Energy – Page 18 – Impact Lab

Using molten salt to store electricity isn’t just for solar thermal plants

January 5, 2019

Startup follows on a number of innovative ideas to make renewable energy more flexible.

How can we make wind a more versatile energy source? By adding storage.

An energy storage startup that found its footing at Alphabet’s X “moonshot” division announced last week that it will receive $26 million in funding from a group of investors led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that counts Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg as investors and whose chairman is Bill Gates. The startup, called Malta, uses separate vats of molten salt and antifreeze-like liquid to store electricity as thermal energy and dispatch it to the grid when it’s needed.

Continue reading… “Using molten salt to store electricity isn’t just for solar thermal plants”

Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Engineering, Inventions, new technology

Meet the desk-sized turbine that can power a small town

December 21, 2018

A desk-sized turbine can power 10,000 homes using carbon dioxide.

10,000 Homes

Engineers from GE Global Research unveiled a turbine that could provide power for 10,000 homes. But what’s truly remarkable about this turbine is its potential to solve the world’s energy challenges.

Typically, turbines weigh tons and use steam to run—this one is no bigger than the size of your desk, weighs around 68 kg (150 pounds), and runs on carbon dioxide. “This compact machine will allow us to do amazing things,” said Doug Hofer, lead engineer on the project, in Albany, New York. He continues, “the world is seeking cleaner and more efficient ways to generate power. The concepts we are exploring with this machine are helping us address both.”

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Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Green Friendly

Battery idea: Hydroelectric pumped storage, but with bricks

December 11, 2018

Company called Energy Vault has an agreement to build a pilot tower in India in 2019.

A mock-up of what Energy Vault’s tower looks like.

Energy Vault

A company called Energy Vault has proposed a new utility-scale battery that is both old and new at the same time. The “battery” is mechanical, rather than chemical, and stores energy much like pumped hydro does, but it does it with bricks.

If you’re not familiar with pumped hydro, it works like this. The system pumps water from a lower elevation to a higher elevation when electricity is plentiful and cheap. When electricity becomes more expensive, operators release that water through a hydroelectric turbine to give the grid some extra juice. Similarly, Energy Vault wants to build a system of six cranes, which will electrically stack heavy bricks into a tower when electricity is cheap and plentiful. When electricity becomes more scarce and expensive, the cranes will release each brick and harvest the energy from their fall.

Continue reading… “Battery idea: Hydroelectric pumped storage, but with bricks”

Energy, Green Friendly, Home Technology

Natural gas firms have a proposal to convert home heating to hydrogen

December 7, 2018

Three companies want to test out a pilot project in Northern England by 2028.

Three natural gas distributors issued a report this week detailing plans to convert the UK’s residential gas system to a hydrogen delivery system. UK firms Northern Gas Networks and Cadent, as well as Norwegian gas firm Equinor, wrote that the proposal (PDF) was technically feasible. They also suggested an initial roll-out of the program to 3.7 million homes and 400,000 businesses in Northern England could commence as soon as 2028.

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Battery, Energy, Solar Energy, Solar Power

Scientists develop liquid fuel that can store the Sun’s energy for up to 18 years

November 13, 2018

No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy that it generates.

The solar industry has been snagged on this branch for a while, but in the past year alone, a series of four papers has ushered in an intriguing new solution.

Scientists in Sweden have developed a specialised fluid, called a solar thermal fuel, that can store energy from the sun for well over a decade.

“A solar thermal fuel is like a rechargeable battery, but instead of electricity, you put sunlight in and get heat out, triggered on demand,” Jeffrey Grossman, an engineer works with these materials at MIT explained to NBC News.

Continue reading… “Scientists develop liquid fuel that can store the Sun’s energy for up to 18 years”

Energy, Home Technology, Housing, Solar Energy, Solar Power

The future of construction may be concrete that generates its own electricity

November 8, 2018

We need buildings in which to live, but crafting those buildings is making it harder to live on this planet. As much as 10% of global carbon emissions come from the production of concrete. One ton of CO2 is generated by making one ton of cement, which is made from limestone and a few other things heated to an extremely high temperature.

