EU Utilities Trapped in'Coal Death Spiral'The share values of Europe biggest utilities have plummeted after the energy companies backed outdated business models that rely on coal,
Germany E ON and RWE, France GDF SUEZ, Électricité de france, and Italy Enel are named in the analysis, which found heavily coal-reliant utilities fared worse.
Fortune: What One Startup CEO Learned From Handling Apple's Homekit Mess While Apple may claim that its Homekit support isn delayed,
#Harvard Organic Flow battery Under Development in Europe Last year, the Harvard School of engineering and Applied sciences demonstrated a flow battery concept in the laboratory that used organic quinone molecules as the basis for its electrolyte.
The most expensive component of flow systems is often the electrolyte. Many current and prototype systems use elements such as vanadium,
he jumped on a plane from Rome to Boston for a meeting with Dr. Aziz, the battery project's director,
Green energy Storage was founded and secured exclusive licensing rights for the technology and the products it yields in the 28 European union nations,
We spoke to Angelo Aliquò, a senior partner with Management Innovation and long-time energy industry consultant,
Green energy Storage has attracted already around half a million dollars of share capital and is close to securing tens of millions more, Aliquò revealed.
"We have attracted a lot of interest from two or three very big European companies in the energy market."
Green energy Storage is in negotiations to sign up suppliers in Europe and the U s. for the various component parts that will be needed
which markets will Green energy Storage's organic flow system be aimed? First, the company plans to attack the domestic storage market with systems of 5-to 20-kilowatt-hours,
designed to hold around four hours of electricity. These should be on sale in 2017, according to current plans.
Next, Aliquò wants to take a slice of the utility market by launching a grid-scale range sometime in 2018.
Aliquò lists the many advantages of the flow battery technology, particularly the projected cost savings. And unless the Green energy Storage team substantially modifies Harvard's technology,
the battery will also use other inexpensive elements, such as carbon electrodes. He also cites the fact that quinones are natural
organic products that present little or no health risk. These molecules are also highly stable, even at fairly high temperatures,
and are less likely than other electrolyte options to cross the battery membrane, thanks to the organic molecules'size and charge.
Another advantage claimed for organic flow batteries is the high solubility of quinones in aqueous solutions, allowing for energy densities that are orders of magnitude higher than lead-acid, lithium-ion,
and vanadium redox flow chemistries. Tags: green energy storage, harvard, organic flow battery, redox flow batter l
#Can $4b in Clean energy Investment Come Fast enough? The White house announced more than $4 billion in commitments at a Clean energy Investment Summit on Tuesday to scale up clean energy companies and address climate change. here not a single reason...
that by 2020 renewables can be 20 percent of U s. energy, said Vice president Joe Biden. nd that the floor, not the ceiling.
One of the reasons that hasn happened yet is because of funding limitations facing early-stage cleantech companies.
The money will come from philanthropists, universities, big banks and environmental nonprofits. The committed funds are more than double the goal of the President Obama Clean energy Investment Initiative that was announced earlier this year.
One of the key efforts will be to bring philanthropy to early-stage, high-risk and high-impact cleantech investments. nly with the private sector can we even mostly realize the possibility of this energy transformation,
said Biden. ur energy future is in cleaner, cheaper renewable energy. A new organization, PRIME Coalition, is committed to helping foundations manage the complex pipeline process of vetting candidates and helping to lower transaction costs for foundations,
as well as ensuring theye adhering to the proper tax rules. Along with PRIME, Cleantech Syndicate announced on Tuesday a merger with CREO Network to become CREO Syndicate.
energy and climate impact. or the folks who already are active for doing deals in this area,
a telecom entrepreneur with a family foundation, gives away millions each year to projects in the energy sector.
it is imperative that we find ways to incentivize the global capital markets to invest in clean energy,
#24m Unveils the Reinvented Lithium-Ion Battery Five years ago, M24 Technologies spun out from parent company A123 with plans to turn a mysterious,
semisolid electrode material into a revolution in how lithium-ion batteries are designed and built. Back then, cofounder and Massachusetts institute of technology professor Yet-Ming Chiang described a lean sheet of paperapproach, combining concepts from flow batteries and fuel cells,
and stripping the modern lithium-ion battery architecture of all its inactive materials and complex manufacturing steps.
