Australian startup PowerWells has won a $75,000 (USD) CISCO Regional First Runner-Up Prize in the Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC) region. The company’s solution addresses the dual global problems of electronic waste management and lack of access to basic electricity. In August 2022, the PowerWells team, including Brad Clair … [continued]
Transportation as a Service (TaaS) is a concept most of us are familiar with — instead of buying your own car, you pay for people to transport you to where you want to go. (Uber — we’re talking about Uber.) We’re also all familiar with microgrids. In simple terms, they … [continued]
Australia is a top source of lithium for EV batteries. Much of the world’s lithium used for such purposes comes from there. Now we’ve got news of a major lithium mine in Australia using batteries as well as solar and wind energy in order to mine more cleanly and — … [continued]
How do you power your beautiful new home when it is built 20 minutes away from the closest town and your electricity provider quotes an astronomical figure to connect you? The answer, many Australians are finding, is: hybrid systems off grid. In this case, solar plus battery plus diesel backup. … [continued]
Portable power stations are unlocking tons of new ways for humans to play, work, create, and relax. They take the power of lithium-ion batteries, compress them into a portable form factor, and roll it all together with inverters and a battery management system. Upstart Travor is pushing into the portable … [continued]
Local energy is an express lane for climate change. The world is obsessed with gigabets on offshore wind and nuclear and there’s a traffic jam of political systems. COP26 was a disappointment. People can pull into the express lane, contribute in a personal way, and get great business value as well.
According to the February 2021 “Unlocking Africa’s Mini-Grid Market” report, 60% of Africa’s population lives in rural areas. Only 5% of this rural population has access to modern electricity services, without which sustainable development cannot take place. In most cases, these rural customers have low power demand, which presents a … [continued]
With a myriad of very colorful charts, a new report from Carbon Tracker makes the point that the majority of new global generating power will be wind and solar. The authors predict a leapfrog effect in countries where there is no developed power grid. As power needs increase, people will … [continued]
Black market poachers and illegal tourist trophy hunters have pushed animals like the black rhino and African elephant to the brink of extinction, with sources like the World Economic Forum claiming that nearly 35,000 of these large animals are killed every year. Patrolling large swaths of the African savanna to … [continued]
I saw a tweet by Leilani Münter in my feed recently that was rather inspiring. Leilani shared that she loved the latest Light Empowered battery installation and that it showed the potential of recycling old EV batteries for microgrid applications. Her tweet included a video and she noted that the … [continued]
