can$325 million over 8 years.
enhance battery technology and expand the use of biofuels, among other clean energy efforts. The ultimate goal:
the crust"would be the first major ecosystem On earth to run on chemical energy rather than sunlight,
but wonder how the amount of living biomass there compares to that at the Earth s surface, says Konhauser s
It Thync, a wearable device that zaps your brain with low levels of pulsed electrical energy to calm you down
Bigbelly streetside trash and recycling bins are already pretty smart they use solar power to compact certain materials
#Cool new material could make fuel cells cheaper It not enough for a new alternative energy technology to work.
That been a high hurdle for devices called solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCS) that convert fuelsuch as methane and hydrogenirectly to electricity without burning them.
generating water, carbon dioxide, and electricity. The electricity is fed through a circuit where it powers our devices,
and then is returned to the anode. As long fuel as is fed in, the SOFC continues pumping out electricity.
SOFCS have some promising capabilities. The devices make electricity at an efficiency that can match a large natural gas-based power plant.
But whereas a power plant is huge and costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build,
These devices work best at converting hydrogen gas and oxygen to water and electricity, and even work at lower temperatures around 600°C. Unlike conventional SOFCS the BZY membranes allow the flow not of negatively charged oxygen ions toward the anode,
and future Earthlings enabling them to use renewable energy sources for making hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells can power vehicles ranging from cars to submarines and rockets.
But existing methods for creating usable hydrogen gas from water require a lot of electricity. That means renewable energy sources like wind or sunlight which are often patchy are not reliable enough.
It can also be hazardous to scale up artificial leaves which make fuel from sunlight just like plants says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow UK.
The device zaps water with electricity to release oxygen then a silicon-based chemical mediator dissolved in the water mops up stray protons and electrons.
The whole process uses a single whack of power and patchy renewable energy will suffice for this says Cronin.
An unexpected pattern has been glimpsed in the solar wind the turbulent plasma of charged particles that streams from the sun. It offers clues for handling plasmas that roil inside nuclear fusion reactors On earth.
The result may help to control nuclear fusion reactors. These create energy in the same way as the sun by fusing a superheated plasma of hydrogen nuclei to form helium.
Though less dense and cooler than the hydrogen of a fusion reactor the wind is a plasma
which can cause plasma to escape the magnetic field containing it in the reactor. They may also be able to use turbulence to disrupt high energy plasma blobs that can rip holes in the reactor.
These results look very promising says Todd Evans of nuclear energy firm General Atomics in San diego California.
This article appeared in print under the headline Sunny surprise for fusion reactor r
#Canada uses satellite to scold Russia over Ukraine Canada has blocked the launch of a satellite aboard a Russian rocket as a result of tensions over Russia's actions in Ukraine.
The move is a step up from a largely symbolic US ban on cooperating with Russia in space earlier this month.
Using the components in 20 million TVS is projected to save 600 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year worldwide enough electricity to power 50,000 average U s. homes. ee been able to show, cradle to grave,
These studies include technology policy reports focused on nuclear power coal natural gas and the smart electric grid.
#Wind energy reaches greater heights Wind turbines across the globe are being made taller to capture more energy from the stronger winds that blow at greater heights.
and Alexander Slocum, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical engineering at MIT is developing a novel system that adapts a traditional pipe-making technology to churn out wind turbines on location,
at wind farms, making taller towers more economically feasible. Keystone system is a modification of spiral welding,
because the trees slow down the wind near the ground you can see a 50 percent increase in energy capture for the same wind turbine.
Solving transport problems The Keystone system value lies in skirting wind turbine transportation constraints that have plagued the industry for years.
Towers are made in segments to be shipped to wind farms for assembly. But theye restricted to diameters of about 14 feet
Smith explains. ut there no way to weld together a tower in a factory that 20 feet in diameter and ship it to the wind farm.
while conducting an independent study on wind energy issues with Slocum. Running a consulting company for machine design after graduating from MIT
Smith was vetting startups and technologies in wind energy, and other industries, for investors. As wind energy picked up steam about five years ago, venture capitalists soon funded Smith, Slocum,
and other wind energy experts to study opportunities for cost savings in large, onshore wind turbines. The team looked, for instance,
at developing advanced drivetrain controls and rotor designs. ut out of that study we spotted tower transport as one of the biggest bottlenecks holding back the industry,
Now, the company is working with the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems, and other turbine makers, to plan out full-scale production,
In Maine, for example, there only a small percentage of the state where wind power is economically feasible today,
In the Midwest, wind energy has reached already grid-parity, undercutting even today low-cost natural gas but in areas like New england and the Southeast,
taller towers are needed to reach the strong winds that make wind energy economically feasible. nce youe at the heights wee looking at,
Prepared to send sizeable chunks of data at any given time the amplifiers stay at maximum voltage eating away power more than any other smartphone component and about 75 percent of electricity consumption in base stations#and wasting
The savings could be substantial Dawson says noting that a large carrier could save $100 million in annual electricity costs.
