which supported the research through the MIT Energy Initiative to further test the material l
#Noninvasive brain control Optogenetics, a technology that allows scientists to control brain activity by shining light on neurons,
The research was supported by KFUPM through the Center for Clean water and Energy at MIT f
Energy wasted through faulty or inefficient equipment, they say, can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoidable annual costs.
as well as energy saving opportunities. The software then translates the data into graphs, metrics, and text that explain monetary losses, where it available for building managers, equipment manufacturers,
to cool rooms. he idea is to make buildings better, by helping people save time, energy,
while Samouhos and Gayeski worked on mechanical design and energy-modeling. After the competition, the cofounders started a company with a broad goal of making buildings better through energy savings.
While pursuing their Phds, they toyed with various ideas, such as developing low-cost sensing technology with wireless communication that could be retrofitted on to older equipment.
that delivers energy more often and in smaller chunks than traditional adapters, ultimately wasting less energy.
which transfers energy from the adapter to the battery run 1, 000 times faster. f you can increase that switching frequency,
you can reduce the amount of energy that you have to store temporarily in the inductors and capacitors
The technology could also help reduce energy consumption with more ubiquitous power conversion, Sagneri says. ee not really an adapter company;
The switches then flip to another state to deliver small chunks of the DC voltage to the battery,
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.
But each switch cycle burns energy as heat. Switching 1, 000 times faster in a typical converter,
therefore, means 1, 000 times more energy wasted. So the circuit uses resonance techniques (modifying how energy oscillates between inductors
and capacitors) to minimize energy loss, meaning the switches turn on and off more efficiently at higher frequencies.
MIT: boon to us-Today, FINSIX which has raised more than $7 million in funding and hired 20 employees operates out of Menlo Park, Calif,
Green who won MIT Patrick J. Mcgovern 9 Entrepreneurship Award in 2011 harkened back to her days in 15.366 (Energy Ventures),
or in improving the efficiency of solar cells. While this analysis still leaves open questions about the precise structure of eumelanin molecules, Buehler says,
#High-flying turbine produces more power For Altaeros Energies a startup launched out of MIT the sky s the limit
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.
Proven to produce double the energy of similarly sized tower-mounted turbines the system called Buoyant Air Turbine
Next year the BAT will test its ability to power microgrids at a site south of Fairbanks Alaska in an 18-month trial funded by the Alaska Energy Authority.
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.
Target sites include areas where large diesel generators provide power such as military bases and industrial sites as well as island and rural communities in Hawaii northern Canada India Brazil and parts of Australia.
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.
Soon he d bring his concept to 15.366 (Energy Ventures) a class at the MIT Sloan School of management where engineering policy and business students build startups around clean tech ideas.
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.
In a few materials, however, extra energy produces extra electrons behavior that could significantly increase solar-cell efficiency.
An MIT team has identified now the mechanism by which that phenomenon happens, 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,
In most photovoltaic (PV) materials, a photon (a packet of sunlight) delivers energy that excites a molecule,
But when high-energy photons provide more than enough energy, the molecule still releases just one electron plus waste heat.
Instead, they generate more than one electron per high-energy photon. That phenomenon known as singlet exciton fission was identified first in the 1960s.
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.
When excess energy is available in these materials, an electron in an excited molecule swaps places with an electron in an unexcited molecule nearby.
The excited electron brings some energy along and leaves some behind, so that both molecules give off electrons.
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.
Indeed, a far more important factor is choosing a material that has the right inherent energy levels.
and toward a focus on the electronic energy levels of selected materials. This work was performed in the Center for Excitonics,
an Energy Frontier Research center funded by the U s. Department of energy. Experimental measurements were supported by The british Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council,
#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,
and a constrained market. And we have a solution. ompared to our competitors at the panel level,
we can recover twice as much energy under partial shading conditions, at a fraction of existing costs, added Arthur Chang,
an MIT Phd student in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) who invented the technology. With the prize money, the team including students from MIT, the California Institute of technology,
Unified Solar now becomes the finalist in the energy category in the MIT $100k Entrepreneurship Competition,
The CEP, the nation leading student-run energy business-plan competition, awarded a total of $320,
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
such as capacitors and inductors. Failing to account for the strength or weakness of each individual PV cell,
the improvement in energy capture under partial shading is basically two times better compared to panel level solutions,
specifically iffusion capacitancesunwanted electrical charges between two components Chang was able to eliminate the need for external energy storage
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,
But a more cyclical approach where waste is used as an energy source could provide higher profit yields
for example, consumes over 3 percent of the electricity in the United states, yet organics in the wastewater have energy that can be extracted
and used locally, Silver says. nd that the case for a lot of waste products in general. Cambrian automated and modular Ecovolt system delivered on a flatbed
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
where aerobic microorganisms degrade pollutants consume a lot of energy and generate biosolids (organic materials) that are managed at cost.
