Energy
Humankind has an insatiable appetite for energy that has put the planet in a very precarious position environmentally, but is also one of the main drivers of prosperity and improved living standards. New Atlas keeps you up to date with the latest breakthroughs in the energy sector, from the expanding field of renewable energy production to the exponential rise of battery technology and the slow march towards cold fusion.
Latest News
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Scientists at the University of Central Florida studying alternative lithium battery designs have come up with a modification to one they say could lead to great performance gains, thanks to a new protective coating for one of its electrodes. -
The state of South Australia met significant but short-lived milestone for renewable energy on Sunday October 11, when solar power provided all of its energy needs between midday and 1 pm – a first for a jurisdiction of its size.
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As a storage solution for renewable energy, scientists see great potential in what are known as redox flow batteries. A new design from Linköping University is a decidedly green version of this, being the first made from all-natural materials.
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Scientists in Australia have happened upon a solution to one of the key instability issues facing perovskite solar technology, finding that doses of high-intensity light can be used to avoid deformations that plague the performance of the cell.
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Battery researchers are continually experimenting with alternative materials in an effort to boost performance, and a group from Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is claiming to have landed on a winner.
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We got it wrong, folks. The Superbattery from Skeleton Technologies is not a hybrid battery/ultracapacitor energy system, it's an entire new type of cell that sits somewhere in between the two. And it will make it into EVs – just not how we expected.
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French company Nawa technologies says it's already in production on a new electrode material that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery types, delivering 3x the energy density, 10x the power, and vastly faster charging.
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Hydropower plants that leverage the force of falling water to generate electricity are already an important part of the global energy mix, but by bringing floating solar panels into the mix, a new study suggests they may have much more to offer.
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Our story on NDB's self-charging nuclear diamond batteries generated a lot of heated discussion, so we reached out to the University of Bristol, where the technology was invented, to discover exactly what these diamond betabatteries can and can't do.
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By focusing on the way lithium moves between the two electrodes, scientists in the Netherlands have come up with a new battery design that promises much faster charging rates, which could help improve the grid storage capability of renewable energy.
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Estonia's Skeleton Technologies and Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have partnered up to complete development on what they're calling the SuperBattery for EVs – "a groundbreaking graphene battery with a 15-second charging time."
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A team from Australia's RMIT University says it's figured out a cost-effective way to produce hydrogen using wastewater and sewage. The process not only produces clean H2 gas, it also captures all the carbon in human poop and puts it to valuable use.