On Monday, the Cambridge, Mass. -based startup unveiled the results--a lithium-ion battery that it says can be built at $100 per kilowatt-hour at scale,
or half the cost of today competition. And by using a fluid-like set of electrodes that can be formed into a working cell in one step,
24m says its manufacturing facilities could be one-tenth the cost of today battery plants,
modular packages. obody ever made a battery this way, Chiang said in a phone interview last week. 24m has made about 10,000 test cells so far,
Compared to the multi-stage process used in today lithium-ion batteries, it implified, streamlined, with a lot of metrology,
By early 2017, the startup intends to start producing utility-scale grid storage batteries, using lithium iron phosphate as the cathode and graphite as the anode,
These include Japan IHI, a major manufacturer of jet engines, power turbines and other heavy industrial equipment;
as well as established battery giants like Samsung, Panasonic and LG Chem. Breakthroughs being promised by startups with new nano-structured materials and designs, such as Amprius, Nanosys,
could enable even greater performance and cost improvements for traditional battery designs. And outside lithium-ion batteries, a host of new chemistries from startups such as Aquion, Eos Energy storage and a long list of flow battery contenders are promising low-cost
multi-hour energy storage solutions at utility scale. Given the novelty of what 24m is promising, it likely to be met with a skeptical eye by the industry until it starts delivering a testable product at scale.
As GTM Research analyst Ravi Manghani noted, s with any new technology, it boils down to financeability and execution at their end, both
So how does 24m approach make for an entirely new way of designing and building lithium-ion batteries?
During 24m early days, Chiang and startup cofounder and fellow MIT professor W. Craig Carter saw its semisolid electrode material--dubbed ambridge crudefor its MIT roots--as a material to be used in flow batteries,
In simple terms, t a fluid that can conduct electricity. A friend of mine referred to it as a liquid wire
Chiang said last week. urthermore, it stores a ton of energy. The startup received early funding from the Department of energy ARPA-E program to explore the potential uses for this material. e originally conceived of using this type of electrode in a flow battery,
he said. ut what we realized upon forming the company was that this semisolid electrode capability had a much better home--reinventing how lithium-ion batteries are made.
Chiang identified two main problems in today lithium-ion battery design. ne is that the current lithium-ion battery itself contains a great deal of material that doesn store any energy
he said. He referring to the inactive material that layered between the super-thin electrodes that allow today lithium-ion batteries to charge
and discharge quickly. aving a thin electrode means that the distance the lithium ion has to travel is short--and in the beginning,
and to create a battery that has much thicker electrodes, and thus much less inactive materials. p until now, it has not been possible to create electrodes that are this thick
with an electrolyte material in between. he electrolyte lies between the two layers, but it also permeates both of the electrodes.
That necessary for the lithium ions to get out of the back of the battery, he said.
is a battery cell that combines high energy capacity and high current density in the same set of materials,
as compared to typical lithium-ion batteries for power tools, tablets and electric vehicles. At the same time, e believe these to be the safest lithium-ion batteries ever created,
he said, largely due to the lack of brittle, breakable separator materials within the battery cells.
To prove that, 24m shared a series of photographs of a test pouch cell being folded up like an accordion
we left the battery on the shelf for a month and it still worked, he said.
That not just a safety bonus--it also shows that you can shape the battery,
Chiang said. hy does a conventional lithium-ion battery plant have to be so expensive and so large?
First of all, a conventional lithium-ion battery plant starts with metal foil, and then layers liquid nk or painton it to form its electrodes,
All of these steps you would normally use to make a battery electrode that would take a full day,
Others have tried to adapt similar manufacturing processes to the battery business before, he noted. or example,
people have tried to make extruded batteries, he said, but hey had to have so much plastic to make that process possible,
and a really poorly performing battery. That in contrast to 24m process, in which hat goes into the electrodes is just
cathode and electrolyte to form this perfect blend of battery performance characteristics that Chiang didn reveal in this interview.
much simpler than the processes used to make lithium-ion batteries today. he formulation process for making these electrodes is spent exacting,
using commercial off-the-shelf gear in common use in today battery manufacturing plants, as well as from industries with less of a reputation for cutting edge technology,
many gigawatt-hours of batteries produced every year. We believe the most cost-efficient way to get there is to create manufacturing modules that you can just replicate
The startup plans to build its utility-scale batteries in partnership with its strategic investors rather than licensing the technology itself,
24m technologies, a123, alevo, aquion, arpa-e, batteries, boston-power, energy storage, eos energy storage, flow battery, imergy, investors, lg chem, lithium-ion
and emergency management officials protect those patients who rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment. The empower Map from HHS'Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness
wheelchairs depends on a steady supply of electricity. The online tool shows the monthly total number of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries'claims for electricity-dependent equipment at the national
state, territory, county and zip code levels. It then incorporates that data with real-time severe weather tracking services from the National oceanic and atmospheric administration in a GIS.
