energy – Page 35 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”

Ice Energy A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO 2 over the next 20 years. Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original:
California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”

JetBlue and Boeing Are Betting Big On Electric Jet Startup ‘Zunem Aero’

A new startup called Zunum Aero is aiming to reinvent how users travel short distances, such as from San Francisco to Los Angeles. “The Kirkland, Washington-based company plans to build a fleet of hybrid electric jets to sell to major carriers for service on densely traveled regional routes like San Francisco to Los Angeles or Boston to Washington, DC, “reports The Verge. Two aviation giants, Boeing and JetBlue, are reportedly backing the startup. From the report: Lower operating costs (i.e., no fueling) will allow carriers to reduce fares by 40 to 80 percent, they predict. And by flying a smaller aircraft that would be subject to fewer TSA regulations, Zunum claims it will take less time to go through security before boarding one of its planes. Zunum aims to build several models of hybrid-electric propulsion jets. At launch, its first class of aircraft will be tiny, in the 10-15 foot range, with a 10-passenger capacity and a range of up to 700 miles on a single charge. (Think San Francisco to Portland or Atlanta to DC.) Those planes can be expected to roll off the assembly line by the early 2020s, the company’s CEO Ashish Kumar told The Verge. By the 2030s, as electric battery technology improves, Zunum hopes to build larger aircraft that can carry up to 50 passengers and travel up to 1, 000 miles on a single charge. (Think Seattle to LA or Boston to Jacksonville, Florida.) Zunum’s aircraft will feature hybrid electric motors with the capacity to accept recharging power from a variety of sources. Because airplanes are typically kept in service for up to 30 years, Kumar says its important for Zunum’s aircraft to be future proof. That means designing them to be compatible with future battery designs and range-extending generators, with an eye toward ultimately switching from hybrid propulsion to fully electric motors once the technology catches up. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continued here:
JetBlue and Boeing Are Betting Big On Electric Jet Startup ‘Zunem Aero’

This Elusive Giant Octopus Snacks on Giant Jellies

The giant deep-sea octopus Haliphron is so rare that marine biologists have seen it just three times in 27 years. Using a robotic sub, scientists have finally caught video footage of this animal at mealtime—revealing its distinct preference for gelatinous sea creatures. Read more…

Original post:
This Elusive Giant Octopus Snacks on Giant Jellies

Rediscovered 1920s Home Movies Are the First to Show the White House in Color

An archivist working at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library has stumbled upon color home movies taken in the late 1920s by former First Lady Lou Hoover. Incredibly, this is very likely the first color film to show a US President, the First Lady, and the White House. Read more…

Researchers break efficiency record for consumer-friendly solar panels

Turning sunlight into power is a surprisingly tricky thing. Experiments in academia have created solar arrays that can capture up to 40-percent of the sun’s energy and convert it to electricity, but consumer cells are notably less efficient. At best, silicon-based technology has a theoretical 29-percent efficiency ceiling — meaning any consumer panel in the low 20s is doing pretty well. Still, we’re inching ever closer to the technology’s limit. Researchers at Kaneko corp recently announced that they’ve developed a silicon solar cell with a record-breaking 26.3 percent efficiency rating. The score is only just barely higher than the previous record of 25.6, but that 0.7 percent gain is no easy feat. Researchers had to analyze what factors in current cell design was keeping the technology from reaching its theoretical limits. The group decided that reducing optical loss was the best path forward, and moved low-resistance electrodes to the rear of the cell to increase the amount of photons that could be captured. That’s a lot of technical jargon, sure — but the big win here isn’t just that the cell is more efficient, it’s that the more productive silicon cell was produced using the same kind of production process used for consumer sells. In other words, this isn’t just an experiment, it’s something we might actually see on the market soon. Via: Ars Technica Source: Nature Energy

Follow this link:
Researchers break efficiency record for consumer-friendly solar panels

The US Army Finally Gets The World’s Largest Laser Weapon System

It’s been successfully tested on trucks, as well as UAVs and small rockets, according to a video from Lockheed Martin, which is now shipping the first 60kW-class “beam combined” fiber laser for use by the U.S. Army. An anonymous reader quotes the Puget Sound Business Journal: Lockheed successfully developed and tested the 58 kW laser beam earlier this year, setting a world record for this type of laser. The company is now preparing to ship the laser system to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command in Huntsville, Alabama [according to Robert Afzal, senior fellow for Lockheed’s Laser and Sensor Systems in Bothell]. “We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air…” Laser weapons, which complement traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield, will one day protect against threats such as “swarms of drones” or a flurry of rockets and mortars, Lockheed said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York will offer $2,000 if you buy an electric car

