Power

In a move that sounds like the wildest of science fiction, DARPA has announced its new Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program that plans to use lasers relayed by airborne platforms to power machines thousands of miles away.

Weaning the world off fossil fuels will take time, so finding ways to make energy generation more efficient is still important. A new coating for steam condenser pipes could, if rolled out widely, add more than a Russia’s worth of extra power per year.

Adoption of wireless charging has been fairly slow, but it could pick up if it worked over longer distances. Now Aalto University engineers have developed a new system that can allow more efficient wireless power transmission over longer distances.

As anyone who's ever seen a bolt of lightning knows, the air around us can be filled with an astonishing amount of energy. A new study shows a way to harvest this power using a perforated nanofilm that can be made from a vast variety of materials.

Sleeping on a cliff face is one way to soak up the great outdoors, but most of us like a little comfort at the campsite. That's why portable power stations are such a great piece of kit. We've been putting Bluetti's latest offering to the test.

Researchers have developed a tiny battery that could be stored up to 100 years before being activated. The secret lies in sealing up dormant bacteria until it's time for them to be called into power-generating service.

Korean engineers have demonstrated a new system that uses infrared lasers to beam power over distances as far as 100 ft (30 m), which could eventually lead to technology that automatically charges your phone as soon as you walk into a room.

The first generation-IV nuclear reactor design has been approved for certification by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale's small modular reactor design promises safe, clean energy at radically reduced cost, land use and installation time.

It was back in 2015 that Tesla unveiled its Powerwall battery energy storage system for the home. Well, Toyota has now announced its similar O-Uchi Kyuden System, which can draw power from EVs.

As the number of electronic devices grows, we have to get creative with our energy sources. Cambridge researchers have now demonstrated how an algae energy harvester can use sunlight to power a microprocessor for over a year without any intervention.

In what it describes as the most significant demonstration of its kind in half a century, the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) beamed 1.6 kW of power over a kilometer (3,280 ft) using a microwave beam at the US Army Research Field in Maryland.

Oxford-based UK tech firm Tokamak Energy has reached a milestone in privately-funded fusion research after its ST-40 spherical tokamak reactor reached a temperature of 100 million °C (180 million °F), the threshold for commercial fusion energy.