The empower Map could be used by electric utility companies to determine priority areas for restoring electrical service based on the location of the largest concentrations of electricity-dependent individuals,
whether emergency shelters might experience greater electricity demand due to higher concentrations of electricity-dependent Medicare beneficiaries,
"For people who rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment, prolonged power outages can mean life or death,"said Lurie."
In a position paper for the 3rd annual BDEC event, a team of researchers from A*Star Computational Resource Centre revealed further details about the implementation of Infinicortex. he approach is not a grid or cloud based,
and dsync+(TITECH/Georgia Tech) Near real-time plasma disruption detection using ADIOS (Princeton Plasma Research Lab/ORNL) Automated microscopy image analysis for cancer detection,
finding cures to Alzheimer and other diseases, developing new clean energy technologies, and promoting new advanced manufacturing opportunities.
according to the request, such that dedicated exascale funding at the four DOE crosscuts Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Basic energy Sciences (BES), Biological and Environmental Research (BER),
and the energy technology offices in the development of advanced computing technologies to provide better understanding complex physical systems, notes Dehmer.
Other pieces of the ASCR roadmap include the mandate to maintain operations with>90 percent availability, deployment of a 10-40 petaflop upgrade at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC),
By placing a positive or negative electrical voltage across the interface between the liquid metal and an electrolyte,
#3d, high-capacity soft batteries created using trees Even as technology advances at a mind-boggling rate,
batteries always seem to lag behind. It often hinders the development of novel devices and gadgets simply due to their bulky size or limited storage capacity.
and scientists may have taken just a significant stride in the field with the development of two novel high-capacity energy storage devices made from a cheap and renewable material:
Although some 3d charge-storage devices have been created in the past, they have been limited by the manufacturing processes used to create the complex architecture. here are limits to how thin a battery can be,
but that becomes less relevant in 3d, lead researcher Max Hamedi, of KTH Royal Institute of technology, said in a statement. e are restricted no longer to two dimensions.
but in less space than conventional batteries would allow, Hamedi explains. To create their innovative wood-based aerogel material,
You can touch it without it breaking. he team then coated this spongy material with an ink that conducts electricity within the aerogel,
allowing the researchers to ultimately produce their two 3d energy storage devices: a hybrid battery and a supercapacitor,
which is a rapidly charging and discharging device capable of storing huge amounts of electrical charge.
Led by nanoscientist Ani Sumant of Argonne Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and Argonne Distinguished Fellow Ali Erdemir of Argonne Energy systems Division, the Argonne team combined diamond
and therefore the energy demands of different mechanical systems superlubricity has proved elusive. veryone would dream of being able to achieve superlubricity in a wide range of mechanical systems,
or turbines to computer hard disks and microelectromechanical systems, said Sumant e
#World thinnest lightbulb developed using graphene A postdoctoral research scientist, Young Duck Kim, has led a team of scientists from Columbia, Seoul National University (SNU),
what is essentially the world thinnest light bulb, says Hone, Wang Fon-Jen Professor of Mechanical engineering at Columbia Engineering and co-author of the study. his new type of roadbandlight emitter can be integrated into chips
This is primarily because light bulb filaments must be extremely hothousands of degrees Celsiusn order to glow in the visible range
so that less energy is needed to attain temperatures needed for visible light emission, Myung-Ho Bae, a senior researcher at KRISS and co-lead author,
dison originally used carbon as a filament for his light bulb and here we are going back to the same element,
and NV Energy, is a network of charging stations planned along U s. Route 95 that would finally make it far easier to drive sparsely populated, mostly desert route between Reno and Las vegas with an electric vehicle.
