Renewables

A technology developed by a research team at the University of Edinburgh’s Li-Fi R&D Centre, led by Professor Harald Haas, is set to bring significant commercial and social benefits to millions of people across the world. The new form of wireless data communication uses solar energy to create power for Li-Fi, which will be particularly useful in rural communities and the developing world that do not have existing infrastructures fo...

ROHM’s recently announced AC/DC converter control IC, designed specifically for SiC MOSFETs in industrial equipment such as servers and other large power applications, was showcased at SPS IPC Drives. The BD7682FJ-LB allows the easy implementation of SiC-MOSFETs to an AC/DC converter which has proved challenging when using discrete configurations due to the large number of components required. 

In Germany the concept of energiewende (the country’s transition to an energy portfolio dominated by renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development), inherently includes smart energy use. However, there is not yet any storage system that could be used by industry to efficiently recover braking energy of the many machines in Germany.

The Gerrit Boschloo’s group at the Department of Chemistry-Ångström Laboratory, Division of Physical Chemistry, Uppsala University, has just discovered "zombie solar cells". The so-called Grätzel cells, which are old dye-sensitised solar cells, were still active despite the fact that the electrolyte conducting electricity between the minus and plus poles had evaporated. 

A new framework deal has been signed by DNV GL which demonstrates IEC compliance of ZephIR 300 wind lidar as adoption becomes standardised. “DNV GL has been at the forefront of assessing Lidar technology and other remote sensors. The objective of this framework agreement with ZephIR is to further advance the standardised adoption of wind remote sensing technology in the wind industry,” commented Detlef Stein, Global Head of Pract...

A drop-in replacement for the LTC6804, Linear Technology has announced the LTC6811 high voltage battery stack monitor featuring higher performance and 25% lower price. This a complete battery measuring IC for EVs and HEVs that incorporates a deep buried Zener voltage reference, high voltage multiplexers, 16-bit delta-sigma ADCs and a 1Mb/s isolated serial interface.

Further enhancing IGBT performance, Infineon Technologies has announced the S5 (S for soft) family based on the ultra-thin wafer TRENCHSTOP 5 IGBT. This family has been developed specifically for AC/DC energy conversion in industrial applications switching up to 40kHz, typically to be found in PV inverters or UPS.

Wind power has entered the mainstream. By the end of 2014 global wind generation capacity had reached 369.6GW according to Global Wind Energy Council. The share of wind energy in electricity production is expected to increase in the coming years as wind has become increasingly competitive. Demand for wind will also shift to developing countries where there is an increasing demand in electricity. To keep delivering on its potential, however, ...

Tomorrow, 21st October 2015, will be the exact date that Marty McFly visited in a modified DeLorean in the second of the Back to the Future movies. While we are still waiting for flying cars, Mr. Fusion and Jaws 19 (this time it's really really personal), we now have hoverboards and something that even Robert Zemeckis didn't imagine would exist in 2015: an electric DeLorean.

Transmission losses and fluctuations in electric power grids can be reduced when renewable energy is stored locally. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Kraftwerke Haag, VARTA Storage and the Bavarian Center for Applied Energy Research (ZAE-Bayern) have developed a stationary intermediate storage system: the Energy Neighbor.