Doctoral student Joseph Carr developed the system with his adviser, Juan Balda, University Professor and head of the department of electrical engineering. Innovations in this field are critical as the U.S. moves toward integration of renewable energy sources to the national power grid. The U.S. Department of Energy pursued and was granted a U.S. patent for the tech...
Our energy system is going through a revolution. What type of energies will replace nuclear power? Will there be a rise in electricity prices? Will the hydrogen car become a part of everyday life in 2050? The Energy Center at EPFL, in collaboration with public partners, has developed an information portal, transparent and accessible to all, to understand the issues relat...
South Africa is constructing 3,916 MW of new renewable-energy capacity under the country’s 20-year energy plan, the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. Also, in Medupi and Kusile, the country is constructing two $18.8-billion coal-fired powerplants with a capacity of 9,564 MW. The projects have attracted a mix of international engineerin...
By upgrading a few internal components, engineers were able to increase the turbine's power output by nearly 10%. (Yes, I know that going from 6 MW to 7 MW is a 16.7% increase; I’ll discuss that later.) The blades, tower, and nacelle remain exactly the same, allowing Siemens to make a more powerful turbine without excessive retooling, testing, and certification costs. S...
AvaLAN to offer their thousands of IoT deployments a solution for remotely powering devices Madison, AL – AvaLAN Wireless, leaders in secure, fail-proof wireless connectivity, today announced the availability of their new remote solar power kits. These Remote Power Kits are designed for applications where power is needed but unavailable. “The AvaLAN Wireless Remote...
However, right now the German energy transition is having trouble getting going. There are many discussions about rising electricity prices, new high-voltage transmission lines, and concerns about grid stability. But there are some good news too. For example, new technologies can help better match the power supply from renewable sources with power demand – without requir...
CMT-ANTARES is a new fixed-voltage 5V linear voltage regulator ruggedized for high reliability and high temperature automotive and industrial applications. CMT-ANTARES delivers up to 200mA to the output load from input voltages between 5.5V and 30V. The output voltage is stabilized to 5V +/- 5% including all possible variations: initial accuracy, temperature changes from...
AVX Corporation has extended the voltage and energy ratings of its radial leaded TransGuard Automotive Series with the addition of its new VR20 varistors, expanding both the number and type of applications for which the series is an ideal solution. Based on AVX’s patented multilayer varistor (MLV) technology, which provides bi-directional transient voltage protection in ...
“Wind energy is becoming very close to reaching price parity with fossil fuels,” explains Brian MacCleery, principal product manager for clean energy technology at National Instruments (NI). “The industry is moving toward larger and larger wind turbines because the cost-per-watt goes down as the size of the turbine goes up.” To prepare for these turbines, a team of en...
In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. Further development of one resource, solar energy, is complicated by the need to find space for solar power-generating equipment without significantly altering the surrounding environment. New work from Carnegie's Rebecca Hernan...
Green wall technology and semi-transparent solar panels have been combined to generate electrical current from a renewable source of energy both day and night. A prototype “green bus shelter” that could eventually generate enough electricity to light itself, has been built by a collaboration of Univ. of Cambridge researchers and eco-companies. The ongoing living ex...
However, the future for a cost competitive wave energy industry is less certain and the industry needs a fresh approach to how it extracts and converts energy from waves if costs are to come down and make it viable. The two Insight Reports, written by Stuart Bradley, the ETI’s Offshore Renewables Strategy Manager, look at the opportunities and challenges facing the ma...
In a bid to cut the time and considerable cost of offshore wind farm deployment, subsea connector specialist, First Subsea, is launching a new monopile interface connector for offshore wind monopiles, and top tension connector for floating wind turbines. The most labour intensive and time-consuming element of cable installation into an offshore wind monopile is its co...
Power and automation specialist ABB has been awarded a contract by Atlantis Resources to provide the onshore grid connection for phase one of the MeyGen tidal stream project in Scotland’s Pentland Firth. According to ABB, this project is at the forefront of world marine energy development and will harvest the tidal resources of one of the most energetic maritime sites...
HZI explained that the acquisition of the Kompogas technology completes its portfolio of waste to energy technology offerings and enable it to also offer plants based on the Kompogas technology for energy recovery by fermentation. “The two technologies complement each other ideally, generating energy from municipal residual and green waste respectively”, explained Fra...
The company explained that the contract, awarded by main contractor Interserve Construction, follows the agreement of funding terms for the overall project by Resource Recovery Solutions (Derbyshire). Resource Recovery Solutions (RRS) is a joint venture between waste and recycling firm, Shanks Group and Berkshire based infrastructure construction and management firm, In...
Managed by SITA UK - a part of Suez Environnment (Paris: SEV, Brussels: SEVB) the site was once the busiest in Europe, received over 2000 truckloads of waste each day at its peak, with deliveries coming from homes and businesses in and around Birmingham. According to SITA there is now around 35 million tonnes of waste buried on the landfill. The official closure of th...
The Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre is being built in St. Dennis, which is located in the centre of the county of Cornwall and is scheduled to start operation in 2016. Yokogawa explained that it will supply controls for the waste to energy facility’s boilers and all auxiliary facilities at the plant. These include the CENTUM® VP integrated production control system and...
