Tag: news

Editor’s Note: If you caught Elon Musk and JB Straubel’s Norway town hall in February, you might recall Elon stating that it was “likely” Tesla would bring the first autonomous car to market. That was before Google unveiled a fully autonomous prototype electric car, of which it is building approximately 100 for testing. It seems from other statement that Elon

Read more

The solar industry has been subjected to an intense period of growth and maturation over the past 24 months, as a result of China’s impressive manufacturing capabilities and worldwide demand for one of the two major renewable energy technologies. By the end of 2011 China had emerged as the leading supplier of the crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV production chain, flooding

Read more

Austin, Texas, may be currently known as the “Live Music Capital of the World,” but in coming years, it may also come to be known as the solar capital of Texas, thanks to the city’s recent resolution to make solar power the default generation resource through the year 2024. As part of the city’s climate change goals, the Austin City

Read more

Indian solar energy companies are fast delivering world-class solar power projects as the market expands based on favorable regulatory and policy outlooks. India’s largest engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company in the solar power market has just commissioned the world’s largest single rooftop solar photovoltaic power project. The 7.52 MW solar power plant has been commissioned in the northern state

Read more

An interdisciplinary team of engineers from the University of Pennsylvania has made a discovery regarding the surface properties of graphene, the Nobel-prize winning material that consists of an atomically thin sheet of carbon atoms. On the macroscale, adding fluorine atoms to carbon-based materials makes for water-repellant, non-stick surfaces, such as Teflon. However, on the nanoscale, adding fluorine to graphene had

Read more

Researchers have been trying to increase the efficiency of solid oxide fuel cells by lowering the temperatures at which they run. More efficient fuel cells might gain wider use in vehicles or as quiet, pollution-free, neighborhood electricity generating stations. A serendipitous finding has resulted in a semiconducting material that could enable fuel cells to operate at temperatures two-thirds lower than

Read more

Last week an area outside of Reno, Nevada was chosen as the site of the first Tesla battery Gigafactory. In addition to bringing 6,500 much-needed jobs and a cutting-edge manufacturing facility to Nevada, Elon Musk has also promised to power the Gigafactory using only its own, green energy sources. Can it be done, and if so, how? It is no

Read more

Government-owned companies in India are responding to the calls by the government to boost investment in renewable energy projects. Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), a big coal producer and power generator located in Southern India, has announced that it will invest ₹500 crore (US$82 million) to set up 25 MW solar photovoltaic and 55 MW wind power capacity. The company has

Read more

Despite the devastation wreaked by the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, Japan wants to restart two nuclear reactors that were shut off in the wake of the disaster. According to the Guardian, Japan’s nuclear watchdog has said the reactors can be started up again, as long as the operator can convince the local communities they are safe. That might not be

Read more

We take electricity for granted in the developed world, but did you know that 1.6 billion people – a full one quarter of the world’s population – don’t have access to reliable electricity? The consequences are far-reaching: The lack of electric lighting impacts children’s ability to do well in school and prevents people from working once the sun has set,

Read more