Renewables

When John Wesley Hyatt patented the first industrial plastic in 1869, his intention was to create an alternative to the elephant tusk ivory used to make piano keys. But this early plastic also sparked a revolution in the way people thought about manufacturing: What if we weren’t limited to the materials nature had to offer? Over a century later, plastics are an abundant part of daily life. But these plastics are often derived from petr...

Big data and data mining have provided several breakthroughs in fields such as health informatics, smart cities and marketing. The same techniques, however, have not delivered consistent key findings for climate change. There are a few reasons why. The main one is that previous data mining work in climate science, and in particular in the analysis of climate teleconnections, has relied on methods that offer rather simplistic 'yes or no' answ...

Photons with energy higher than the 'band gap' of the semiconductor absorbing them give rise to what are known as hot electrons. The extra energy in respect to the band gap is lost very fast, as it is converted into heat so it does not contribute to the voltage. University of Groningen Professor of Photophysics and Optoelectronics Maria Antonietta Loi has now found a material in which these hot electrons retain their high energy levels for much l...

With the announcement of Rapid Electronics and ICEE Managed Services entering a partnership to introduce a fully integrated EV charging installation service, the EV charging infrastructure has received a boost. The new service is aimed at the commercial, B2B and local authority markets. Spanning the entire planning, procurement and delivery process, it includes equipment selection, supply, installation, commissioning and lifetime m...

  Electric vehicles for construction, agriculture and mining will be a $87bn market in 2028. Komatsu, John Deere, Caterpillar, and others manufacture the big vehicles - mainly hybrid - while other manufacturers offer smaller, pure-electric versions.

  A new design of algae-powered fuel cells that is five times more efficient than existing plant and algal models, as well as being potentially more cost-effective to produce and practical to use, has been developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Michigan State University (MSU) has improved its campus operations following the upgrade to Aircuity 2.0 from Aircuity. To date two of the nine systems installed on campus have been migrated with the remaining seven scheduled to be completed. MSU has already used the next generation web app for insight into the operation of its labs.  

At the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, BYTON debuted its first drivable concept car. With a digital design and human-vehicle interaction, the premium SUV functions as a next-gen smart device, built for the coming era of truly shared, smart mobility and autonomous driving. The new SUV will be manufactured at BYTON’s plant in Nanjing, China. Its price will start at $45,000. The car will be available in China toward...

ON Semiconductor has joined the global Charging Interface Initiative e.V. (CharIN) ecosystem with the goals of promoting standards for charging systems in Electric Vehicles (EV), creating requirements for the evolution of EV charging systems and developing a certification system for manufacturers to implement charging systems into their products.

  Materials scientists at Duke University have developed a method to create hybrid thin-film materials that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to make. The technique could be the gateway to new generations of solar cells, light-emitting diodes and photodetectors. The research team described their methods in the journal ACS Energy Letters.