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,
where the waste of industry is recycled to create energy and value much like in natural ecosystems. n a natural ecosystem,
Using battery-powered bionic propulsion two microprocessors and six environmental sensors adjust ankle stiffness power position
or hydraulics and don t release more energy than they absorb they walk more slowly consume more metabolic energy
and manipulated by an electromagnetic field to either stiffen or relax during a wearer s gait.
#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
This could enable research leading to significant advances in electronics they say as well as a better understanding of natural energy transfer processes such as photosynthesis. The research is described this week in the journal Nature Communications in a paper co-authored by MIT postdocs Gleb
The particles determine how energy moves at the nanoscale. The efficiency of devices such as photovoltaics and LEDS depends on how well excitons move within the material he adds.
An exciton which travels through matter as though it were a particle pairs an electron
but it can carry energy. For example in a solar cell an incoming photon may strike an electron kicking it to a higher energy level.
That higher energy is propagated through the material as an exciton: The particles themselves don t move but the boosted energy gets passed along from one to another.
While it was previously possible to determine how fast on average excitons could move between two points we really didn t have any information about how they got there Akselrod says.
which combines optical microscopy with the use of particular organic compounds that make the energy of excitons visible we can directly say what kind of behavior the excitons were moving around with.
so that energy is lost not to leakage; 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
We showed how energy flow is impeded by disorder which is the defining characteristic of most materials for low-cost solar cells
and LEDS Baldo says. While these experiments were carried out using a material called tetracene a well-studied archetype of a molecular crystal the researchers say that the method should be applicable to almost any crystalline or thin-film material.
Plants absorb energy from photons and this energy is transferred by excitons to areas where it can be stored in chemical form for later use in supporting the plant s metabolism.
The new method might provide an additional tool for studying some aspects of this process the team 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
and store that energy in chemical form, ready to be released again on demand. This solution is no solar-energy panacea:
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,
since it makes the sun energy, in the form of heat, storable and distributable, says Jeffrey Grossman, an associate professor of materials science and engineering,
Exposing them to sunlight causes them to absorb energy and jump from one configuration to the other,
or electricity and when they relax, they give off heat. In effect, they behave as rechargeable thermal batteries:
taking in energy from the sun, storing it indefinitely, and then releasing it on demand.
The new work is a follow-up to research by Grossman and his team three years ago,
In order to reach the desired energy density the amount of energy that can be stored in a given weight
While previous modeling showed that the packing of azobenzenes on the same CNT would provide only a 30 percent increase in energy storage,
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
He adds that the resulting increase in energy storage density s surprising and remarkable. his result provides additional motivation for researchers to design more
and better photochromic compounds and composite materials that optimize the storage of solar energy in chemical bonds, Kanai says.
The work was supported by BP though the MIT Energy Initiative and the U s. Department of energy Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy n
This new approach could ultimately lead to advances in solar photovoltaics, detectors for telescopes and microscopes,
his could have great applications in energy, 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.
But for this approach to work it is essential to limit the heat and light lost to reflections,
and the U s. Department of energy, through the MIT S3tec Energy Research Frontier Center r
#Seeking a parts list for the retina New technique classifies retinal neurons into 15 categories,
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.
These hybrid materials could be worth exploring for use in energy applications such as batteries and solar cells Lu says.
The researchers are interested also in coating the biofilms with enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cellulose
Now, a team of MIT researchers wants to make plants even more useful by augmenting them with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production
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.
Electric car batteries are expensive and charging them requires plug-in infrastructure that s still sparse in the United states. Now MIT spinout XL Hybrids is upfitting (and retrofitting) gas and diesel commercial vans and trucks with fuel-saving add-on electric powertrains
whose batteries are charged through energy generated by braking. According to tests conducted by the startup the $8000 system which has been incorporated into hundreds of vans in the commercial fleets of Coca-cola
and don t need a large battery says Tod Hynes 02 co-founding president of XL Hybrids and a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of management.
