Tag: news

A comprehensive look at how tiny particles in a lithium-ion battery electrode behave shows that rapid-charging the battery and using it to do high-power, rapidly draining work may not be as damaging as researchers had thought – and that the benefits of slow draining and charging may have been overestimated. The results challenge the prevailing view that “supercharging” batteries is

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Toshiba’s Rapid Recharge SCiB battery has been selected by Proterra to power their next generation of fully electric buses. Using a lithium-titanate chemistry, the SCiB batteries are resistant to thermal-runaway and yet can be rapidly recharged and discharged with minimal capacity loss over 10,000 cycles. The promise of fully electric buses is one of zero emissions, renewable energy, and a

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There’s no getting around the fact that clean energy took a popularity hit, particularly among Republicans, with the fossil lobby’s 2011 subterfuge: the phony Solyndra non-”scandal.” We can now say with confidence that there was never any “there there” (“hat tip” to normally pro-fossil fuels Joe Nocera, who wrote that the entire “scandal” was “phony”). But the constant drumbeat by

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Countries once considered as part of the Third World are making plans to substantially increase renewable energy capacity, while some in the developed world are contemplating getting rid of them altogether. The Central Asian country of Kazakhstan has set a target that will see renewable energy projects contributing 3% to the country’s energy mix by 2020. This would require the

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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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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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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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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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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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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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