Massive offshore wind turbines to float in waters over a thousand feet deep
The US and UK last week announced plans to develop enormous floating offshore wind turbines that can be deployed in much deeper waters and further out to sea.
Full Story: ArsTechnica
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)
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.
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)
Wood stoves convert waste heat into electricity for charging small devices
Nearly half of the world’s population cooks over open wood fires, but such fires are inefficient, waste energy and create toxic smoke that’s a hazard both to the environment and to human health. Like Inyenyeri, New York-based BioLite aims to offer something better — specifically, stoves that use half the wood, emit only a fraction of the smoke, and capture excess heat to generate electricity for other purposes. READ MORE…
via springwise:
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.
Could a carbon tax fix the deficit and the environment?
“Most carbon tax proposals envision an initial tax rate of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide. The carbon tax is meant not to raise revenue but to change behavior: The ultimate goal is to have polluters avoid paying the tax by shifting to renewables. Nonetheless, Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf, in a 2007 paper, calculated that a $15 carbon tax would raise about $82.5 billion per year, which would easily cover the $70 billion cost of extending the payroll tax cut through 2013. To maintain pressure on polluters to keep reducing carbon emissions, the carbon tax would have to rise steadily. Inglis and Flake’s bill would raise it to $53 in its twentieth year, which is about what’s envisioned in a report by Robert Shapiro, Nam Pham, and Arun Malik of the private U.S. Climate Task Force. The task force calculated that the revenues could keep the Social Security tax a little below its current lowered rate and still leave 10 percent of the money to pay for other programs to fight climate change. Alternatively, you could use this money to provide even greater payroll tax relief for people at lower incomes.”
-Timothy Noah, “The Best Way to Fix the Deficit—and the Environment”
Photo courtesy of the New York Times
via thenewrepublic:
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.
ARPA-E recently wrapped up its Energy Innovation Summit, which took place just outside Washington D.C. from February 27-29. The third conference brought together leaders from academia, business, and government in order to advance energy technology innovation. Heavy-hitters like Bill Gates and Nancy Pelosi presented along with APRA-E award recipients who’re on the ground creating new technologies that are transforming the way we consume, generate, and store energy.
On Tuesday, Arun Majumdar (Energy Salon 2011), director of ARPA-E, framed the conversation by showing the audience a punch card from the 1970s used to input data into computers and an iPhone. In the information revolution that’s taken place over the last 40 years, “we didn’t make better punch cards,” explained Majumdar. “We enabled the future and built a better world.”
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)
