We just finished getting all excited about a new Department of Energy project for teasing renewable hydrogen fuel out of municipal wastewater, when along comes Stanford University with a neat little wastewater trick of its own. The Stanford project involves harnessing a curiously evolved trait of exoelectrogenic microbes. These naturally … [continued]
New research from Stanford University suggests the high energy requirements of grid-scale batteries make energy storage a good option for solar energy, but not wind farms.
A Stanford University research team has just come up with a new way to work with the super-strong but super-finicky semiconductor material graphene. The idea is to use DNA as a platform for mass producing precisely engineered ribbons of graphene, and the goal is to open the door to a … [continued]
We were just fooling around with the notion that new fuel cell technology could shake up the electric vehicle market, when here comes GE with another alternative: a flow battery that combines with a fuel cell to push EV range up to the Department of Energy’s goal of 240 miles, … [continued]
Originally published on RenewEconomy. Several years ago, Tony Seba, an energy expert from Stanford University, published a book called Solar Trillions, predicting how solar technologies would redefine the world’s energy markets and create an investment opportunity worth tens of trillions of dollars. Most people looked at him, he says, as if … [continued]
Yes, you heard that right. ARPA-E, the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, is behind a new low cost, high efficiency zinc battery that will be manufactured in West Harlem. While not exactly known as a hotbed of advanced battery manufacturing, West Harlem is home to a redevelopment initiative called … [continued]
Original article posted on Stanford News. By Mark Shwartz Scientists have spent decades trying to build flexible plastic solar cells efficient enough to compete with conventional cells made of silicon. To boost performance, research groups have tried creating new plastic materials that enhance the flow of electricity through the solar … [continued]
Silicon could provide lithium-ion batteries with ten times their typical storage capacity, but this ubiquitous semiconductor is notoriously fragile when applied to battery technology. One promising line of research is to apply silicon to a flexible platform, enabling it to expand without cracking. That is the approach taken by a … [continued]
It looks like black is the new black when it comes to solar cell efficiency. A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has come up with a way to increase solar cell efficiency, by creating “black metals” etched with nanoscale structures that harvest energy from wavelengths all … [continued]
This article was originally published on 1Sun4All. Researchers at Stanford report that “peak oil” — and the related fears that we have depleted the Earth’s supply of oil so much that we will run into greater conflicts between supply and demand that will stimulate social unrest and economic problems — are … [continued]
