Renewables

Supercapacitor leader Maxwell Technologies recorded total revenue of $39.2 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012. - a up 11% from the same period a year ago. Growth was driven not only by ultracapacitor sales of $22 million, which is up 3% from Q1 '11, but also by unusually strong sales of microelectronics and high-voltage capacitor products, which came in at $17.2 million - up 24% from last year's first quarter.

E-mobility has the potential to play a key role in meeting the challenges towards sustainable transport. Standardisation of the connection between the electricity grid and electrically-chargeable vehicles is one of the prerequisites to help e-mobility gain a viable market share.

Villanova University and Unmanned Ocean Vehicles, Inc., in the USA have been developing the electric powertrain and harvesting for an unmanned surface boat using funding from the US Office of Naval Research since 2006.

The City of Amsterdam has designed a new subsidy scheme to encourage businesses in Amsterdam to switch to more sustainable means of transportation. The subsidy scheme will reimburse businesses in Amsterdam up to 50% of the additional cost of purchasing an electric vehicle.

DuPont Solamet PV17x photovoltaic metallization paste has become the leading frontside silver paste series on the market today due to its ability to raise efficiency in standard solar cell constructions and its unique properties which enable Lightly Doped Emitter cell designs. LDE is a strong differentiator for solar cell producers as it can boost efficiency by up to 0.4 percent.

Smaller, lighter, and more powerful – those are the attributes that characterize the latest generation of power electronics, developed by the international automotive supplier Continental for electric drive train applications. In figures, the highly integrated module has a continuous power of 20 kilowatts at a weight of only eight kilograms and just five liters of space. Mass and volume are about 33 percent less than in the previous generation....

Anderson Power Products is proud to announce that Solar SPEC Pak is the first multi-pin connector to meet the photovoltaic industry requirements specified in UL 6703A, passing the same harsh environmental tests used to qualify solar panels. Solar SPEC Pak has power handling capabilities up to 1000 volts and features a locking latch that complies with NEC 2008 section 690.33(C) requirements.

Mitsubishi Electric is introducing its 6th generation Mega Power Dual (MPD) Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules. The modules, which are for use in power converters such as large-capacity photovoltaic and wind power generation systems, are also suitable for other high-power applications e.g. in the areas of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems and AC motor control.

Global automakers from the United States and Germany demonstrated fast-charging technology that will enable the recharging of most electrified vehicles with compatible systems in as little as 15-20 minutes.

eASIC Corporation today announced that Tokyo Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Hitotsubashi University, has successfully demonstrated a 3X increase in energy efficiency for a green supercomputer used for performing astronomical simulations. By leveraging eASIC´s low power Nextreme-2 NEW ASIC devices, Tokyo Institute of Technology was able to achieve an energy efficiency ratio of 6.5 GFLOPS/Watt for its GRAPE-8 supercomputer.