Renewable Energy

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new type of wearable electric generator, which harvests energy from the wind as you walk. The team says it’s low cost and efficient enough to power small sensors and LEDs.

A surprisingly simple new energy storage system is built on blocks that store thermal energy like melted chocolate chips in a muffin. The team says they’re efficient, scalable, safe, inexpensive, and can be used in existing coal-fired power plants.

A Scottish company called Gravitricity has now broken ground on a demonstrator facility for a creative new system that stores energy in the form of “gravity” by lifting and dropping huge weights.

Lured by the prospect of nearly inexhaustible source of clean energy, scientists have been investigating nuclear fusion reactors for decades, but a new facility taking shape in southern France will provide them with their biggest proving ground yet.

Using electrical storms as a jumping off point, scientists at Israel’s Tel Aviv University believe they may have uncovered a new source of renewable energy, generating a small voltage using only water and metal.

Wind turbine towers have become a familiar sight in many parts of the world, but if Ampyx Power has its way, they could be replaced with fleets of tethered drones that harness the energy of high-altitude winds to run generators on the ground.

Researchers at the University of Southern California looking to crack the renewable energy storage problem have developed a new version of a redox flow battery from inexpensive and readily-available materials.

The Sun is a great source of energy, but of course those rays can be damaging as well. Engineers in Korea have now developed a new way to make perovskite solar cells to protect them from the elements without reducing their efficiency.

Stacking perovskite solar cells on top of silicon ones is one way to increase the amount of sunlight harnessed. Now researchers at Australian National University (ANU) have broken a new efficiency record for these tandem solar cells.

The waters surrounding the UK have long played home to some of the world's most ambitious renewable energy projects, and they are set to welcome another with construction now underway at Dogger Bank, the world's largest off-shore wind farm to be.

The biggest battery in the world is set to soon grow even bigger. The Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, built by Tesla and managed by renewable energy company Neoen, will be expanded by an extra 50 percent early next year.

As reported by Tokyo-based newspaper Nikkei Asian Review, plans are afoot to transform Fukushima into a renewable energy hub, with 21 wind and solar plants to be built and the power to be fed into the national grid for use in the country’s capital.