solar power inverters, industrial motor controllers, and other electronics will produce $900 billion in energy savings annually by 2025.
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.
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.
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.
#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.
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
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:"
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 from huge rotating machines akin to wind turbines that sit above water, said Ozgur Sahin, Ph d,
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.
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.
#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 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
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
#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.#
a technology that replaces the oil-based feedstock for part of the synthetic rubber-making process with renewable biomass.
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:
#Why is Apple working on wind turbine technology? Filing a patent for a new energy storage and generation system,
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
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
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,
In turn, such variability may limit the ability to incorporate large amounts of wind power into a grid system.
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:
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
He said he expects the retailer to be paying as little for solar power as utility power in less than three years,
And as prices continue to fall for solar panels and other energy sources it looks like utilities will be forced to innovate e
The King Adbullah City for Atomic and Renewable energy, the government organization also known as Ka-care that was set up in 2010 to oversee the country's renewable energy strategy,
Ka-care announced at the recent Fourth Saudi Solar energy Forum it plans to add 41 gigawatts of solar capacity--enough to generate a more than 20 percent of the country's power needs--by 2032.
Another 25 GW of capacity would come from concentrated solar plants, which use thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun onto heating liquid,
The estimated $109 billion plan isn't just about building solar power plants. Instead, the government wants to build a solar industry, according to al-Sulaiman's presentation.
or seek out other established solar panel makers to establish factories there. Photo: Flickr user zigbphotography, CC 2. 0 Related:
Solar power Bike path Opens In Netherlands This Week On November 12, 2014, The netherlands will proudly open up the world first public solar powered road.
Collective-Evolution notes that the solar panels embedded in the concrete bike path are not as efficient as panels installed on homes
the solar panels on the smart highway cover about 75 yards of roadway which is slightly more than you can fit on a roof.
Nanofibril films may be used in photovoltaic cells and also in displays because they have better light-transmission properties than glass,
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.
#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.
Unlike traditional wind turbines, which have three blades and a central gearbox, 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.
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.
Bright Energy is developing a system that would use offshore renewable energy to store compressed air in vessels in the ocean.
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.
which you can temporarily store your solar energy. In short, for a solar fuels future we cannot ignore gallium phosphide any longer,
#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,
Visible light accounts for under half of the solar energy that reaches Earth's surface. Nearly all of the rest comes from infrared radiation.
solar infrared rays normally passes right through the photovoltaic materials that make up today's solar cells.
or pconvertedinto a higher energy photon that is readily absorbed by photovoltaic cells, generating electricity from light that would normally be wasted.
Apple is putting a massive $848 million into solar energy. According to Cook, Apple is putting $848 million into building a 1, 300-acre solar farm in Monterey, Calif,
#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.
That enough to power about 46,000 U s. homes, 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.
Amazon is not disclosing the financial details of this project 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
in today announcement. his power purchase agreement helps to increase the renewable energy used to power our infrastructure in the US
and renewable energy projects for powering our datacenters that we currently have in the works. While Google has made various wind energy investments over the last few years
this is Amazon first (or at least the first one it is publicly talking about) s
#Cheaper Sensors Will Fuel The Age Of Smart Everything For better or worse, we are about the enter the age of smart everything.
and wind power cheaply and cleanly has hit the market. It is by far the cheapest of a new generation of large,
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,
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 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.
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
#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.
This contraption is part of one of the most efficient solar power devices ever made. Semprius, a startup based in Durham, North carolina,
claims that the next generation of this power unit will make solar power the cheapest option for utilities installing new power plants.
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,
That raises a disturbing possibilityight a breakthrough technology that could make solar power truly competitive never see the light of day, not because of any lack of technical merit,
In the heyday of the solar technology bubble, the ill-fated startup Solyndra raised about $1 billion from venture capitalists
low-cost solar power possible. The stamp, developed in Rogers lab, 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
so they can be paired with an array of lensesnd that where the rubber stamp comes in.
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,
and some clever lens designs, allowed Semprius to break a solar power efficiency record in 2012.
and Siemens drawing on its expertise in building solar power plants. But 15 months after Siemens invested in Semprius,
Huge investments in conventional silicon solar power, especially in China had lowered costs of production 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,
Semprius solar devices are suited best for use in solar power plants. Having the backing of Siemens would have helped convince utilities to take a chance on novel technology.
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 wind power capacity and increased use of cleaner-burning natural gas instead of coal. Compared with 2012,
including jobs that involve handling delicate materials such as thin semiconductors for new, advanced solar cells. But the technology also offers a cheap way to pick up just about anythingabric, bags of chips, 50-pound boxes of paper, single pieces of paper, mobile phones.
#A Promising Step Toward Round-the-clock Solar power If solar power is to become a primary source of electricity around the world,
relatively high-voltage solar cells to generate the needed electricity, along with inexpensive new catalyst materials based on nickel and iron for two electrodesne produces hydrogen
The solar cells use an inexpensive and easily manufactured material known as perovskite, which has been generating excitement in the research community
but consider that most solar cells convert only 16 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity,
For one thing, it only lasts a few hours before the solar cell performance quickly drops off. Researchers aren sure why perovskite materials degrade quickly
or improving the way the solar cells are sealed against the elements. Researchers recently demonstrated a perovskite solar cell that lasted over a month
#The Coming Era Of Self-Assembly Using Microfluidic Devices When it comes to building microscopic devices,
and solar power in recent years is launching more than 20 demonstration projects that involve storing energy by splitting water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
whether electrolysis as the technology is known could address one of the biggest looming challenges for renewable energy its intermittency.
The electrolyzer projects under construction in Germany typically consist of a few buildings each the size of a shipping container that consume excess renewable energy on sunny and windy days by turning it into an electric current that powers the water-splitting reaction.
and the large-scale use of renewable energy is creating new needs for storage making electrolysis a practical option in a growing number of places.
because excess wind and solar power creates a glut of power on the grid. Because power needs to be used as soon as it s generated to keep the grid stable prices are dropped sometimes to zero
But it can compete with storage options such as batteries says Kevin Harrison a senior engineer at the National Renewable energy Laboratory in Golden Colorado.
When experts talk about future solar cells they usually bring up exotic materials and physical phenomena. In the short term however a much simpler approach stacking different semiconducting materials that collect different frequencies of light could provide nearly as much of an increase in efficiency as any radical new design.
The startup Semprius based in Durham North carolina says it can produce very efficient stacked solar cells quickly
Conventional solar cells convert less than 25 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity. Semprius has come up with three key innovations:
In its designs Semprius uses tiny individual solar cells each less than a millimeter across. That reduces costs for cooling
but also stacks several different combinations resulting in a solar panel that can capture more energy from sunlight. Semprius has demonstrated cells made of three semiconductor materials stacked on top of a fourth solar cell that would not have been compatible otherwise.
It has made two versions of the device this year one with an efficiency of 43.9 percent
In addition to being fast and precise the approach also makes it possible to reuse the expensive crystalline wafers that multijunction solar cells are grown on.
Sarah Kurtz a principal scientist at the National Renewable energy Laboratory says costs won t come down until production happens at a large scale.
With economies of scale however such cells could improve the economics of solar power. At a scale of 80 to 100 megawatts a year of manufacturing capacity a cell with 50 percent efficiency would make it possible to reach costs of less than five cents per kilowatt-hour Burroughs says.
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