As we have already said on numerous occasions, the problem with solar and wind energy is that it isn't available 24/7. Due to variations in the wind and solar intensity or presence, the energy generated would differ in quantity as well. So researchers have been looking for ways to store it for longer and have come up with geothermal and molten salt. Nevertheless, its incorporation into the grid also needs to be regulated.
The Salton Sea is dying out and this is no new phenomenon: for decades now, the sea is slowly but surely losing its salt levels, affecting the fauna in and around it. That makes the Salton Sea Authority face a pressing issue: that of finding ways to save it. So its members have been thinking about tapping into its clean energy resources to come up with the money.
I don't currently own a Nissan Leaf, but what I know is this car benefits from excellent advertising. After the polar bear ad, Nissan effectively attacks everything that runs on gas in an over-dramatized scenario. It also uses the Chevy Volt image at the end to suggest this one also runs on gas, like all the other things in "this" world.
Since Germany is way ahead in the clean energy race, a "little" impediment like the lack of a network to connect wind farms is not going to stop it. So the country is going to resolve the issue of transmission and connectivity by building a renewable energy superhighway.
Who said a hybrid vehicle has to have a battery storing electricity? Georgia Tech students are currently working to convert a classic school bus into a hydraulic hybrid under a project sponsored by Ford with $50,000 and cheered by the local school districts and not only.
In a recent article I published, I've been saying that it's hard to almost impossible for a country like France, which depends heavily on nuclear power, to give up using it. Well, it looks like the democratic process worked after all in Switzerland, where crowds peacefully demonstrating near one of the oldest nuclear power plant in Beznau succeeded convincing the authorities to give up nuclear for good until 2034.
Besides investing in the most interesting and promising green technologies, Google is now reaffirming its green commitment by building a data center in Hamina, Finland. Initially built in the 1950s and projected to be a paper mill, the building already had tunnels diving into the sea.
Brilliant ideas usually don't need years of hard labor, or at least so it happens most of the time. For example, by implementing a switching trick to a DC to AC current converter used in solar panels, Heribert Schmidt, an electrical engineer (with a doctorate), from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems has managed to halve inverter losses, bringing the efficiency to 98 percent.
If we are to rely on clean energy from wind and solar resources, then we have to find a way to have them constantly at hand. The wind and the sun are unreliable by their nature and power cuts are not an option in this era of speed and global communication.
One of the biggest hurdles lithium ion batteries face is to overcome is heat. Today's electric cars use complex and bulky cooling systems to get rid of the heat, fact that also lowers the batteries' storage capacity and put weight on the car, lowering its mileage per charge. A new type of battery chemistry that doesn't overheat is now emerging from Leyden Energy's labs.