Let’s get down to business: with the new European Energy Directive to be implemented in all EU member states, it is high time to really start thinking about how to improve energy efficiency at all stages of the energy chain – including and especially in industrial production. Manufacturing and production account for a substantial portion of total energy consumption, whic...
Marie-Isabelle de Lobkowicz, marketing executive with Siemens Belgium, reports on the completion of a major drive train project Siemens recently accomplished in Belgium. Doel, a town in the Belgian province of Oost-Vlaanderen is home to the Sleco plant, Europe’s largest fluidized bed incineration plant. This type of plant generates electricity with a steam turbine pow...
Processor Zhong Lin Wang and his students are taking advantage of the triboelectric effect to harvest small amounts of energy, essentially turning static electricity into something useful. They can power LEDs and other devices using the harvested energy (see the figure). Static electricity is a form of the triboelectric effect. It occurs when some materials are rubbed...
Wave power as a renewable energy source is extremely predictable and even has the potential to generate more electricity than wind and solar sources. In an effort to make ocean energy more commercial available, Lockheed Martin and Victorian Wave Partners have announced a new wave-energy project. The project aims to offer an environmentally benign, non-polluting solution ...
Giant windmills now command the landscape and even some seascapes in the quest for renewable energy resources. Researchers at the University of Texas Arlington, however, are taking the technology behind these titan turbines and shrinking it to power portable electronics. Measuring 1.8 mm at their widest point, hundreds of these micro-windmills could be embedded in a slee...
The solar cell is designed to operate in concentrator photovoltaics systems in which it can be exposed to more than 1,000 suns of concentrated sunlight. (One sun concentration equals 1kW/m2.) Multi-junction cells have materials tuned to specific wavelengths that absorb different solar wavelengths, thus maximizing how much sunlight it harvests. The four material junctions...
A researcher in Russia thinks he has a way of generating power from wind turbines and other rotating devices that is super-efficient thanks to the elimination of any intervening power conversion electronics. The basic idea, as described by Sergey Gandzha of South Urals State University, is to adjust the output of a generator by adding to or subtracting magnetic flux. ...
The MIT students came together at the MIT hackerspace, MITERS, with access to machine tools, electrical equipment, and most importantly, a community of people with similar interests. “Tesla coils have been our hobby for a while. We developed our first product, the first version of the oneTesla kit, more or less for fun, and put it on Kickstarter a year and a half ago ...
In its REForCh research program — "Resource-Efficient Forging Process Chain for Complicated High-Duty Parts" — IPH concluded it can reduce the burr percentage of forged crankshafts from 54% to 7%, saving approximately 20% of energy requirements in the process. IPH noted industrial-scale tests of the process have been successful, setting the stage for commercial applic...
The ‘Lee Valley Heat Network’ it intended to create an energy solution for the Lee Valley through a system of pipes that moves heat in the form of hot water from the waste to energy plant, to where it is needed. The project is being executed by Enfield Council and the Mayor of London, and was outlined today at City Hall. Enfield Council explained that the first pha...
According to Byogy, new yeast strains developed by Gen 2 Energy, Iowa State University and the USDA, improve the alcohol yield of conventional fermentation from a variety of feedstocks - including agave, a “monster” energy crop being deployed as part of the Byogy value chain. "Rather than try and perfect novel cellulosic technologies, we have focused on improving yiel...
According to the company, the new 45,000 tonne per year facility is now being commissioned, with the first electricity generation from food waste expected at the end of July. Tamar explained that it is working with waste management parties, including Essex County Council, the waste disposal authority working on behalf of 13 waste collection authorities, to secure fee...
Waste and recycling firm, AmeyCespa, has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with energy firm GDF SUEZ Energy UK for the output from its major new 320,000 tonne per year waste to energy facility in North Yorkshire. Under the agreement, GDF SUEZ Energy UK will buy all of the electricity generated by Allerton Waste Recovery Park, which will process household and comme...
Texas Instruments has packed two GaN FETs and a high-frequency gate driver into a half-bridge configuration that produces an 80 V, 10 A, . The LMG5200 power stage (Fig. 1) features advanced multichip packaging technology and is optimized to support power conversion topologies operating at frequencies up to 5 MHz. LMG5200 inputs are TTL-compatible, and can withstand up to...
Researchers from institutions including Lund University in Sweden have taken a step closer to producing solar fuel using artificial photosynthesis. In a new study, they have successfully tracked the electrons’ rapid transit through a light-converting molecule The current study aims to find a way to make fuel from water using sunlight, which is the basic principle of p...
In Germany, buildings account for almost 40 percent of all energy usage. Heating, cooling and ventilating homes, offices and public spaces is expensive – and offices with huge glass façades are one of the worst offenders in terms of energy wastage. In the summer, these buildings begin to resemble giant greenhouses that take an enormous amount of effort to cool, while ...
Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy built both power plants. Between them, they will meet almost the entire factory’s energy needs, with an on-site solar array providing more energy during peak hours of power usage. The two power plants replace grid power that would have led to the emission of more than 9,400 tons of CO2. Fuel cells produce power electrochemically, a...
