Renewables

New tools for harvesting wind energy may soon look less like giant windmills and more like tiny leafless trees. A project at The Ohio State University is testing whether high-tech objects that look a bit like artificial trees can generate renewable power when they are shaken by the wind—or by the sway of a tall building, traffic on a bridge or even seismic activity.

Workers with Ennoviga Solar and Lightsource Renewable Energy are set to unveil the largest floating solar array in the world. The five year project was commissioned by Thames Water and the electricity produced by the array will go towards powering water treatment plants that support London and surrounding areas. The array has been built on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir, which sits approximately 20 miles from London, and will have a top capacit...

Most plastic and polymer materials around are poorly sustainable, as they are petroleum-based, their preparation needs metal catalysis, and they persist in the environment and cannot be effectively recycled. Seeking for true sustainability, American scientists have now prepared a fully recyclable biopolyester from a biofeedstock-based chemical without any metal catalyst involved.

Storing sunlight as fuel that can be later used to drive fuel cells requires new materials. Scientists demonstrated such a material. They combined two oxides on the atomic scale. The interface between the oxide materials, one containing strontium and titanium (SrTiO3) and one containing lanthanum and chromium (LaCrO3), absorbs visible light, producing electrons and holes that might be useful for catalysing reactions, such as producing hydrogen fu...

Nissan has revealed an exciting glimpse into the future – with the first look at its fully connected vision of the future of mobility in association with renowned architects, Foster + Partners.The landmark partnership, between the manufacturers of the world’s best-selling 100% electric vehicle and the leading design studio, concluded that the fuel station of the future could actually be the car itself.

Plans were unveiled today for a community-owned wind farm in Cornwall which could become the first in the UK to operate without government subsidy. In 2015, the Government announced an end to subsidies for onshore wind farms in Britain.

Physicists at the University of Salford, along with 12 international partners, have launched a research project that aims to develop novel types of photovoltaic (PV) cell. The cells will use so-called perovskite PV technology, which has the potential to be both low-cost and extremely efficient. The €5 million project, entitled CHEOPS, aims to upscale promising initial trials of the technology to industrial and commercial levels.

Analog Devices has announced a PMU (Power Management Unit) designed to enable faster and more efficient energy harvesting in IoT applications where energy is scarce. Due to its unique circuit design, the ADP509x is among the most efficient energy harvesting PMUs on the market, converting harvested power down to 16μW with only sub-μW operation losses.

When scientists Daniel Riley and Jared Schwede left Stanford University last year to join Cyclotron Road, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) program for entrepreneurial researchers, their vision was to take thermionics, an all-but-forgotten technology, and develop it into a clean, compact, and efficient source of power.

Researchers have reached a critical milestone in solar cell fabrication, helping pave the way for solar energy to directly compete with electricity generated by conventional energy sources. Led by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and in collaboration with Washington State University and the University of Tennessee, the researchers improved the maximum voltage available from a cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar...