Renewables

There is an emerging and potentially large market for wireless sensors. By their very nature, wireless sensors are chosen for use in inaccessible places, or for applications that require large numbers of sensors—too many to easily hardwire to a data network. In most cases, it is impractical for these systems to run off primary batteries.

Ever since the first watermills and windmills were used to generate electricity, energy harvesting has been an attractive source of energy with great potential. In recent years, energy harvesting technology has become more sophisticated and efficient, and energy storage technologies, such as supercapacitors and thin-film batteries (TFBs), have become more cost-effective.

Over the past few years, the technology of energy harvesting has emerged from the laboratory to the marketplace. In practice, however, it has been difficult to efficiently capture the ambient or waste energy generated by many practical devices suited for this purpose, due to their very low voltage and power outputs.

By Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx In this article, we share some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, Electric Vehicle Industry Profitability 2012 - Where, Why, What Next - vehicles & components, hybrid & pure electric, land, water, air, winning strategies, forecasts. (www.IDTechEx.com/EVprofit)

The pre-commercial trial for the first Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging (WEVC) trial for London is expected to start in early 2012 and will involve as many as 50 electric vehicles (EVs). It is a UK and industry-leading initiative. Qualcomm is collaborating with the UK Government, as well as the Mayor of London's office and Transport for London (TfL) to deliver the trial. The trial will use Qualcomm wireless inductive power transfer technology t...

The performance data of the lightweight electrical sports car Elise-E that Evonik Industries presents at the Car Symposium in Bochum are impressive: The vehicle weighs 950 kg, has a power of 150 kW, accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.4 seconds. The top speed is limited to 200 km/h. The purpose of exhibiting the vehicle is to show the automotive industry what can be achieved with our expertise in chemicals, says Klaus Hedrich, Head of the Evonik ...

Oerlikon Solar presented its 2nd generation ThinFab at the World Future Energy Summit 2012 (WFES) in Abu Dhabi today. This end-to-end production line resets the standard for manufacturing sustainable solar modules at low cost and high quality. The new design reduces capital expenditure (Capex) by 23 % to just $ 1/Wp including engineering support and performance guarantees.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the latest in the series of 18 IDTechEx reports on electric vehicles and their components. The report is Electric Vehicle Industry Profitability 2012 - Where, Why, What Next.

Helping make the world greener, Texas Instruments Incorporated announces two new solar kits based on its C2000 32-bit Piccolo and Concerto microcontrollers (MCUs). These new solar kits bring advanced peripherals, application-targeted development hardware, schematics, comprehensive software libraries of algorithms and an industry-leading development environment to the renewable energy market, allowing designers to easily create solar inverter des...

With the launch of the WattStation, GE continues a century of innovation in the design and manufacturing of electrical distribution systems. GE's WattStation enables fast Level 2 charging at home and on the road. The modular design by renowned industrial designer Yves Behar is upgradable as more communication options become available. This allows customers to stay current with the latest technology in a rapidly changing space, while providing the...