futurescope:

BMW, Daimler partner on ultra-light Visio.M city EV

If you like the idea of German electric vehicles like the BMW i3 and i8, but you’re worried they may be more than you really need when they arrive next year, you’ll be glad to know that a more to-the-point EV auf Deutsch is on the way. Along with Munich’s Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), BMW, Daimler and14 others are jointly developing the Visio.M urban runabout. While it should only muster the equivalent of 20 horsepower, it should be about 45 percent lighter than a Smart Fortwo — important when you want to use a small battery to keep the cost down. The project is also tackling safety and other chronic problems with tiny electric cars. TUM’s MUTE prototype (pictured here) is serving as the testbed for the technology being rolled into the Visio.M, although the €10.8 million ($14.2 million) in funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research is expected to produce something more original when the EV project reaches its eventual close.

[via] [more & image credit: BMWBLOG] [BMBF Project]

8bitfuture:

New solar cell technique could more than double efficiency.

A joint Australian/German research team have developed a way to boost efficiency of solar cells up to a record breaking 40% efficiency. Current panels have around 12-17% efficiency.

Called photochemical upconversion, the process captures energy that is normally lost in solar cells.

“We are able to boost efficiency by forcing two energy-poor red photons in the cell to join and make one energy-rich yellow photon that can capture light, which is then turned into electricity,” Associate Professor Schmidt said.

“We now have a benchmark for the performance of an upconverting solar cell. We need to improve this several times, but the pathway is now clear.”

(Source: sydney.edu.au)

thisistheverge:

Electric DeLorean makes auto show appearance: 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds for $95,000

2013 can’t get here soon enough

smarterplanet:

Honda’s FCX Clarity can power a home for 6 days | The Car Tech blog - CNET Reviews

Honda equips an FCX Clarity with a mobile power supply system and reveals a new solar-powered hydrogen-fueling station in Japan.

A story from FuelCellToday shows how Honda has turned the FCX Clarity into a zero emissions electric generator on wheels. The auto manufacturer outfitted the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with a mobile power supply system, enabling the car to provide 9 kilowatts of electricity continuously for more than seven hours on a full tank of hydrogen at peak generation. At the lower-generation rates needed to power a typical home in Japan, the FCX Clarity could provide electricity for six days.

Nissan and Mitsubishi also have vehicle-to-home power systems, albeit with smaller energy capacities. These systems can be used in emergency power outage situations or to offset the cost of electricity during peak use hours.

8bitfuture:

Tesla co-founder says electric cars have reached tipping point.

Tesla Motors co-founder JB Straubel believes that steady improvements in battery technology over the past few decades have brought the world to a ‘tipping point’, where we will soon see far greater adoption of electric vehicles on the roads.

In a keynote address this week Straubel said that recently energy density in batteries has improved by an average of 7 to 8 percent each year, to the point where EVs can be driven for at least 200 miles on a full charge - a statistic that is only set to improve. Currently 96% of all US transportation uses petroleum.

Straubel said future generations are likely to wonder why so much of the world’s finite supply of petroleum was squandered on relatively short car rides, which he said could relatively easily be replaced with using electric vehicles. In the U.S., he said, about half of petroleum use comes from people who commute 20 to 50 miles per day. While such commuting is easily within the range of EVs from Tesla and others, replacing the petroleum used for longer trips and especially for things like airplane flights is still far beyond current technology’s capabilities.

(Source: eetimes.com)

futurescope:

3D solar-cell towers deliver up to 20 times more power per base area

MIT researchers are building cubes or towers that extend solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations and show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.

The biggest boosts in power were seen in the situations where improvements are most needed: in locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier days. […]

[via] [more] [photo credit: Allegra Boverman]

prostheticknowledge:

Japanese Solar Power System

What looks like a metallic flower art installation is new solar tech. From National Geographic:

Rising electricity prices and limited supply threaten to hamper the recovery for manufacturers. So it makes sense that Solar Techno Park, the first solar-power research facility focusing on multiple technologies in Japan, is operated not by the government but by a unit of the Tokyo-based JFE, the world’s fifth-largest steelmaker. Given the energy-intensive nature of steel production, reliable power will be key to the future of Japan’s steel industry. The facility, which opened in October last year, is developing advanced technology in solar light and thermal power generation that it aims to apply both in Japan and overseas. 

More Here

8bitfuture:

New technology could halve the cost of electric car batteries.

Startup company Envia has demonstrated electric car batteries which are able to store twice as much energy as current models. Once fully developed, the system could halve the cost of batteries - currently up to $10,000 or more.

Before the technology can be used commercially though, the developers must find a way to at least double the amount of times they can be charged and recharged, before the technology will be cost effective.

To last the life of a vehicle, they need to be able to recharge over 1,000 times and still maintain 80 percent of their original storage capacity. The company is still testing the new batteries, but after only 400 charges, they have dropped to 72 percent of capacity, Kumar says. Solving the problem could require substantial improvements to the electrodes. The cells also have to be put through several other tests of performance and safety before they’re qualified for use in vehicles.

8bitfuture:

Electric car can be used to power homes.

A new system developed by Nissan allows the electric ‘Leaf’ car to be plugged into a house, providing it with energy. Leaf owners will have to buy a separate Power Control System (PCS) box, which is installed in their home.

According to Nissan, the Leaf’s 24kW per hour battery is enough to power a home’s lights, fan, television, fridge and other appliances for two days. 
In an ideal world, the technology would operate in a smart home fitted with solar panels and fuel cells, thus free from the electrical grid. 

However, until those types of homes are the norm, it could still be used to reduce a household’s electricity bills. The car would be charged at night through the electrical grid but homeowners might use the vehicle’s battery to power certain appliances and devices during peak times to save money. It could also be used to power the home during blackouts. 

The PCS box will go on sale at the end of March in Japan, where it will cost more than US$6,300.

(Source: metro.co.uk)

realcleverscience:

8bitfuture:

New research could increase solar cell efficiency.

Current photovoltaic cells work by absorbing photons from the sun, and converting each one photon into one electron - enough electrons in a stream is then used as electricity. This system is only capable of converting up to 34% of the available sunlight into electricity.

New research at the University of Cambridge has allowed two electrons to be generated for every photon, enabling up to 44% efficiency. 

The Cambridge team, led by Professor Neil Greenham and Professor Sir Richard  Friend, has developed a hybrid cell which absorbs red light and harnesses the extra energy of blue light to boost the electrical current.

By adding pentacene, an organic semiconductor, the solar cells can generate two electrons for every photon from the blue light spectrum.  This could enable the cells to capture 44% of the incoming solar energy.

The team also says that the new cells would be cheaper to produce, because “Organic and hybrid solar cells have an advantage over current silicon-based technology because they can be produced in large quantities at low cost by roll-to-roll printing”.

Awesome. I hadn’t heard any big solar news in a few weeks, so very happy to read this. Increased efficiency at a lower cost - that’s a winner. (And 44% efficiency! Woah!) Pretty soon solar is going to hit that tipping point where it becomes cheaper than fossil-fuels, and that is when the business sector will join environmentalists and start to adopt solar on a wide scale. In other words, big changes on the horizon. I’m looking forward to it.

And this is why we need to invest more in solar instead of digging a deeper hole for ourselves for fossil fuels - figuratively and literally.

(Source: cam.ac.uk)