Tag: battery industry news

Tesla Motors will decisively, even state by state if necessary, win its ongoing war with the car dealership associations, according to a recent op-ed by a prominent industry journalist. The most that the dealership associations can hope for with their lawsuits is a short delay to Tesla’s expansion and growth — a delay that won’t stop the turning tide, according

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SAN FRANCISCO – One automaker’s vision of the transportation future sat parked under a broiling sun not far from AT&T Park baseball stadium Tuesday. But the blackout tint on the sedan’s windows wasn’t to keep the interior cool, but hidden. Toyota quietly rolled into town with the newest addition to its eco-conscious fleet, the 2015 FCV. That stands for Fuel

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Carbon nanotubes have been used in everything from energy-free lights to oil spill clean-up technology, and now a team from Rice University has used them to develop a paint that transforms any surface into a lithium-ion battery! This transformative paint holds the potential to create a functional, rechargeable solar battery on just about any surface. The Rice University team’s rechargeable

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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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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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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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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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Solar power systems are ideal for buildings with large, flat roofs. That type of building is universal in public schools in the US. Thus, public and private schools offer huge, mostly untapped potential to increase solar energy use in the US. Installing rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal systems on US schools just makes so much sense. Initiating progress

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