Tag: Renewable Energy

How do you store renewable energy so it’s there when you need it, even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing? Giant batteries designed for the electrical grid — called flow batteries, which store electricity in tanks of liquid electrolyte — could be the answer, but so far utilities have yet to find a cost-effective battery that

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A low-cost, high-performance battery chemistry developed by University of Colorado Boulder researchers could one day lead to scalable grid-level storage for wind and solar energy that could help electrical utilities reduce their dependency on fossil fuels. The new innovation, described today in the journal Joule, outlines two aqueous flow batteries, also known as redox flow batteries, which use chromium and organic

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engine & Turbocharger, Ltd. (MHIET), a Group company of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI), has developed what the company describes as a “triple-hybrid” stand-alone power supply system that combines renewable energy such as solar power with a reciprocating engine generator and storage battery. According to the company, the triple-hybrid system enables optimal stabilization control. The system’s primary advantage is its

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University of Alberta, Canada chemists Jillian Buriak (pictured above in a photo by John Ulan), Jonathan Veinot and their team found that nano-sized silicon particles overcome a shortcoming of using silicon in lithium-ion batteries. The discovery could lead to a new lithium-ion battery design with ten times the capacity of current lithium-ion batteries. “We wanted to test how different sizes

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German battery maker Varta has sealed a research agreement to lay the groundwork for mass production of lithium-ion battery cells for electric cars as it seeks to take on Asian leaders in the sector. Varta, which currently specializes in batteries for hearing aids and large storage systems for solar energy, has agreed a cooperation deal with Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, a

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•A 200-room Premier Inn in Edinburgh is trialing the 100-kilowatt battery.•The battery weighs around 5 metric tons and takes two hours to fully charge up. A hotel in Scotland has started to use a lithium-ion battery to help power its operations. The Edinburgh Park hotel, a 200-room Premier Inn in Edinburgh, is trialing the 100-kilowatt battery with the aim of

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Researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick have developed a new direct, precise test of Lithium-ion batteries’ internal temperatures and their electrodes potentials and found that the batteries can be safely charged up to five times faster than the current recommended charging limits. The new technology works in-situ during a battery’s normal operation without impeding its performance and it

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A new approach to analyzing and designing new ion conductors — a key component of rechargeable batteries — could accelerate the development of high-energy lithium batteries, and possibly other energy storage and delivery devices such as fuel cells, researchers say. The new approach relies on understanding the way vibrations move through the crystal lattice of lithium ion conductors and correlating

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