Solar Power

The first solar farm to provide power to a railway line in the UK was switched on today by Riding Sunbeams, 10:10, Community Energy South and Network Rail.

The search is very much on for new water desalination technologies that can get the job done more efficiently. Scientists in Melbourne have put forward one rather promising solution, developing a new kind of system that heats up and purifies water using only the power of the Sun.​

Abu Dhabi are claiming the title of the World's largest single-site solar project, having hit the go-button on the Noor Abu Dhabi project this week, with a reported capacity of 1.177 gigawatts, eclipsing Dubai's Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park – for now at least.

Electronic devices are made possible thanks to rare-Earth metals, but these are rare and relatively expensive. Now, scientists have found a way to combine common elements into electronically-useful compounds, which could find their way into tunable lighting and solar panels.

A Spanish start-up called Proton New Energy Future has unveiled Ebörd, a smart table that has a wireless charger built into the entire surface, allowing it to charge multiple devices at once. Better yet, it harvests energy from the Sun or even artificial light.

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.

London-based Studio Bark has done a superb job with this contemporary take on a traditional barn-style house. Named Black Barn, the recently-completed home runs fully off-the-grid and is designed to resemble the local agricultural buildings in rural Suffolk, England.

Another year is winding up, so it's time to look back at the scientific breakthroughs that excited us this year. From innovative new materials that open the door to more advanced tools and products, to discoveries that continue to push the borders of human knowledge, 2018 didn't fail to deliver.

Though broad strokes paint a useful overall picture of rates of solar uptake in the US, there’s a lot to be learned from drilling into the finer details. Stanford scientists have built a new machine learning tool specifically to do the job, and it goes by the name of DeepSolar.

Following years of research and development, an accidental fire and rebuild, and around a month in the Dubai desert, Virginia Tech students have won the 2018 Solar Decathlon Middle East with the FutureHaus. The prefabricated modular home runs from solar power and was assembled in under two days.

The automotive world's attention may be focused on the high-performance parts of SEMA 2018, but Hyundai is previewing a very different style of performance-enhancing component. Beginning around 2020, it will add solar roof panels to both electrified vehicles and gas models.

More than 30 years after the worst nuclear disaster in history, the Chernobyl area is once again producing power. From the (somewhat literal) ashes of the Nuclear Power Plant springs the Chernobyl Solar Power Plant, which was officially launched with an opening ceremony on Friday.