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Imagine being able to switch out the batteries in electric cars just like you switch out batteries in a photo camera or flashlight. A team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego, are trying to accomplish just that, in partnership with a local San Diego engineering company. Rather than swapping out the whole battery, which is cumbersome and

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The Face Companies® are the Diamond Sponsor the 2014 edition of Darnell’s Energy Summit (DES ’14). The Face® Companies are a Norfolk, Virginia based group of family-controlled businesses that offers new classes of very-rugged and high-energy piezoelectric actuators, generators and transformers – and self-powered wireless controls that use a Face piezoelectric generator enabling the controls to be battery-less. Two of

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We’re just wrapping up Nation Drive Electric Week, which has brought together EV enthusiasts across North America in an effort to spread the good word, and they weren’t alone. This year, Nissan joined on as the exclusive sponsor of National Drive Electric Week, calling the 60,000 US Nissan LEAF owners to join in the action. National Drive Electric Week is

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US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced $68 million in funding Thursday for 540 US renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in the nation’s rural communities. This legislation is part of the “Swiss Army knife” of tools for jobs, innovation, infrastructure, research, and conservation President Obama has been talking about. Of these projects, almost half are solar investments. The funding comes

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The University of California higher education institution recently made the largest solar energy purchase in the US by a higher education institution, ever, as part of a new deal to power its many campuses and medical centers with renewables. The purchase comprises two Power Purchase Agreements with the supplier Frontier Renewables to receive solar PV generated electricity for the next

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The University of California higher education institution recently made the largest solar energy purchase in the US by a higher education institution, ever, as part of a new deal to power its many campuses and medical centers with renewables. The purchase comprises two Power Purchase Agreements with the supplier Frontier Renewables to receive solar PV generated electricity for the next

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If you’re ready for another glimpse into what the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2015 teams are up to, check out the updated 2015 team pages, reports Carol Laurie for Solar Decathlon. They now include links to the teams’ own websites! As part of the Communications Contest, teams create websites to share information about their projects and their progress.

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That the new BMW i8 hybrid-electric supercar is visually stunning is beyond debate. So, too, is its success in the marketplace, considering that the first batch sold out before the first example ever reached dealerships. Demand for the car, however, remains high – so high, in fact, that a particularly desperate BMW fan just paid more than 50% over the

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Novatec Solar – a company majority owned by Australia’s Transfield Holdings – has commissioned a solar thermal energy demonstration plant in Spain that is based on a new type of molten salt storage technology. The Germany-based Novatec Solar says the new plant uses a process called direct molten salt or DMS technology – where inorganic salts are used as a

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Electric cars are much, much greener than gas cars (“gasmobiles,” as I like to call them). Even in the state with the dirtiest electricity grid (Colorado), electric cars charging from the grid have a miles per gallon equivalency of 34. The average new gasoline-powered compact car has a fuel economy rating of 28 mpg. (In the cleanest state, New York,

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