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)

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)

unknownskywalker:

How much energy? by GOOD

How much energy whether electric, coal, nuclear, or otherwise - is required for a 100 watt lightbulb to run for a year , 24 hours a day?

discoverynews:

Fold-Up Car of the Future

A tiny revolutionary fold-up car designed in Spain’s Basque country as the answer to urban stress and pollution was unveiled Tuesday before hitting European cities in 2013.

The “Hiriko,” the Basque word for “urban,” is an electric two-seater with no doors whose motor is located in the wheels and which folds up like a child’s collapsible buggy, or stroller, for easy parking.

The car was dreamed up by Boston’s MIT-Media lab.

jtotheizzoe:

Wind Energy Without the Blades?

What if we could harness wind energy without the fields of enormous blade turbines that have come to be associated with modern wind farms. It would certainly help eliminate the “spinning blades of death” that many birds have to deal with, as well. Levant Power of Cambridge, MA turned to nature for an inspired alternative:

The proposed design calls for 1,203 ““stalks,” each 180-feet high with concrete bases that are between about 33- and 66-feet wide. The carbon-fiber stalks, reinforced with resin, are about a foot wide at the base tapering to about 2 inches at the top. Each stalk will contain alternating layers of electrodes and ceramic discs made from piezoelectric material, which generates a current when put under pressure. In the case of the stalks, the discs will compress as they sway in the wind, creating a charge.

Not to mention that I wouldn’t mind having one of these near my house at night … just beautiful. If this doesn’t work, then all we have to turn to is purple turbines.

(via DiscoveryNews)

jtotheizzoe:

Here Comes Solar Energy - Paul Krugman

Is there a “Moore’s Law” taking over for solar energy?

These days, mention solar power and you’ll probably hear cries of “Solyndra!” Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste — although claims of a major scandal are nonsense — and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.

But Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

(Source: jtotheizzoe)

poptech:

Paul Needham is interested in why and how people buy things. As a doctoral student at Cambridge, he specialized in a field of economics that asked questions like “What does it cost a buyer to find a seller?” Does the buyer have to travel a great distance, for instance? Does she have to pay a fee to a middle man? So when he started thinking about energy access—how to improve the way people in places without strong electricity infrastructure get their power—one of the questions he asked himself was “Why don’t I own solar panels?” 

GOOD profiles 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Paul Needham who founded Simpa Networks, which sells high quality solar energy systems on a pay-as-you-go basis to underserved people in emerging markets.

jtotheizzoe:

Solar Fuels Take Two Steps Forward

Two papers out this week show huge leaps forward in the two most important aspects of adopting solar energy and fuel cells:

Cheapness and efficiency.

(via ScienceNOW)