#How to make a perfect solar absorber The key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material s spectrum of absorption just right:
When harnessing solar energy you want to trap it and keep it there Chou says; getting just the right spectrum of both absorption and emission is essential to efficient STPV performance.
Most of the sun s energy reaches us within a specific band of wavelengths Chou explains ranging from the ultraviolet through visible light and into the near-infrared.
which would add greatly to the complexity and expense of a solar power system. This is the first device that is able to do all these things at the same time Chou says.
and materials science to advance solar energy harvesting says Paul Braun a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was involved not in this research.
Of course much work remains to realize a practical solar cell however the work here is one of the most important steps in that process.
The work was supported by the Solid-state Solar Thermal energy Conversion Center and the U s. Department of energy y
Originally designed to look for cracks in nuclear reactors water tanks the robot could also inspect ships for the false hulls
and is exploring powering the device on solar energy an important consideration for poor rural areas. The research was funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation through SMART T
#Recycling old batteries into solar cells This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries a potential source of lead pollution into new,
long-lasting solar panels that provide emissions-free power. The system is described in a paper in the journal Energy and Environmental science,
It is based on a recent development in solar cells that makes use of a compound called perovskite specifically,
organolead halide perovskite a technology that has progressed rapidly from initial experiments to a point where its efficiency is nearly competitive with that of other types of solar cells. t went from initial demonstrations to good efficiency in less than two years,
Already, perovskite-based photovoltaic cells have achieved power-conversion efficiency of more than 19 percent, which is close to that of many commercial silicon-based solar cells.
Initial descriptions of the perovskite technology identified its use of lead, whose production from raw ores can produce toxic residues,
the team analysis shows that the lead from a single car battery could produce enough solar panels to provide power for 30 households.
As an added advantage, the production of perovskite solar cells is a relatively simple and benign process. t has the advantage of being a low-temperature process,
and the number of steps is reducedcompared with the manufacture of conventional solar cells, Belcher says.
In a finished solar panel, the lead-containing layer would be encapsulated fully by other materials, as many solar panels are today,
limiting the risk of lead contamination of the environment. When the panels are retired eventually, the lead can simply be recycled into new solar panels. he process to encapsulate them will be the same as for polymer cells today,
Chen says. hat technology can be translated easily. t is important that we consider the life cycles of the materials in large-scale energy systems,
Old lead is as good as new Belcher believes that the recycled perovskite solar cells will be embraced by other photovoltaics researchers,
just as good for the production of perovskite solar cells as freshly produced metal. Some companies are already gearing up for commercial production of perovskite photovoltaic panels,
and provide a solution for future renewable energy. The work, which also included research scientist Jifa Qi, graduate student Matthew Klug and postdoc Xiangnan Dang, was supported by Italian energy company Eni through the MIT Energy Initiative y
or microfluidic devices or solar panels that could automatically clean themselves of dust and grit. Most surfaces are passive says Kripa Varanasi an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT
For example solar panels and the mirrors used in solar-concentrating systems can quickly lose a significant percentage of their efficiency
The issue of dust basically makes the use of solar panels to be less efficient than in North america or Europe.
The work was supported by the MIT-KFUPM Center for Clean water and Clean energy y
#Light pulses control graphene s electrical behavior Graphene, an ultrathin form of carbon with exceptional electrical optical and mechanical properties, has become a focus of research on a variety of potential uses.
Now researchers at MIT have found a way to control how the material conducts electricity by using extremely short light pulses
which electricity runs through a gas to produce light. These are very bright but can be as large as trucks
The new material is able to convert 85 percent of incoming solar energy into steam a significant improvement over recent approaches to solar-powered steam generation.
if you can generate steam with solar energy, it would be very useful. Ghasemi and mechanical engineering department head Gang Chen,
But initiating this reaction requires very intense solar energy about 1, 000 times that of an average sunny day.
and retain solar energy. The structure bottom layer is a carbon foam that contains pockets of air to keep the foam afloat
They found they were able to convert 85 percent of solar energy into steam at a solar intensity 10 times that of a typical sunny day.
Now the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity that might be used to power electronic devices.
and Wang s 2013 finding in attempting to develop an improved heat-transfer surface to be used as a condenser in applications such as power plants that droplets on a superhydrophobic surface convert surface energy to kinetic energy as they merge to form larger droplets.
The research which also included MIT graduate student Daniel Preston and former postdoc Ryan Enright now at Lucent Ireland Ltd. was supported by MIT s Solid-state Solar-Thermal energy Conversion Center
and inventor Nikola Tesla proposed a global system of wireless transmission of electricity or wireless power.
