Today’s Tesla Model 3’s lithium-ion battery pack has an estimated 168 Wh/kg. And important as this energy-per-weight ratio is for electric cars, it’s more important still for electric aircraft. Now comes Oxis Energy, of Abingdon, UK, with a battery based on lithium-sulfur chemistry that it says can greatly increase the ratio, and do so in a Read more about Lithium Sulfur Battery Project Aims To Double The Range Of Electric Airplanes – good to see another new type of battery apparently maturing, but is it as green as alu-air?[…]

A new lithium-ion battery design makes it possible for electric vehicle drivers to charge their cars and hit the road in as little as ten minutes, according to a new study. The quick charge gives drivers up to 200 miles per ten minute charge while maintaining 2,500 charging cycles, the researchers behind the study say. Read more about New Battery Design Can Charge an Electric Car in 10 Minutes[…]

Growing demand for SUVs was the second largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions from 2010 to 2018, an analysis has found. In that period, SUVs doubled their global market share from 17% to 39% and their annual emissions rose to more than 700 megatonnes of CO2, more than the yearly total emissions Read more about SUVs second biggest cause of emissions rise, figures reveal – turns out they are 11% more lethal to driver in an accident too, so maybe just a matter of time before that problem is fixed[…]

Electric vehicles are everywhere now. It’s more than just Leafs, Teslas, and a wide variety of electric bikes. It’s also trains, busses, and in this case, gigantic dump trucks. This truck in particular is being put to work at a mine in Switzerland, and as a consequence of having an electric drivetrain is actually able Read more about Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than It Uses[…]

In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world’s largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars. The experimental campaign that will be carried out at ITER Read more about ITER is making a mini sun to power the earth[…]

Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant sailed Friday to its destination on the nation’s Arctic coast, a project that environmentalists have criticized as unsafe. The Akademik Lomonosov is a 140-meter (459-foot) long towed platform that carries two 35-megawatt nuclear reactors. On Friday, it set out from the Arctic port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula Read more about Russia’s floating nuclear plant sails to its destination[…]

Electricity output was curtailed at six reactors by 0840 GMT on Thursday, while two other reactors were offline, data showed. High water temperatures and sluggish flows limit the ability to use river water to cool reactors. In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday Read more about Hot weather cuts French, German nuclear power output by ~ 8%[…]

The ever-more-humble carbon nanotube may be just the device to make solar panels—and anything else that loses energy through heat—far more efficient. Rice University scientists are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation (aka heat) and greatly raise the efficiency of solar energy systems. Gururaj Naik and Junichiro Kono of Rice’s Read more about Carbon nanotube device channels heat into light, could increase solar panel efficiency[…]

Spanish renewable energy giant and offshore wind energy leader Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy last week inaugurated operations of its electrothermal energy storage system which can store up to 130 megawatt-hours of electricity for a week in volcanic rock. […] The heat storage facility consists of around 1,000 tonnes of volcanic rock which is used as Read more about Siemens Gamesa Unveils World First Electrothermal Energy Storage System, stores electricity in volcanic rock[…]

This week the world’s first and only digital circuit breaker was certified for commercial use. The technology, invented by Atom Power, has been listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the global standard for consumer safety. This new breaker makes power easier to manage and 3000 times faster than the fastest mechanical breaker, marking the most radical Read more about How the World’s First Digital Circuit Breaker Could Completely Change Our Powered World[…]

The obvious drawback of solar panels is that they require sunlight to generate electricity. Some have observed that for a device on Earth facing space, which has a frigid temperature, the chilling outflow of energy from the device can be harvested using the same kind of optoelectronic physics we have used to harness solar energy. Read more about Experimental device generates electricity from the coldness of the universe, good for night time[…]

A technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air has received significant backing from major fossil fuel companies.British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way.It has now been boosted by $68m in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP. […] The quest for technology for carbon Read more about Carbon Engineering receives $68m from energy companies to turn CO2 from air into fuel[…]

The research team led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, developed a new technique using a liquid metal electrolysis method which efficiently converts CO2 from a gas into solid particles of carbon. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the authors say their technology offers an alternative pathway for “safely and permanently” removing CO2 from the Read more about Scientists turn CO2 ‘back into coal’ in breakthrough carbon capture experiment[…]

For most of the industrial era, a nation’s carbon emissions moved in lock step with its economy. Growth meant higher emissions. But over the past decade or so, that has changed. Even as the global economy continued to grow, carbon emissions remained flat or dropped a bit. It would be simple to ascribe this trend Read more about Renewable energy policies actually work[…]

Ethereum mining consumes a quarter to half of what Bitcoin mining does, but that still means that for most of 2018 it was using roughly as much electricity as Iceland. Indeed, the typical Ethereum transaction gobbles more power than an average U.S. household uses in a day. “That’s just a huge waste of resources, even Read more about Ethereum Plans To Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption By 99 Percent[…]

According to Chinese media, Qing Tao Energy Development Co, a startup out of the technical Tsinghua University, has deployed a solid-state battery production line in Kunshan, East China. Reports claim the line has a capacity of 100MWh per year — which is planned to increase to 700MWh by 2020 — and that the company has Read more about A Chinese startup may have cracked solid-state batteries[…]

Energy is already stored, of course, in batteries or various other technologies. Even reservoirs can act as huge stores of energy. However nothing that exists or is in development can store energy as well, and as cheaply, as compressed air. The concept seems simple: you just suck in some air from the atmosphere, compress it Read more about Let’s store solar and wind energy – by using compressed air[…]

Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world. By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according Read more about The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars[…]

New York – Sept. 26, 2018 – NantEnergy today announced a breakthrough in its six-year mission to develop the world’s first scalable air breathing, zinc rechargeable battery system at a manufacturing cost below $100 kWh and to operate this intelligent digitally controlled system on a global scale. This green rechargeable battery, an air-breathing cell, uses just zinc and air, integrated with digitally controlled intelligence. The energy system is monitored in real time in the cloud and has been Read more about NantEnergy Announces Largest Global Deployment of Novel Air Breathing Zinc Rechargeable Battery System and Breakthrough in Cost Barrier[…]

Solid Power is a Colorado-based startup that spun out of a battery research program at the University of Colorado Boulder. The company claims to have achieved a breakthrough by incorporating a high-capacity lithium metal anode in lithium batteries – creating a solid-state cell with an energy capacity “2-3X higher” than conventional lithium-ion. They have already attracted Read more about Solid-state battery startup secures backing from several automakers as it claims 2- 3x higher energy capacity, better safety through solid-state[…]

The Forever Battery comes in a AA form factor, and houses electronics (including an antenna) within its shell. Ossia’s Cota system uses a transmitter that beams electricity along direct paths through the air to the antenna in the battery, charging it from distances of up to 30 feet, with nary a wire to be seen Read more about With the “Forever Battery,” Ossia’s Cota AA system Promises True Wireless Charging[…]