The electric-car maker is building its giant battery igafactoryoutside of Reno. So the state fortunes will be tied to the success of electric cars.
which will be installed for free by NV Energy. Host sites must agree to let consumers use the stations at no charge for at least five years
costing $6, 000 for a basic version and even more for those that feature fast charging, according to NV Energy. t close to a 7 1/2-hour drive and one day,
said NV Energy CEO Paul Caudill
#Google Project Soli will put gesture controls everywhere Every motion controller currently on the market may have just become obsolete thanks to Google.
despite only being powered by batteries. And now the company has added self-driving capabilities that use a range of sensors to drive safely and more efficiently.
It does so using a special T-shaped battery and a light frame that is built to absorb collisions.
That helps the car use the battery even more efficiently than it already does. The company says that it can build the car o meet special customer requests
The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery Professor Richard Catlow of the University of London,
Offshore wind turbines could benefit from selfhealing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes (AFP/Getty) Professor Wass team at the University of Bristol has been focusing on the creation of self-healing versions of carbon fibre composite materials,
*The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery.
*Offshore wind turbines could also benefit from self-healing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes.
saving up to 95 per cent of energy costs compared to conventional electronic methods, the company claims. in addition,
Optalysys hopes optical processing will accelerate computation by performing processor-intensive tasks at much faster rates and with a significant reduction in energy consumption.
because it uses light rather than electricity as the processing medium, it is much more energy efficient than classical processing devices.
the breakthrough results suggest new ways to optimize solar resources as they are integrated increasingly into the nation energy systems.
That can increase the use of renewable energy sources as a more accepted energy generation option, said Dr. Bri-Mathias Hodge,
who oversees the Transmission and Grid Integration Group at the National Renewable energy Laboratory (NREL), a collaborator in the project.
In 2013, solar was the second-largest source of new electricity generating capacity in the U s,
. exceeded only by natural gas 1. A USA Sunshot Vision Study suggests that solar power could provide as much as 14%of U s. electricity demand by 2030 and 27%by 2050 2. Currently,
and wind forecasts has required electric utilities to hold higher amounts of energy reserves as compared to conventional energy sources.
but it reduces the amount of electricity demand they observe. The growing aggregate output from all these resources across our region will increasingly change the daily demand curve,
so the ISO will need accurate solar forecasts to help grid operators continue to balance power generation and consumer demand.
The U s. Department of energy Sunshot Initiative is a collaborative national effort that aggressively drives innovation to make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources before the end of the decade.
It was possible thanks to the use of plasma. In the Aerial Burton once noted that they created a device is absolutely safe for humans,
including those in contact with the plasma. Possibility to work with such displays provide lasers,
that transmit airborne gases enough energy to heat the electrons and force them to leave their orbit ionize the air
and in the process of ionization towards the plasma a air begins to emit light. To achieve this effect allowed the femtosecond laser pulse
#Toyota Nissan Honda to jointly support hydrogen station infrastructure development Toyota motor Corp Nissan motor co and Honda motor Co have agreed to work together to help accelerate the development of hydrogen station infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles (FCVS.
and Fuel cells in June 2014 the Japanese government has highlighted the importance of developing hydrogen station infrastructure as quickly as possible
#Technology Fuel cells provide electricity for homes Kyoto-based Steven Rogers is the business development executive for Ceres Power, a British venture company that specialises in solid oxide fuel cells.
This technology can supply 80%of a modern home electricity and heat up all of its water. ost of our money comes from investors,
will manufacture their fuel cells under licence. Ceres Power brainchild is a remarkably compact fuel cell, the prototypes
of which are made in a state-of-the-art plant in Horsham, southern England. Rogers grasps one of the cells, which,
fuel cell is like a battery, in a sense; but if you have a continuous supply of fuel and air,
it doesn run out in the same way that a battery does. he cell is made up of three layers cathode, electrolyte and anode
thus the cell effectively works as a battery. But, unlike a traditional battery, Ceres fuel cells last years. e are targeting 10 years,
he states. A decade equates to about 90 000 hours of use. A typical home needs 120 separate Ceres cells,
000, will provide most of a home electricity. At the same time, he says, the fuel cell process produces heat,
which will be enough to supply a home with all of its hot water needs. Other companies do make similar systems,
Gas is essential to the Ceres fuel cell process. The stacks will be powered by piped gas in the same way that homes are supplied with gas from the mains in the street.
the energy-making process will be activated immediately in the fuel cell stack. The green credentials in this process are connected,
a typical house gets its electricity, already generated, from a distant power station. But Rogers says that
even in the most efficient gas turbine-driven power station, any large-scale process means an initial loss in energy of 40,
%lost as heat as the fuel is burned. Then, the electricity has to travel by cable and pylon to the consumer,
with an additional 20%of energy lost along the way. By the time the electricity reaches the home,
only 40%of the original energy remains. eat is wasted always if you have centralised power generation,
says Rogers. f you can generate power in the home, you are inherently close to a user of heat.
