Tag: battery industry

16
Sep

Nevada Governor Signs Tesla Tax Break Bill For Battery Gigafactory

Tesla Motors’ battery Gigafactory took another step toward construction with the approval of incentives worth up to $1.3 billion by Nevada lawmakers. Governor Brian Sandoval signed the package of four bills into law one week after announcing that the Silver State would host the first of what could be multiple factories that will produce lithium-ion cells on a massive scale.

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16
Sep

Yingli Drops Q2 Solar Module Manufacturing Costs to Less Than 50 Cents per Watt

The costs of manufacturing PV modules, not to be confused with selling price, remained relatively flat for major suppliers between the first and second quarter of the year, according to GTM Research’s September PV Pulse. Yingli Green Energy was the one company to reduce all-in module costs by a significant measure, dropping 6 percent to 49 cents per watt. Only

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16
Sep

Raytheon and Newcastle University to Investigate SiC Interface Defects

Raytheon UK’s semiconductor business unit in Glenrothes, Scotland, has embarked on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project, in conjunction with researchers at Newcastle University, to enhance the performance of Silicon Carbide (SiC) electronic devices, specifically for Raytheon’s own SiC CMOS process. KTPs are supported by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. Raytheon UK’s KTP with Newcastle University is studying, in

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16
Sep

Students Create Award-Winning Robot That Cleans Solar Panels

Solar panels must be regularly cleaned and maintained in order to keep them operating efficiently and maximize the amount of sunlight they convert into electricity. With this in mind, a group of students from CalTech and UCLA have developed an impressive robot that cleans solar panels. The design won a third of $200,000 in prize money in the DOE’s National

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16
Sep

India to Install 2,200 Solar-Powered Cell Phone Towers

India currently has one of the largest populations of cell phone users in the world – the nation is expected to have 815 million users by year’s end. To help expand its growing communication network, the Indian government has announced plans to erect as many as 2,200 solar-powered mobile communication towers in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh,

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16
Sep

New Zealand’s Green Party Proposes 100% Renewable Energy Target Ahead Of Elections

New Zealand’s Green Party has released probably the most ambitious part of its economic plan to woo voters ahead of the country’s general election later this week. The Green Party, which may look to come to power through a coalition with other like-minded parties, has proposed a comprehensive clean energy plan. The party want 100% renewable energy target by 2050,

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16
Sep

China changes course: wind surges, coal stalls

The Chinese wind energy sector is growing at tremendously. China is expected to exceed its 2015 target of 100GW wind capacity by 30%, reports Tim Buckley, Director Energy Finance Studies Australasia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) for Reneweconomy. At the same time, China is rapidly diversifying away from coal, towards more nuclear, renewables and hydropower.

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15
Sep

Analytics for Solar and Energy Storage: Show Me the Money

Software that analyzes the complex interplay between solar PV, energy storage systems and customer energy use sounds like a great idea — but is it something that companies are ready to pay for? This depends on the level of maturity of the industry in question, and just what financial stake they see in capturing information that is now lost in

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15
Sep

Stem to Install 1MW of Networked Behind-the-Meter Batteries in Hawaii

Hawaii is facing some serious disruptions from its growing share of distributed rooftop solar, and it’s going to try Stem’s distributed grid energy storage as a solution. On Thursday, utility Hawaiian Electric announced it had picked the Millbrae, Calif.-based startup for a 1-megawatt pilot project on the island of Oahu. It’s a pretty small project, compared to the up to

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15
Sep

Li-ion batteries: new material multiplies charging capability

The battery is a result of the EiSiBatt research project that aims at developing a safe lithium ion battery technology. The anode of the new battery devised by the Siemens team is not made of graphite but instead of lithium titanate. For the cathode, the researchers replaced the usual lithium metal oxide another material, lithium iron phosphate. In addition, the

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