Renewables

Electric cars will only be truly competitive when it doesn’t take longer to charge them than it does to fill the fuel tank. The storage capacity of batteries is improving exponentially, but the power grid is the weak link: how could it possibly charge thousands of cars at the same time? This is especially problematic in the case of ultra-fast charging, which requires more than 10 times more power. EPFL researchers have found the solution: i...

Some of the most promising solar cells today use light-harvesting films made from perovskites - a group of materials that share a characteristic molecular structure. However, perovskite-based solar cells use expensive 'hole-transporting' materials, whose function is to move the positive charges that are generated when light hits the perovskite film.

The past century has seen a 0.8°C (1.4°F) increase in average global temperature and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the overwhelming source of this increase has been emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from human activities.

A new thin-film electrolyte material that helps solid oxide fuel cells operate more efficiently and cheaply than those composed of conventional materials, and has potential applications for portable power sources, has been developed at the University of Cambridge. These new materials offer the possibility of either significantly improving the efficiency of current high-temperature fuel cell systems, or achieving the same performance levels a...

The expertise of Morgan Advanced Materials has been recognised once again, this time by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the national trade association for the US wind industry. The AWEA has accepted an abstract by Roland Roberge, Manager of Design and Application Engineering at Morgan's site in Greenville, SC.

About 2.5 billion people do not have access to sanitised toilet facilities, according to the UN. Much of this problem lies in India and Sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 10 million children under five have died from lack of toilets since 2000. To help address this problem from the modern world, researchers from Cranfield University in the UK. have developed a cheap, clean, and eco-friendly nanotechnology toilet that has the ability to g...

Progress has been announced in the quest to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to cheap solar power. A tandem solar cell exceeding 25 percent efficiency has been proven possible, but the long-run potential is much higher. Perovskite cells have shaken up solar research. They are potentially very cheap to make, and while their efficiency doesn't yet match the best silicon cells, records have been broken faster than for any previous cell-typ...

“With lidar-based wind measurements, taken with the ZephIR DM wind lidar, we are able to offer customers a new completely independent power performance test and optimisation for their wind turbines. ZephIR DM is the only lidar capable of full rotor diameter wind measurements, delivering a power curve measurement equivalent to current and future IEC guidelines. BBB has been working with lidar systems now for over five years and we look forwa...

A smart shower head that flashes red when someone uses too much water is aiming to make people think seriously about water conservation. Developed by French firm Start & Blue, Hydrao has built-in LED lights that change colour as more and more water is used. Once a 50 litre limit has passed it flashes red to suggest it might be time to get out of the shower.

Recently, Google started the Sunroof project, a service that calculates potential energy savings of home owners due to solar facilities on their roofs. However, this project covers a few cities in the US only. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and European partners have now finished the EAGLESolar research project. It covers the same activities in European cities and takes into account local conditions. Among the test regions ...