So you can make use of that heat. ou cannot send heat down a power line;
you can only send electricity. If you compare that to everyone having a power station in their own home, even a little one,
both the user of electricity and the user of heat are there. he Ceres system,
then, is akin to a mini-power station, situated in a home. But, he says, such a system cannot hope to be 100%efficient,
as a small proportion of the electricity generated must be used to power the system own blower,
to keep it cool, and other working parts, such as its pumps. Rogersstrategic location in Kyoto enables him to easily reach the company partners
He expects the Ceres Power fuel cell technology to reach the market in two and half years. f there was one in every home in Japan, for example,
When a laser hits one of the nanostars most of the light scatters with the same amount of energy.
But a small number of photons about 1 in 10 million--scatter with less energy
The company will also be releasing new printing materials in order to try its hand at printing resistors, sensors and, for future models of its printer, even lithium-ion batteries.
Light technology is now an active area of research in energy, health and agriculture. First lighting the way In the late 1800s
Thomas Edison created a practical light bulb, an electrically-powered, long-lasting light source that significantly changed our work, play
Light emitting diodes (LEDS) are now everywhere from consumer electronics like smart phones to light bulbs for home lighting.
In recognition of this energy saving invention, they received the Nobel prize in Physics last year. Light was recognized also in the Nobel prize category of Chemistry last year for light-based microscopy tools that use a few tricks to sense the presence of a single molecule.
"a steam-powered sewage processor that burns up solid waste and creates both potable water and electricity.
and built by the Washington-based engineering firm Janicki Bioenergy, which is now receiving funding from the Bill
The generator creates electricity that is used to power the machine. There's even a little extra electricity left over that can be transferred into the power grid.
This self-sustaining machine will soon be launched in a pilot project in Dakar, Senegal, where Janicki engineers will study the Omniprocessor's operation in a real-world setting.
#Following Tesla's Lead Toyota Makes Fuel cell Patents Free Toyota is making thousands of its hydrogen fuel cell patents available royalty-free,
600 fuel cell patentsavailable through 2020 to carmakers who produce and sell fuel cell vehicles, and to parts suppliers and companies interested in building and operating fueling stations,
said Bob Carter, Toyota's senior vice president of automotive operations. The carmaker hopes the move will spur worldwide development and innovation in fuel cell technologies.
It comes on the heels of a similar decision by billionaire entrepreneur Elon musk to make the patents of his electric car company
requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration between automakers, government regulators, academia and energy providers,
Companies that make fuel cell busses and industrial equipment can also receive the patents, and requests from nontransportation companies will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis,
Fuel cell vehicle-related patents will be available royalty-free until the end of 2020, while hydrogen-production and supply patents will remain free indefinitely.
Toyota also encouraged other companies to share their fuel cell patents. Carter said his company provided substantial funding for the development of hydrogen fueling infrastructure in California and the northeastern United states. In May 2014
500 watts of power and a giant backpack full of motors and batteries to operate. But the company also developed much smaller devices, called passive walkers,
For instance, Samsung introduced a computer monitor made of 30 percent recycled plastic that runs on less energy
Electronics company LG announced a whole line of"greener"home appliances that use less energy and water than the company's previous models
which Misfit has dubbed an"energy harvesting crystal.""The clear crystal version of the Shine can't absorb quite as much light as the blue version,
which is why it needs a traditional battery. Solpro Of course, the Misfit Shine isn't the only product at this year's CES that gets its power from the sun. Solar tech company Solpro unveiled its new solar-powered phone-charging device, the Helios Smart
The device is a pocket-size rectangle that unfolds to reveal three solar panels. These panels can absorb enough sunlight in 90 minutes to charge a standard smartphone
or those who are living off the grid (even if just on a camping trip). But Solpro CEO Bill Pike thinks the device is a good solution for everyday charging, as well."
sustainable options for generating energy, he said
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