It's been a while since Porsche made an electric car, just like I wrote a week ago, after admiring the creator's first EV at the Technical Museum in Vienna. Just like then, nowadays the Porsche car company (acquired by VW) is preparing to take off on the track of electric cars, and releases press announcements and teases us with concepts of what their first sports electric car is going to be.
A team of researchers from the University of Southern California has published a paper in the most recent journal ACS Nano, revealing a new approach to solar cells. Specifically, they combined graphene, one of the most recent and studied materials discovered, and organic (Graetzel) solar cells. Their project has produced organic photovoltaic cells (OPV).
Photovoltaic solar cells are often used in centralized power harvesting installations, generating large amounts of energy for use in the grid. Rohm Co Ltd, on the other hand, proposes the usage of organic photovoltaic solar cells (dye-sensitized cells) in small appliances and healthcare devices.
Maybe this is not the typical alternative energy article we've gotten you used to, but it may look like BP could use some Chinese people in their fishing boats to clean up the spill.
Who would have imagined that a 14-year-old boy will convert his grandpa's 1972 Beetle into an electric one? After almost a year of building a fully operational electric vehicle, Ashton Stark is now waiting for a learner's permit. "It...
Yi Cui, a researcher from Stanford University, about whom we've been talking about many times lately, has discovered how nanoscale wires, pores, bumps and other material textures can improve the performance of solar cells dramatically. They could even serve as self-cleaning coatings, because of their highly hydrophobic properties.
Researchers at Beijing's Tsinghua University and NTU unveiled the first hydrogen-electric bus that will be from now on Singapore roads. Dubbed GreenLite, this eco-friendly bus only emits clean water and has zero carbon emission. Compared with other conventional buses, GreenLite does not run on fossil fuel and is powered by a combustion engine, which makes it very quiet.
Capturing the carbon dioxide that a coal-powered plant produces and sequestering it is not an easy task, and until now it rose the costs of the electricity produced by 80 percent. Due to researchers at Codexis, a Redwood, CA, company, genetically modified enzymes can make carbon dioxide capture much cheaper, increasing the cost of electricity by less than a third.
The device's working principle is very simple. "HighDro Power works by using the water discharged from appliances such as showers, toilets and sinks in high-rise apartments. The water goes down the pipe and hits four turbine blades that drive one generator."
Wind power is the best there is right now in terms of reliability and ease of deployment, at least in some areas of the world. The Californian government, for example, has set an objective to have 33% of their energy coming from renewable resources by 2020.
