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That tailwind Toyota may be feeling in Japan won’t be from a stiff breeze off the northern Pacific Ocean. The Japanese automaker is getting ready to start selling its first production hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in its native country next year. And the government is ponying up real big in incentives, Reuters says. The Japanese government will provide incentives worth about

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Africa has experienced massive economic growth over the last decade, but in order for this growth to translate into significant development outcomes, big investments will be needed to provide electricity to the 600 million sub-Saharan Africans who lack it, said a panel of development experts at Breakthrough Dialogue. Lack of cheap and reliable energy is a significant barrier to continued

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Renewable energy on the march Keeping with the steady growth and adoption of renewable energy, the latest Energy Infrastructure Update report just released from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects states that wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydropower accounts for 55.7 percent of newly installed generating capacity in the U.S. for the first half of 2014. Of

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LG Chem, the South Korean company that supplies batteries to General Motors and Renault among others carmakers, will offer electric vehicles more than 200 miles of range by 2016, reports Automotive News. Chief financial officer Cho Suk-jeh, who revealed LG Chem’s ambitions last week, did not confirm which carmakers would use the new batteries, although LG Chem’s technology can currently

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A NEW generation of plug-in hybrid taxis will soon ply London streets and will be green enough to satisfy the toughest emissions regulations foreseeable. THE Metrocab REE is the brainchild of British manufacturer Fraser Nash and a development partner, Ecotive. They will be putting the car through its paces in the British capital this summer before offering the cab for

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When selecting a service provider for circuit-board repair or rework, focus on the “three E’s”: expertise, equipment, and economies of scale. Printed-circuit boards (PCBs), no matter what brand or type, come attached with one inescapable reality—they are inherently failure-prone. Planning for when, rather than if, your circuit boards will malfunction thus becomes the optimal approach, as it leads to reduced

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Exar Corp. announced a family of half duplex RS-485 transceivers optimized to operate over a wide 2.8 V to 5.5 V supply voltage range. The wide operating range makes these transceivers ideal for isolated applications where the remote devices are powered through the cable. The XR33032/5/8 wide supply transceivers can tolerate significant voltage drop along the cable resistance and still

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Osram Opto Semiconductors now enables remote control functionality to be incorporated in a lower profile than ever before thanks to the first flush-mountable infrared LED. The compact side-looking T-shaped Midled SFH 4140 offers impressive high radiant intensity and protrudes only a fraction of a millimeter from the PC board. Now an infrared transmitter can be integrated into extra-thin smartphones or

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Intersil Corporation has added the ISL2802x family of digital power monitors capable of supporting a wide common mode input voltage range of 0V to 60V. The ISL2802x family is comprised of three devices offering a range of capability including full featured bi-directional, high-side and low-side digital current sense and voltage monitors with a serial interface with a high level of

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Venture capital funding into smart grid companies came in at $81 million in 13 deals in Q2 2014, compared to $101 million in 21 deals in Q1 2014. Battery/Storage companies raised $90 million; Energy Efficiency companies raised $113 million, all according to Mercom Capital Group, llc. Twenty-five investors participated in VC funding rounds in Q2 2014. Siemens Venture Capital was

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