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The world's first renewable energy-powered, glass-bottomed sky train unveiled in Chengdu

2021-07-12T18:20:00-04:00

Touted as the world’s first renewable energy-powered, suspended sky train, a new transportation system has been unveiled in Chengdu, the capital city of China’s southwest Sichuan Province.

Photo: CCTV

The project, titled the Dayi Air Rail Project, is a first-of-its-kind demonstration line, approximately seven miles in length and featuring an aerial-suspended train that uses lithium battery packs as traction power. The project was primarily developed by Zhongtang Air Rail Technology Co Ltd.

Photo: CCTV

The train offers 270-degree views through generous floor-to-ceiling glass paneling on three sides, along with a glass bottom. The train is made of lightweight carbon fiber and composite foaming materials, which greatly reduces its weight. In a nod to its hometown, the cars are painted to resemble a panda, paying homage to Chengdu, the home of China’s panda breeding program. Each train car has a maximum capacity of 120 people per car and can travel up to 50 miles per hour.

Photo: ...

New research shows potential in storing energy in red bricks

2020-08-12T21:41:00-04:00

Imagine plugging in to your brick house.

Red bricks — some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials — can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but rarely has been found fit for any other use. Now, chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug. 11 in Nature Communications (and pictured above) shows a brick directly powering a green LED light.

“Our method works with regular brick or recycled bricks, and we can make our own bricks as well,” said Julio D’Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry. “As a matter of fact, the work that we have published in Nature Communications stems from bricks that we bought at Home Depot right here in Brentwood (Missour...

The development of high capacity batteries is picking up steam

2020-03-05T14:10:00-05:00

manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries is scaling up rapidly to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles and large systems installed in power grids or at solar farms. As prices for lithium-ion batteries drop — they fell by half from 2016 to 2019, according to BloombergNEF — banks are taking another look.

The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the growing viability for utility-scale battery operations.

One stumbling block for municipalities and building operators alike has been finding affordable battery storage options to keep sustainably generated energy flowing when the sun isn't shining and the wind doesn't blow. A key problem in the widespread deployment of these energy storing units is finance: The investment required to bring these units online is viewed as a risk by banks and other lenders.

Increasingly, according to the report, however, banks and other financial institutions are moving to embrace the financial promise of boosting the development and deployment of these technologies, a trend that will surely help decarbonize the building sector.

California poised to ramp up its geothermal capacity

2020-01-28T16:21:00-05:00

After years of playing third fiddle to solar and wind power, geothermal energy is poised to start growing again in California. [...] The new plants will be the first geothermal facilities built in California in nearly a decade — potentially marking a long-awaited turning point for a technology that could play a critical role in the state’s transition to cleaner energy sources.

The Los Angeles Times on California's efforts to increase, potentially double, the share geothermal energy contributes to the state's electricity mix by adding new plants.

Traditionally, the much higher upfront cost of geothermal plants (compared to solar or wind farms of comparable capacity) outplayed the technology's big advantage of generating dependable emission-free, renewable electricity regardless of weather conditions above ground.

With more plants going on line in coming years, hopes are that kilowatt-hour prices of geothermal-generated electricity will drop enough to help California reach its ambitious goal of 100% renewable-powered energy by 2045.

BIG's waste-to-energy ski slope, Amager Bakke, is now open

2019-10-04T16:05:00-04:00

The BIG day has arrived for the Danish firm's long-awaited, waste-to-energy ski slope Amager Bakke, which was inaugurated and fully opened to the public today. At 41,000m2, the year-round ski plant — also dubbed “CopenHill” — was the winning proposal of a 2011 competition that was designed by BIG in collaboration with SLA, AKT, Lüchinger+Meyer, MOE, and Rambøll. After a major setback in 2011, the project broke ground in 2013, and was partially open to visitors over the last two years.

The 100-meter-tall ski plant aligns with Copenhagen's mission of becoming the world's first carbon-neutral city by 2025. Designed for the Amager Resource Center (ARC), the project is located on the industrial waterfront of Amager, which has become a site for extreme sports.

Photo: Dragoer Luftfoto.

Photo: Aldo Amoretti.

CopenHill's new facilities integrate the latest waste treatment and energy production technologies, while also inviting thrill-seekers and recreational sports enthusiasts. Skiers have acc...

UCLA electrical engineer builds thermoelectric device that can harvest energy after dark

2019-09-18T15:00:00-04:00

[Dr. Raman's] prototype device employs radiative cooling, the phenomenon that makes buildings and parks feel cooler than the surrounding air after sunset. As Dr. Raman’s device releases heat, it does so unevenly, the top side cooling more than the bottom. It then converts the difference in heat into electricity.

After driving through a dark village in Sierra Leone, UCLA electrical engineer Aaswath Raman got the idea of building a device that didn't have to rely on solar power or wind to generate electricity after dark.

Dr. Raman and his research team did just that, and built a prototype thermoelectric device that uses radiative cooling techniques. It doesn't generate much power yet and still has a long way to go in research and development, but other academics like MIT materials scientist Jeffrey C. Grossman tell The New York Times that Dr. Raman's work is one promising step forward in the development of low-power applications at night.

