Snowy places aren’t ideal for harvesting solar energy – panels can’t do much if they’re buried under blankets of snow, of course. Now a team from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has developed a new device that can produce electricity from snow itself.
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In 2014, US Army engineers Charles Marsh and Carl Feickert envisioned a wind-power system inspired by fluttering Venetian blinds. They have since teamed up with eight colleagues, creating a system that generates power in breezes that are too light to turn the blades of a traditional wind turbine.
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Tokamak reactors and fusion stellarators are a couple of the experimental devices used in pursuit of nuclear fusion, but scientists at the University of Washington are taking a far less-frequented route known as a Z-pinch, with the early signs pointing to a cheaper and more efficient path forward.
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A South Australia-based startup says it's built a thermal energy storage device with a lifetime of at least 20 years that can store six times more energy than lithium-ion batteries per volume, for 60-80 percent of the price.
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Batteries have become much more efficient, but gauging their service life is still extremely difficult and time-consuming. To better predict how long a battery will last, MIT and Toyota have teamed up to employ artificial intelligence to accurately determine battery life without years of testing.
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Engineers have developed a new type of hybrid cathode for a lithium-sulfur battery that seems to boast better energy density than existing versions of both lithium-ion and lithium-sulfur batteries.
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They've been used as a rubber additive, a carbon-capture medium and a bioplastic ingredient. Now, discarded eggshells may have yet another use. Scientists have determined that they could be utilized in an eco-friendly and inexpensive form of energy storage.
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Over the last few years humans have tried to mimic nature with artificial leaves, but they’re never quite up to scratch. Now, researchers have designed a new version that could work under real-world conditions, sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and creating oxygen and synthetic fuels.
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Although we've seen a number of experimental wave-power systems in recent years, a new one is claimed to be less expensive and to incorporate fewer moving parts, while still remaining durable in rough seas. It's known as a Dielectric Elastomer Generator, or DEG for short.
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Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed flags that are reckoned to be the first to harvest solar and wind at the same time. Not enough to power a house, or even a gadget such as a smartphone, but could be enough for set it and forget it remote sensors.
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