Now this wireless electricity (or Witricity) technology licensed through the researchers startup Witricity Corp.#is coming to mobile devices electric vehicles and potentially a host of other applications.
At the time he was working on various photonics projects lasers solar cells and optical fiber that all involved a phenomenon called resonant coupling.
Think of the electricity as water being transferred via bucket from a full tank to an empty tank
In that analogy, the bucket is the adapter that collects the water (electricity) from a full tank (outlet) and dumps it into an empty tank (laptop battery.
or in improving the efficiency of solar cells. While this analysis still leaves open questions about the precise structure of eumelanin molecules, Buehler says,
when it comes to wind power. Founded by alumni Ben Glass 08 SM 10 and Adam Rein MBA 10 Altaeros has developed the world s first commercial airborne wind turbine
which uses a helium-filled shell to float as high as a skyscraper and capture the stronger steadier winds available at that altitude.
and diesel generators for power paying upward of $1 per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The BAT which has a capacity of 30 kilowatts aims to drop that kilowatt-hour cost down to roughly 18 cents the cofounders say.
Instead its purpose is to bring wind power to remote off-grid areas where towers aren t practically or economically feasible.
It s really about expanding wind energy to all those places on the fringes where it doesn t really work today
and expanding the amount of wind power that s able to be deployed globally Rein says. Aerostat innovationmuch of the BAT s innovation lies in its complete autonomy Glass says.
Harboring an interest in wind turbine design and knowing that traditional towers could never reach high-altitude winds he designed the BAT in his free time receiving technical guidance from Institute Professor Sheila Widnall and other faculty.
At the time Rein who had done independent research on clean energy was an MBA student and teacher s assistant for the class who helped Glass flesh out an initial business model.
For their first power-producing prototype they bought a small reliable wind turbine rotor and cut off some metal in the back that was dead weight
#Getting more electricity out of solar cells When sunlight shines on today solar cells, much of the incoming energy is given off as waste heat rather than electrical current.
yielding new design guidelines for using those special materials to make high-efficiency solar cells. The results are reported in the journal Nature Chemistry by MIT alumni Shane R. Yost and Jiye Lee,
However, achieving it in a functioning solar cell has proved difficult and the exact mechanism involved has become the subject of intense controversy in the field.
In 2013, they reported making the first solar cell that gives off extra electrons from high-energy visible light,
According to their estimates, applying their technology as an inexpensive coating on silicon solar cells could increase efficiency by as much as 25 percent.
The results also provide practical guidelines for designing solar cells with these materials. They show that molecular packing is important in defining the rate of fission but only to a point.
#MIT team wins Clean energy Prize for solving solar s shade problem An MIT team whose integrated chip restores lost power to partially shaded solar panels achieving double the energy capture improvement of similar technologies won big on Monday night at the seventh annual MIT Clean energy Prize (CEP) competition.
Equipped with a promising business plan and a snappy catchphrase hade happensunified Solar took home both CEP grand prizes:
the DOE Energy efficiency and Renewable energy Clean energy Prize, worth $100, 000, and the NSTAR MIT Clean energy Prize, worth $125, 000.
Solar panels on residential rooftops that are shaded partially by clouds or trees sacrifice as much as 30 percent of their energy potential over a year.
Unified Solar technology, for the first time, integrates an entire power balance circuit onto a low-cost chip that can be integrated into a solar panel to regain that lost energy. n the real world,
shade happens, said Bessma Aljarbou, a graduate student at the MIT Sloan School of management, during Unified Solar winning pitch last night to a capacity crowd. hade brings energy loss, reliability concerns,
000 last night to six teams that have developed clean energy startups and innovations. More than 60 teams entered this year contest;
One finalist team was selected in each of three categories renewable energy (Thermovolt), energy efficiency (MF Fire), and infrastructure and resources (ulink) with each receiving $25, 000.
and the U s. Department of energy has awarded more than $2 million to help launch clean energy startups. Past participants have gone on to raise more than $250 million in capital
the competition aims to promote clean energy innovation and entrepreneurship across the nation and the globe, said CEP cofounder Bill Aulet,
Existing solutions for partially shaded solar panels optimize power at the panel level. But these bulky oxesrely on costly energy storage components
you learn a lot about properties of solar cells that people often ignored as parasitic components. People wanted to get rid of them,
but we found a way to leverage them. o one has thought ever of using the solar cell as an energy storage itself,
and routing device that plugs into solar panels to power electronic devices, enabling a pay-as-you-go electricity system for people off the grid.
But the true novelty is in its connectivity: The ulink units can be linked to one another,
Winning in renewable energy (and also an Audience Choice Award) was Thermovolt which turns solar cells into cogeneration systems.