Believe it or not, New York hasn’t offered a financial incentive to buy eco-friendly cars. While over three quarters of the US has some kind of state-level discount, New York has made you ‘settle’ for the federal tax credit. Officials are about to sweeten the pot, though: months after approval, New York is launching a rebate program on April 1st that gives you up to $2, 000 if you buy an electric car or plug-in hybrid . If you can buy a car that also qualifies for the federal credit, you’re looking at nearly ten grand off the sticker price. The initiative wasn’t exactly on the fast track. April 1st was the deadline for launching the program — the state clearly put this off until the last minute, and staff at New York’s Energy Research and Development Authority are still hashing out the details of the rebate. Still, it could be vital if it goes according to plan. New York represents one of the larger potential markets for electric cars outside of California, and the added incentive could be important for the Chevy Bolt , Tesla Model 3 and future EVs just affordable enough that even $2, 000 could make a big difference. It’s particularly important for the Model 3, whose pre-orders are strong enough that you may not get a federal credit at all if you ordered relatively late. Via: Electrek Source: AP (US News)

See the original post:
New York will offer $2,000 if you buy an electric car

Wind penetration on central US grid hits 52% Sunday night, breaking record

(credit: Indigo Skies Photography ) An organization that manages transmission systems across the central US announced on Tuesday that it broke a record for wind penetration in North America. On Sunday at 4:30am, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) became the first regional transmission organization (RTO) to serve 52.1 percent of its load using wind energy. SPP also set the previous record in April 2016 with 49.2 percent wind generation. A record previous to that was set by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in late March 2016, when the organization hit 48.28 percent wind penetration at 1:10am. Records for wind penetration, which measure the amount of total load supplied by wind on a moment-to-moment basis, are being broken more frequently these days, on a regional and internal level. As RTOs, which generally serve large areas and cross state lines, add more wind turbines to their portfolios , wind is becoming a more important part of the energy mix. SPP noted that “wind is now the third most-prevalent fuel source in the SPP region,” which covers 550,000 square miles of territory in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and portions of neighboring states. Natural gas and coal are still the primary fuel sources for SPP, but the organization said that wind accounted for 15 percent of its generating capacity in 2016. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View original post here:
Wind penetration on central US grid hits 52% Sunday night, breaking record

Scientists make battery that runs on air and carbon dioxide

Researchers at Penn State University have potentially come up with yet another way we could create energy from all that nasty carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere. They’ve developed an inexpensive flow cell battery that uses mostly water solutions containing either dissolved CO2 or dissolved normal air — the technical name for the dissolving process is called sparging, just FYI. Because the liquids contain different concentrations of CO2, they have different pH levels, and it’s this imbalance that generates electricity. In a flow cell battery, two liquids are separated by a membrane that doesn’t allow them to mix, but does permit the flow of ions. As ions are exchanged between the denser CO2 solution and normal air solution, the voltage changes at the manganese oxide electrodes in either tank. This stimulates the flow of electrons between the two connected electrodes and voilà : electricity. When the ion concentrations have normalized, you can effectively recharge the battery by refilling each tank with the opposite solution, reversing the flow of electrons. The Penn State scientists were able to do this over 50 times before seeing a drop in performance. Using CO2 in a flow cell battery isn’t an entirely new idea, but this version has an average power density of 0.82 W/m2 — nearly 200 times higher than anything developed previously, according to the researchers. Other CO2-based fuel cell systems are capable of much more, but they are also much more complicated, using other energy dense fuels and requiring high temperatures to operate. Penn State’s battery, on the other hand, works at room temperature and uses inexpensive materials and processes. Even so, the team admit it may not be economically viable to make use of their research on a large scale just yet. The dream, though, would be to integrate these batteries into fossil fuel power stations, repurposing their CO2 emissions to make even more energy. While more work needs to be done to improve performance and viability, anything that can make light of a bad (and worsening) situation can only be a good thing. Via: Phys.org Source: Environmental Science & Technology Letters

More:
Scientists make battery that runs on air and carbon dioxide

China To Plow $361 Billion Into Renewable Fuel By 2020

China will invest $361 billion in renewable power generation between 2016 and 2020, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said Thursday, as the world’s largest energy market pushes to shift away from coal power. From a report: The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the NEA said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation’s energy sector in a five-year period. The NEA repeated its goal to have 580 million tonnes of coal equivalent of renewable energy consumption by 2020, accounting for 15 percent of overall energy consumption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taken from:
China To Plow $361 Billion Into Renewable Fuel By 2020