But what if concrete could generate its own energy? The era of photovoltaic concrete may be getting closer. Photovoltaics, which work by converting light to energy via semiconducting, are starting to migrate from solar panels into the building materials themselves.

Continue reading… “The future of construction may be concrete that generates its own electricity”

Batteries, Breakthrough Thinking, Electric Vehicles, Energy

120-kW wireless charging proves 97% efficient

October 29, 2018

High power wireless charging efficiency reaches 97%.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) upgraded its previous 20 kW wireless charging system to 120 kW, and through a new design and a silicon carbide power electronic device, it was able to achieve 97% efficiency.

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Batteries, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Energy

Scientists turn nuclear waste into diamond batteries

October 26, 2018

They’ll reportedly last for thousands of years. This technology may someday power spacecraft, satellites, high-flying drones, and pacemakers.

Nuclear energy is carbon free, which makes it an attractive and practical alternative to fossil fuels, as it doesn’t contribute to global warming. We also have the infrastructure for it already in place. It’s nuclear waste that makes fission bad for the environment. And it lasts for so long, some isotopes for thousands of years. Nuclear fuel is comprised of ceramic pellets of uranium-235 placed within metal rods. After fission takes place, two radioactive isotopes are left over: cesium-137 and strontium-90.

These each have half-lives of 30 years, meaning the radiation will be half gone by that time. Transuranic wastes, such as Plutonium-239, are also created in the process. This has a half-life of 24,000 years. These materials are highly radioactive, making them extremely dangerous to handle, even with short-term exposure.

Continue reading… “Scientists turn nuclear waste into diamond batteries”

Batteries, Battery, Energy, Engineering, Environment

This new Lithium battery tech can simply suck up CO2 to power itself

October 8, 2018

We need this right now!

Everybody knows the world’s got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2 could provide the means of tomorrow’s battery technology.

For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new system might offer a powerful advantage over these efforts.

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Energy, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Wind Power

Utilities have a problem: the public wants 100% renewable energy, and quick

September 18, 2018

The industry is groping for ways to talk the public down.

Renewable energy is hot. It has incredible momentum, not only in terms of deployment and costs but in terms of public opinion and cultural cachet. To put it simply: Everyone loves renewable energy. It’s cleaner, it’s high-tech, it’s new jobs, it’s the future.

And so more and more big energy customers are demanding the full meal deal: 100 percent renewable energy.

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Analysis, City Planning, Energy, New Viewpoints

Study: Decentralized microgrids can provide 90% or a neighborhood’s energy needs

September 17, 2018

“The new approach could even pave the way for 100 percent self-sufficiency in power, heat, and water.”

A new report funded by the Dutch government finds that microgrid technologies could make a local “techno-economy” 90 percent self-sufficient, through the decentralized sharing of energy at the local level between multiple households.

This report adds fuel to efforts by the Siemens Corporation to design better microgrids and promote their efficiencies.

The new approach could even pave the way for “100 percent self-sufficiency in power, heat, and water, and 50 percent self-sufficiency in food production”, according to the report’s author, energy systems engineer Florijn de Graaf.

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Energy, Future, New Discoveries, Space

This astrophysicist explains the surprisingly complex concept of ‘nothing’

August 27, 2018

Philosophers have debated the nature of “nothing” for thousands of years, but what has modern science got to say about it?

In an interview with The Conversation, Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, explains that when physicists talk about nothing, they mean empty space (vacuum).

This may sound straightforward, but experiments show that empty space isn’t really empty – there’s a mysterious energy latent in it which can tell us something about the fate of the universe.

Rees was interviewed for The Conversation’s Anthill podcast on Nothing. This Q&A is based on an edited transcript of that interview.

Continue reading… “This astrophysicist explains the surprisingly complex concept of ‘nothing’”