The system s powertrain includes an electric traction motor a lithium-ion battery advanced power converters
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
which in turn releases the energy to the electric motor during acceleration. Custom software reads the driver s braking habits
Last month Fast Company ranked the startup No. 35 on its list of the world s 50 most innovative companies and third in energy-specific companies trailing only Tesla motors and General electric.
This week the company was named an Energy Innovation Pioneer by the global analytics company IHS at CERAWEEK a leading international energy conference.
Electric or hybrid fleet vehicles traditionally run on large batteries sometimes more than 100 kilowatt-hours (kwh) in capacity that cost upward of $40000.
XL Hybrids installs small 1. 8-kwh lithium-ion batteries that provide a 20 percent fuel savings Hynes says.
Renewed energyfor Hynes the path to entrepreneurship alternative energy and XL Hybrids revolves around his alma mater.
but began viewing climate change and energy as the real challenges of my generation. After graduating he co-founded the consulting
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
of which Hynes became involved with. I got more engaged with MIT as MIT got more engaged with energy he says.
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.
So he quit his job in 2008 with the aim of starting a company to cut oil consumption.
With rising innovations in batteries and advanced power inverters and motors Hynes backed into a technological solution with retrofitted electric powertrains.
Hynes and Aulet co-founded MIT s Clean energy Prize in 2008; via the competition Hynes met Ashton his XL Hybrids cofounder.
Back on campus he says the energy landscape has expanded certainly since he was an undergraduate
MIT has done a tremendous job at becoming a world center for energy innovation he says e
and online access in an area where most people lack electricity or piped water. There students and monks will be able to learn from materials such as lectures on MIT s Opencourseware (with added Tibetan subtitles.
-or bicycle-powered electricity and creating awareness about sustainable farming and improved water systems. Besides encouraging the development of locally useful technologies the program aims to improve the teaching of math and science.
But Chandrakasan and his colleagues also developed a new signal-generating circuit that reduces the chip power consumption by an additional 20 to 30 percent.
Among other things, she is now studying the financing of small-scale distributed solar power in areas of Kenya without either a formal grid or established banking systems;
capstan-based mechanism ensures that the battery-powered device can lift two soldiers sometimes carrying 80 to 100 pounds of equipment swiftly along an attached rope, without jamming.
A lightweight, interchangeable battery capable of hundreds of feet of hoisting per charge snaps into the front.
as with conventional pulleys and winches, the rope fed through the APA weaves between a series of rollers that sit on top of a turning, battery-powered spindle.
Using drill batteries and other custom-designed equipment, the team completed a working prototype that achieved a 50-foot lift in seven seconds.
hoists for workers at dams, buildings, bridges, and massive wind turbines; as well as for first responders. here a broad spectrum of users people who use rope access as part of their work for
But a new study by researchers at MIT finds that a egmentalapproach involving separate targeting of energy choices
and energy consumption through regulations or incentives can play an important role in achieving emission reductions. The new study, by assistant professor of engineering systems Jessika Trancik, is being published this week in the journal Environmental science and Technology.
Trancik says in particular dealing with the inertia associated with existing infrastructure. t will be expensive to retire new power plants early,
and so with each power plant built we are committing to emissions not just today, but in future years, she says. ompliance with a carbon-focused policy can come either from changes in energy consumption levels or technological change,
and a set of segmental policies can ensure that both types of change happen concurrently,
Doug Arent, a research scientist at the National Renewable energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. who was involved not in this work,
Since a conventional lidar system would require about 100 times as many photons to make depth estimates of similar accuracy under comparable conditions the new system could yield substantial savings in energy and time
and energy between the drop and the surface, Varanasi says. f you can get the drops to bounce faster,
For example, the turbine blades in electric power plants become less efficient if water builds up on their surfaces. f you can make the blades stay dry longer,
The research received support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the MIT Energy Initiative, the National Science Foundation,
When an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, knocking out emergency power supplies,
crews sprayed seawater on the reactors to cool them to no avail. One possible reason:
and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute who was involved not in this research, says, xtending the surface temperature at which this phenomenon occurs is a challenging task that has been a century-long research effort.
The research was supported by a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the MIT Energy Initiative,
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