Sun exposure to solar panels produces about 0. 5 percent of wasted heat per Degree celsius increase.
Thermovolt modified solar cell captures that wasted energy and uses it to heat water for homes.
The two other audience choice awards went to REECYCLE, which reclaims rare earth elements from recycled electronics to create other resources,
for example, consumes over 3 percent of the electricity in the United states, yet organics in the wastewater have energy that can be extracted
in the process, generate electricity. This electricity travels through a circuit and onto cathodes coated with separate microbes that consume that electricity
along with carbon dioxide to produce biogas at a rate of up to 100 cubic feet per minute.
Depending on several site factors, this produces anywhere from 30 to 400 kilowatts of electricity. Treated wastewater exits the reactor with 80 to 90 percent of pollutants removed,
so it can be used for irrigation, equipment washing, and other things. The system can treat 10,000 to 1 million gallons of wastewater daily.
through carbon-free energy generation and avoiding municipal wastewater treatment ffectively planting over 4, 400 acres of trees in a year,
At current usage rates, Cambrian estimates the system will generate enough electricity to meet 25 to 50 percent of these breweriesneeds
and provides real-time data thanks to using exoelectrogens as sensors. hese bugs are generating electricity,
to see how well the reactor is doing, explains Buck, who invented Cambrian sensor technologies.
and generates electricity to power itself. Another project, funded by the National Science Foundation, uses exoelectrogens to sense nitrate in wastewater, cheaply and with very high specificity,
and generate electricity for astronauts. Soon, they came across exoelectrogens; a 1999 study had revealed that exoelectrogens could,
#Excitons observed in action for the first time A quasiparticle called an exciton responsible for the transfer of energy within devices such as solar cells LEDS
For example in a solar cell an incoming photon may strike an electron kicking it to a higher energy level.
for other uses such as solar cells it is essential to minimize the trapping. The new technique should allow researchers to determine which factors are most important in increasing
which is the defining characteristic of most materials for low-cost solar cells and LEDS Baldo says.
#A molecular approach to solar power It an obvious truism, but one that may soon be outdated:
The problem with solar power is that sometimes the sun doesn shine. Now a team at MIT and Harvard university has come up with an ingenious workaround a material that can absorb the sun heat
While it could produce electricity, it would be inefficient at doing so. But for applications where heat is desired the output whether for heating buildings, cooking,
or powering heat-based industrial processes this could provide an opportunity for the expansion of solar power into new realms. t could change the game,
or electricity and when they relax, they give off heat. In effect, they behave as rechargeable thermal batteries:
not electricity, might be desired the outcome of solar power. For example, in large parts of the world the primary cooking fuel is wood or dung
and better photochromic compounds and composite materials that optimize the storage of solar energy in chemical bonds, Kanai says.
and especially in solar thermophotovoltaicsharnessing solar energy by using it to heat a material, which in turn radiates light of a particular color.
That light emission can then be harnessed using a photovoltaic cell tuned to make maximum use of that color of light.
which add functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light. The new materials represent a simple demonstration of the power of this approach
which could one day be used to design more complex devices such as solar cells self-healing materials
If gold nanoparticles are added to the environment the histidine tags will grab onto them creating rows of gold nanowires and a network that conducts electricity.
and solar cells Lu says. The researchers are interested also in coating the biofilms with enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cellulose
In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report boosting plantsability to capture light energy by 30 percent by embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast,
Supercharged photosynthesis The idea for nanobionic plants grew out of a project in Strano lab to build self-repairing solar cells modeled on plant cells.
As a next step, the researchers wanted to try enhancing the photosynthetic function of chloroplasts isolated from plants, for possible use in solar cells.
The plant captures this electrical energy and uses it to power the second stage of photosynthesis building sugars.
When the vehicles brake a process known as regenerative braking captures the kinetic energy (usually dissipated as heat through friction) and converts it into electricity that charges the battery
Renewed energyfor Hynes the path to entrepreneurship alternative energy and XL Hybrids revolves around his alma mater.
and engineering services firm Strategic Energy systems with two MIT alumni before taking a position as director of alternative energy at Citizens Energy in Boston.
Alternative energy became a focus at MIT which had launched among other things the MIT Energy Club (2004) and the MIT Energy Initiative (2006) both
At the same time across the nation clean energy ventures became much more profitable: For example the wind industry grew from a $500 million industry to a $15 billion industry in five years.
But Hynes noticed that the nation didn t have an electricity problem. It has an oil problem he says.
We re very dependent on oil: We rely on imports and more than 95 percent of transportation fuel is oil.
Hynes and Aulet co-founded MIT s Clean energy Prize in 2008; via the competition Hynes met Ashton his XL Hybrids cofounder.
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