Google and SunPower are planning to invest up to $250 million to lease solar panels to homeowners, the companies said on Wednesday. Google is investing up to $100 million, while solar panel maker SunPower is committing the other $150 million. Some 20,000 people in the U.S. already lease solar panels from San Jose-based SunPower, the […]
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Phoenix Contact Goes Off the Grid
Phoenix Contact has installed a new combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system that will generate enough electricity to power the company’s U.S. headquarters approximately 65 percent of the time. As part of the company’s Earth Day activities, Phoenix Contact leaders and other officials today held a wire-cutting ceremony to symbolically disconnect the facility from […]
Bloomberg Invests $5M in Solar-Powered Lamp
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s foundation on Tuesday announced a $5 million investment in an artsy-looking solar-powered lamp designed for use in off-grid populations in Africa. The lamp, called Little Sun, provides clear, affordable energy to places dependent on costly and toxic kerosene lighting in sub-Saharan Africa, said Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charity of the […]
How Hammer Strikes Could Generate Nuclear Fusion
Our energy future depends on nuclear fusion, says Michel Laberge. The plasma physicist runs a small company with a big idea for a new type of nuclear reactor that could produce clean, cheap energy. His secret recipe? High speeds, scorching temperatures, and crushing pressure. In this hopeful talk, he explains how nuclear fusion might be […]
Choosing the Right Cabling Option
Renewable energy industry reports suggest that more than 60% of all future power capacity will come from renewable technologies, only 25% will be in the form of gas or oil, with the remainder being nuclear. Furthermore, experts estimate in the next 10 to 15 years, the market share of renewables will increase by more than […]
Vacuum Ultraviolet Lamp of the Future Created in Japan
A team of researchers in Japan has developed a solid-state lamp that emits high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light at the shortest wavelengths ever recorded for such a device, from 140 to 220 nanometers. This is within the range of vacuum-UV light – so named because while light of that energy can propagate in a vacuum, it […]
Unlocking Secrets of New Solar Material
A new solar material that has the same crystal structure as a mineral first found in the Ural Mountains in 1839 is shooting up the efficiency charts faster than almost anything researchers have seen before—and it is generating optimism that a less expensive way of using sunlight to generate electricity may be in our planet’s […]
NREL unlocking secrets of new solar material
A new solar material that has the same crystal structure as a mineral first found in the Ural Mountains in 1839 is shooting up the efficiency charts faster than almost anything researchers have seen before—and it is generating optimism that a less expensive way of using sunlight to generate electricity may be in our planet’s […]
New Design for Mobile Phone Masts Could Cut Carbon Emissions
A breakthrough in the design of signal amplifiers for mobile phone masts could deliver a massive 200MW cut in the load on UK power stations, reducing CO2 emissions by around 0.5 million tonnes a year. Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff have designed an amplifier […]
Programming Computational Wind Tunnels to Save Millions
It famously took Thomas Edison thousands of attempts to settle on a practical design for the incandescent light bulb. If each crack at a solution had cost him hundreds of millions of dollars, however, he might not have been so keen on using a build ‘em and bust ‘em approach. The companies designing turbines for […]