Juno spacecraft breaks solar power distance record
Jim Sharkey for SpaceFlight Insider: NASA’s Juno mission has broken the record for distance traveled by a solar-powered spacecraft. Juno reached this milestone at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Wednesday, Jan. 13, when the spacecraft was approximately 493 million miles (793 million kilometers) from the Sun.
The record was previously held by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft, whose orbit peaked at the 492 million-mile (792-million kilometer) mark in October 2012, during its approach to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
“Juno is all about pushing the edge of technology to help us learn about our origins,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We use every known technique to see through Jupiter’s clouds and reveal the secrets Jupiter holds of our solar system’s early history. It just seems right that the sun is helping us learn about the origin of Jupiter and the other planets that orbit it.”
Juno is the first solar-powered spacecraft designed to operate so far from the Sun. Generating sufficient power to operate the spacecraft requires a very large area of solar cells. The four-ton Juno spacecraft carries three 30-foot (9-meter) solar arrays festooned with 18,686 individual solar cells. At Earth’s distance from the Sun, the cells can generate about 14 kilowatts of electric. The further away from the sun the spacecraft is, the lower the power its solar cell will be able to generate. Cont'd...
Optimising Energy Storage for Renewable Energy Security
Battery energy storage systems (ESSs) are becoming well established to help the grid integration of solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy, particularly in remote and island communities. It is important to understand the different roles that energy storage can play, including controlling ramp rates, smoothing, shaping, peak shaving and frequency regulation.
Accomplishments of the Solar Industry in 2015
A thank-you letter to SEIA members summarizing some of the accomplishments of 2015
Liquid Cooled High Power Li-ion Battery System
Using battery systems for peak shaving is highly beneficial; enabling a constant load on the engine ultimately leads to high efficiency and energy saving at the engine level.
Is this sunny state trying to kill solar power?
Claudia Assis for MarketWatch: Nevada has turned into a sunny battleground for the future of solar in the U.S., with regulators there moving to make solar power less attractive to homeowners and businesses and pitching utilities against solar-power companies.
SunRun Inc. on Thursday said it was pulling out of Nevada, which the company said will result in “hundreds” of job losses. A day earlier, SolarCity Corp. announced the same move, saying that about 550 jobs would be lost.
The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that nearly 6,000 people in Nevada are employed in the solar industry. Besides affecting jobs, the new rules cut down on the savings that many homeowners count on from going solar. Cont'd...
The Three Top Portable Solar Generator Companies
Off grid living will become more common place as energy storage & solar generation become more ubiquitous.
Businesses Bank on Fuel Cell Reliability to Achieve Sustainability Goals
As the business case becomes more apparent - with fuel cells delivering both economic and environmental value - the list of corporate customers continues to grow.
Top Smart Grid Solutions From Technology Companies
Here are three key software driven technology majors who are outsiders in the utility industry but are still driving big innovations in the Smart Grid area
CES 2016 - Autonomous Cars Set To Dominate
BY DAVID GILBERT For International Business Times:   As cars become less about horsepower and torque and more about the technology inside, CES has become one of the most important showcases of the year for auto manufacturers. It's a sea change in how cars are built and marketed, with technology now the core, rather than an added feature. Connected, autonomous and electric vehicles will all be on display at CES 2016, with some of the worlds most talk-about companies in the field looking to make a major impact.
First up will be Faraday Future, the secretive startup based in Los Angeles and backed by a Chinese billionaire. It is set to unveil its first ever concept design on Jan. 4, and while all the company has said so far is that it will be an electric vehicle, it is widely believed to feature autonomous capabilities.
While Faraday Future is a relative unknown, one of the worlds biggest automotive companies, Ford, will also be at CES announcing news about the autonomous car it has been testing internally for several years. Among the announcements expected is apartnership with Google to build some of Googles fleet of self-driving cars.  Cont'd...
What makes the TDP Turnkey Tracker unique?
The big differentiator of TDP Turnkey Tracker is the fact that its bundled with a complete services and support package.
Speeding Up the Hydrogen Highway
The Hydrogen Station Equipment Performance device, or HyStEP, could reduce the time to commission new stations from months to just one week.
The Cost of Renewable Energy
Support for new renewable energy resources will have the greatest impact on our energy by driving demand for improvements in alternative energy that will deliver health and environmental benefits, and will help change the way our electricity is produced.
Ultracapacitors on the Road
Well soon start to see a hybrid energy-storage solution of batteries and ultracapacitors to address multiple applications simultaneously, like e-turbo, active suspension, regeneration, power steering, electric brake boosters and more.
Breakout Year for Energy Storage
Locational Capacity will be the dominant application in 2016. In other words, battery systems targeted at the grids most congested load centers will be first and foremost used to provide four hours of peak shaving capability, and other grid balancing services when available.
Global Solar Industry Saved from 2017 Cliff-Edge as US Set to Extend Solar ITC
An extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) - the main driver of solar growth in the United States - was unexpectedly included in an omnibus spending bill agreed upon in Washington, D.C. late Tuesday night. It will be finalized and voted on later this week.
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