Industry news

The highly anticipated Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive is nearly here — the impressive battery-powered vehicle is set to debut in the US in only a few more months. The first units have just begun to roll off the production line in Rastatt, Germany. Not a long wait now (unless you’re impatient, like me, that is). 🙂 For those wondering what

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After the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011, Japan was in a seemingly impossible situation. A tremendous amount of conventional generation capacity, including the entire nuclear fleet, was unavailable, and the country faced the risk of power cuts during summer consumption peaks. But miraculously, or seemingly so, in just a few short weeks Japan managed to avert the rolling power cuts

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There is still a significant swath of the U.S. that will continue to run on coal and gas even as many states meet their renewable portfolio standards heading toward 2020. In January, renewable energy made up nearly 100 percent of new installed electricity capacity in the U.S., mostly driven by utility-scale solar. Last October, a study conducted by the Federal

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Two groups of researchers have recently advanced the field of solar cells with a cheaper and efficient replacement for platinum and better synthesis of zinc oxide. Working on dye-sensitized solar cells — researchers from University Malaya (UM) and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) have achieved an efficiency of 1.12 %, at a fraction of the cost compared to those used

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Finding new and different methods of harvesting renewable energy is a key component of building a more sustainable future, and while solar power, wind power, and ocean energy are often the focus of large-scale renewables research, it turns out that something that we take for granted, our toilets, could be used to also generate electricity. Researchers in South Korea have

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Two key players in the electric vehicle industry — auto-giant and manufacturer of the wildly popular LEAF electric vehicle Nissan, and ChargePoint, the biggest and most-open EV charging network in the US — have now teamed up to offer free charging to Nissan customers, and to create a new, first-of-its-kind access platform, the EZ-ChargeSM card. The new “No Charge to

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French car manufacturer Peugeot just unveiled its new plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) concept, the EXALT, at the Beijing Motor Show — which opened to the public on April 21st. The new PHEV, interestingly, incorporates a number of different man-made materials onto the car’s body in order to mimic the look and feel of shark skin. Not something I had

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National elections are underway and dominating headlines and conversations across India. In parallel, the timely release of the second new consensus report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documenting the impacts of climate change, has confirmed again the current and growing risks to the economy, human health and food supply of India’s communities. This latest warning of

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When the sun sets on a remote desert outpost and solar panels shut down, what energy source will provide power through the night? A battery, perhaps, or an old diesel generator? Perhaps something strange and new. Physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) envision a device that would harvest energy from Earth’s infrared emissions into outer

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Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are here, and more are coming. One study forecasts that more than a million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) will be sold in California, New York, Washington, and Florida alone between 2013 and 2022. There is a need for proven technologies that can predict the grid availability of a collection of independently operated vehicles. Yet the

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