Renewables

Macro-scale energy harvesting technologies in the form of windmills, watermills and passive solar power systems have been around for centuries. Now, as designers seek to cut the cords, they turn to microenergy harvesting systems that can scavenge milliwatts from solar, vibrational, thermal and biological sources. However, understanding ultra-low power from the sourcing side brings challenges as harvested power derived from ambient sources tends t...

The U.S. Department of Energy have granted more than $7 million to fund four projects in California, Washington and Oregon to advance hydrogen storage technologies to be used in fuel cell electric vehicles.

Charging electric cars without an electric cable - how does that work? Daimler AG is about to test inductive charging for the first time on a vehicle in everyday use in the form of a technically modified Mercedes-Benz A-Class E-CELL. With the inductive charging principle, an electric car fitted with a special charging coil merely has to be positioned over a charging coil in the ground to start the charging process fully automatically, with no ne...

Silicon Laboratories Inc. has introduced the industry’s most energy-efficient wireless sensor node solution powered by a solar energy harvesting source. The new turnkey energy harvesting reference design enables developers to implement self-sustaining, ultra-low-power wireless sensor networks for home and building automation, security systems, industrial control applications, medical monitoring devices, asset tracking systems and infrastructure...

Imec, Polyera and international chemical group Solvay have achieved a new world-record efficiency of 8.3% for polymer-based single junction organic solar cells in an inverted device stack. These excellent performance results represent a crucial step towards successful commercialization of organic photovoltaic cells.

GE Energy Industrial Solutions has finalized an automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement for the sale and distribution of the GE WattStation Wall Mount electric vehicle (EV) charging station with CODA Automotive Inc., a leading EV manufacturer.

There are many reasons for creating an electric vehicle charging station based on a large battery.

Energy harvesting comes to the fore with electric vehicles because the price they pay for being environmental and exhibiting many performance advantages is that they have limited energy available. In and on these vehicles, the energy snatched from heat, light, movement and other sources may be milliwatts or less to drive wireless sensors and actuators, watts for self sufficient lighting clusters (still in development) or - the main focus - up to ...

Heliatek GmbH has once again set a new world record for organic solar cells after Fraunhofer ISE CalLab certified a cell efficiency of 9.8 % for a 1.1 cm² tandem cell manufactured with a low temperature deposition process. This new record makes the third time in a row that Heliatek has set a world record for efficiency in the field of organic photovoltaic and demonstrates its continuous technology leadership in organic solar.

General Motors announced Monday initiatives for customer satisfaction and battery safety research to ensure ongoing confidence in the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle.