Is Home Energy Storage Coming to your House?
Home energy storage helps whichever energy source is the cheapest, and helps the grid stay stable and available to us all.
Solar Heating Combined with a Ground Heat Pump Is a Cost-efficient, Ecological Solution
Solar power was particularly efficient when combined with ground heat in terms of the profitability of investments.
Solar Powered Water Pumping: Combining two hot topics, Water and Solar
A solar powered water system is one of the easiest solar power systems to install and will ultimately save you time and money.
Obama Plan Would Give Poor Easier Access to Solar Energy
The Obama administration on Tuesday announced an initiative to help low- and middle-income Americans gain access to solar energy, part of a series of steps President Obama is taking to tackle climate change, according to administration officials.
The administration said it intends to triple the capacity of solar and other renewable energy systems it installs in federally subsidized housing by 2020, make it easier for homeowners to borrow money for solar improvements and start a nationwide program to help renters gain access to solar energy, the officials said.
The actions were announced in Baltimore by Brian Deese, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser for climate issues, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Democrat who represents the city.
Mr. Deese, in a conference call with reporters, called the moves “part of a bigger-picture effort to try to drive innovation” toward cleaner, low-carbon energy solutions.
Also unveiled on Tuesday were commitments totaling more than $520 million from charities, investors, states and cities to pay for solar and energy-efficiency projects for lower-income communities. Cont'd...
New benches that'll use solar power to charge your phone
This is the "Strawberry bench". The solar-powered smart bench (yes, really) collects energy via a solar panel on its roof, and uses it to power a range of functions: monitoring air quality, disseminating information about the local area, offering free power-ups for the phones of passers-by.
This summer, four of these benches will be installed around Canary Wharf, the privately-owned office and retail estate at the heart of London's Docklands. The concept was the winner of the "Cognicity Challenge", a competition intended to find innovative proposals to use technology to create smarter urban environments (and, as a side effect, make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy towards the Canary Wharf Group).
The name, incidentally, has nothing to do with actual Strawberries. The company behind them is Belgrade-based Strawberry Energy, whose previous products include the "Strawberry Tree", a vaguely familiar solar-powered mobile phone charge and wifi hub with a bench attached to it. Both products were the work of architect Milos Miliojevic.
ABB and Smart Grid Technology in North Carolina
North Carolina's Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS) has encouraged investments in renewables and the energy economy statewide.
5 Things You Should Know Before Installing Solar Panels
Pay too little and you risk a dodgy product and no after-sales service. Pay too much and you'll end up waiting 10 years just to recoup your cost!
Is India Ready to Be a Solar Power Leader?
By RUPA SUBRAMANYA for ForeignPolicy.com: Is India ripe for a renewable energy revolution? Foreign investors certainly seem to think so, and renewables have been a signature issue for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But if revolution is indeed underway, it isn’t a spontaneous one. And taxpayer money — not just from India — is fueling the surge.
New Delhi’s renewable energy aspirations recently received a major boost when Japan’s SoftBank announced a joint venture with Indian conglomerate Bharti Enterprises and Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group to create a new, Japanese-owned company that will bid on power contracts in India’s growing solar sector. Renewable energy, including solar, is a priority for Modi and has been since before he became the country’s leader last year. “The time has arrived for a saffron revolution, and the color of energy is saffron,” he saidon the campaign trail in 2014, attempting to symbolically link the sacred color of Hindus and his Bharatiya Janata Party with his energy dream. This joint venture is the first major announcement by a foreign investor that could help make that dream a reality. Cont'd...
Ports/Trains - Great Non-road EV Opportunities for Utilities
Unlike on-road electric vehicle programs which can be complicated and depend, in part, upon factors outside a utility's control, non-road programs are less risky and comparatively simple to design, operate, and control.
Case Study: Solar Tile Mount Provides Adequate Air Flow Between Solar Panels And Tile Roof
TRA Snow and Sun modifies Solar Tile Mount to adjust vertically for use on S-tile tile roofs to provide adequate air flow between solar panels and the tile roof.
New method can make cheaper solar energy storage
Storing solar energy as hydrogen is a promising way for developing comprehensive renewable energy systems. To accomplish this, traditional solar panels can be used to generate an electrical current that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being considered a form of solar fuel. However, the cost of producing efficient solar panels makes water-splitting technologies too expensive to commercialize. EPFL scientists have now developed a simple, unconventional method to fabricate high-quality, efficient solar panels for direct solar hydrogen production with low cost.
The work is published in Nature Communications.
Many different materials have been considered for use in direct solar-to-hydrogen conversion technologies but "2-D materials" have recently been identified as promising candidates. In general these materials—which famously include graphene—have extraordinary electronic properties. However, harvesting usable amounts of solar energy requires large areas of solar panels, and it is notoriously difficult and expensive to fabricate thin films of 2-D materials at such a scale and maintain good performance.
Kevin Sivula and colleagues at EPFL addressed this problem with an innovative and cheap method that uses the boundary between two non-mixing liquids. The researchers focused on one of the best 2-D materials for solar water splitting, called "tungsten diselenide". Past studies have shown that this material has a great efficiency for converting solar energy directly into hydrogen fuel while also being highly stable. Cont'd...
Hawaii and Vermont set high renewable portfolio standard targets
Two states recently passed legislation that would require significant increases in renewable electricity generation.
Digital Inkjet Printing: An Opportunity for Further Reductions in Solar Energy Costs
With solar on the cusp of economic feasibility in many areas, incremental cost reductions such as those offered by digital inkjet printing technologies can make the difference between moving ahead with solar and sticking with electricity from the local utility
Start of test with solar energy generating noise barriers alongside highway
Alongside the A2 highway near Den Bosch, The Netherlands, two test noise barriers are installed that generate solar energy. The aim of this practical test, that was officially launched 18 June is to assess the economic and technical feasibility of this form of energy generating noise barriers. Playing a key role in the test are the LSC panels, developed by researcher Michael Debije at TU/e.
The translucent, colored panels are a new type of energy source, developed jointly by TU/e. These 'luminescent solar concentrators' (LSCs) receive sun light and guide it to the side of the panels. There, it lands in concentrated form on traditional solar cells. "Thanks to their many colors the LSC are visually very attractive, which makes them ideal for use in many different situations in the built environment", explains Debije of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, who has carried out years of research into these panels. "Further benefits are that the principle used is low cost, they can be produced in any desired, regular color, is robust, and the LSCs will even work when the sky is cloudy. That means it offers tremendous potential." Debije published his latest research findings on this subject last March in Nature.
On 18 June a one-year practical test started in 's-Hertogenbosch, led by the building company Heijmans. The researchers intend to assess the feasibility of generating electricity using solar cells integrated in noise barriers or SONOBs (Solar Noise Barriers). Cont'd...
Vanadium Flow Batteries for Global Academy of Technology (GAT) College
By implementing the IMERGY storage solution in the premises, GAT is able to store the energy produced by the PV panels during the day and use it during the non-solar time, thus eliminating the diesel generator run to provide clean power when needed.
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