admin

Midsummer’s CIGS solar cells have recently seen their efficiency improved to an impressive 16.2% — up from a previous high of 15% efficiency. The new, higher efficiency solar cell was manufactured in a normal production run, and the process has already been implemented into the production line. “Considering that the solar cell is made on stainless steel, contains no cadmium

Read more

The Tesla Roadster helped Elon Musk get his foot into the electric vehicle world, but he wishes it had been an all-original design from the get-go. Turns out Tesla had to modify so much of the Lotus Elise body, that it would have been easier to just design it from the ground-up. It was an early lesson learned for Musk

Read more

The topic of discussion above is the challenges of building a solar airplane, as well as some highlights of the Unified Engineering Flight Competition that took place last week at MIT. The theme for the MIT 2014 competition was Green Aviation Inspired by Solar Impulse. André tells us in the video that the objective for the Solar Impulse team was

Read more

Over $10 billion has been invested so far into renewable energy by GE’s energy investing unit, the company recently announced — making GE Energy Financial Services one of the leading investors in the industry. When taken altogether, the projects produce roughly two times the electricity consumed annually in Los Angeles — not an insignificant amount, to put it lightly. 🙂

Read more

One of the technology bottlenecks sitting between you and the affordable fuel cell electric vehicle of the future is the hydrogen storage issue, and the Energy Department has just handed out a $7 million round of grants to help leap over that hurdle. The funds are being split among six projects that attack the problem from different angles. Not for

Read more

National utility trade association Edison Electric Institute (EEI) has admitted that its members are pushing for solar taxes. Utilities across the country are lobbying for Value of Solar Tariffs (VOSTs), which require solar homeowners to sell the solar power they generate to the utility. That sale triggers substantial taxation for the homeowners. When discussing whether VOSTs are a sale, which

Read more

Power Japan Plus today launched a new battery technology – the Ryden dual-carbon battery. This unique battery offers energy density comparable to a lithium-ion battery, but over a much longer functional lifetime with drastically improved safety and cradle-to-cradle sustainability. The Ryden battery makes use of a completely unique chemistry, with both the anode and the cathode made of carbon. Power

Read more

Infineon Technologies AG has extended the latest generation of reverse conducting IGBTs for resonant applications with a new 650V component including a monolithically integrated RC diode. This means the high-performance RC-H5 family of products can now be used in a significantly broader range of applications: the new discrete RC-H5 650V power semiconductor is the perfect choice for use in multi-hob

Read more

The STLUX™ development environment, consisting of demonstration boards, a graphical configurator, software libraries, and compiler, provides everything needed to start designing high-performance LED lighting with STLUX385A, the first in a new family of lighting controllers claiming a breakthrough digital control technique from STMicroelectronics NV. ST will unveil the STLUX development environment at PCIM Europe 2014 in Nuremberg with a plug-and-play

Read more

Called the Little Box Challenge, Google announced recently that it will be offering a $1 million prize for inventing much smaller solar power inverters. The challenge will be launched this summer, so currently few details have been released to the public. Note that Google Ventures is an investor in Transphorm, a company that doesn’t make solar inverters but is trying

Read more