Energy derived from anaerobic digestion could fuel the future

2019-08-17T07:00:00-04:00

U.S. investors are beginning to smell an opportunity in the waste-to-energy market, where livestock dung and food garbage is traded. Interest is being fueled by new state laws and by demand from companies such as UPS Inc. After a lull in investor interest stretching back a decade, attention to “anaerobic digestion” waste-to-energy is surging in the United States, developers in the sector have said.

The Land Art Generator Initiative encourages designers to be a part of the great energy transition

2019-03-14T14:58:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by The Land Art Generator Initiative

What does the future of renewable energy look like? As the world comes together over the next decade to meet the challenge of global climate change, solar, wind, and other renewable energy installations will be distributed across rooftops, farmlands, vacant lots, and sites of every kind and scale around the world, having an impact on our cities and rural landscapes like nothing else since the construction of the automobile superhighways of the twentieth century.

While the vast majority of this new infrastructure will be utilitarian installations designed to meet the most competitive cost per kilowatt-hour, the great energy transition also offers the opportunity—for cherished places, sensitive sites, and when community engagement is key to long-term project success—to think creatively about how clean energy technology can weave itself into the cultural landscapes of our cities. When future generations look back at this ...

A new and improved, 'Decathlon 2019–2020', is heading back to DC

2018-08-29T21:15:00-04:00

Teams that compete in the Solar Decathlon Build Challenge must design and construct fully functional houses...In the National Showcase, teams will ship their houses to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in June 2020 for display and operation on the National Mall. In the Local Build, teams will showcase their built houses in their communities and bring a smaller representative exhibit to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Plus, both the Solar Decathlon and Race to Zero competitions are merging, creating the new, U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.

For further details check out the 2019–2020 Competition Guide

Swiss startup Energy Vault stacks concrete blocks as an efficient way to store energy

2018-08-20T20:05:00-04:00

Once the crane arm locates and hooks onto a concrete block, a motor starts, powered by the excess electricity on the grid, and lifts the block off the ground. [Designed to withstand wind, the crane arm] can smoothly lift the block, and then place it on top of another stack of blocks—higher up off the ground. The system is “fully charged” when the crane has created a tower of concrete blocks around it.

A tower of the concrete blocks — weighing 35 metric tons each — can store a maximum of 20 megawatt-hours (MWh), which Energy Vault says is enough to power 2,000 Swiss homes for an entire day. According to Quartz, the Swiss startup is planning to build their first commercial plants starting early 2019.

Google's Dandelion startup wants to make geothermal energy more affordable for homeowners

2017-07-10T14:49:00-04:00

Google parent Alphabet is spinning off a little-known unit working on geothermal power called Dandelion, which will begin offering residential energy services. [...] Dandelion chief executive Kathy Hannun said her team had been working for several years "to make it easier and more affordable to heat and cool homes with the clean, free, abundant, and renewable energy source right under our feet," and that the efforts culminated with the creation of an independent company outside of Alphabet.

"In the U.S., buildings account for 39% of all carbon emissions, mostly from the combustion of fossil fuels for heating and cooling," Dandelion CEO Kathy Hannun explains on the company's blog. "In the Northeast, heating and cooling is particularly carbon-intensive due to the relatively high use of fuel oil or propane as a heating fuel. This also leads to unpredictable costs for homeowners; if fuel prices rise during a particularly long and cold winter, their wallets take a hit."

Hannun describes how designing a better drill was the key to reducing cost, time, hassle, and environmental impact of the drilling process: "After months of testing, we hit upon a design for a fast, slender drill that hit our objectives. It could drill just one or two deep holes just a few inches wide, and compared to typical installation rigs, it produced less waste and took up much less space as it operated. It left a typical suburban backyard relatively undisturbed, so we could minimize landscaping costs ...

Vancouver is the latest city to announce 100% green energy goals

2015-04-10T21:13:00-04:00

Vancouver has become the latest city to commit to running on 100% renewable energy...The city’s ambition is to be the world’s greenest city by 2020 despite the fact Canada has had one of 'the most environmentally irresponsible national governments' for the last 10 years, [said Vancouver deputy mayor Andrea Reimer.]

Which city will be next? Which will pull through? According to The Guardian, Vancouver is one of the latest to join the more than 50 cities that have already announced their plans to run on 100% renewable energy, including San Diego, San Francisco, Sydney, and Copenhagen.

First Texas town makes longterm plans to switch to solar and wind energy

2015-03-30T20:45:00-04:00

Because of its size and intense radiation, Texas leads the nation in solar energy potential, but the solar industry has long struggled to get a foothold in the state... and solar energy currently makes up a tiny percentage of the state’s energy portfolio. That’s beginning to change. Improving technology has driven down the price of solar power, making it more competitive with other resources — even without incentives, developers say.

The municipal utility of Georgetown, a Texan city of about 55,000, recently signed a 25-year contract with SunEdison to buy 150 megawatts of solar power as well as 144 megawatts of wind power from the EDF Renewables wind farm through 2039 -- reportedly being the first city-owned utility to take action on such a plan (and not long after the end of former Texas governor Rick Perry's tenure). While eco-conscious benefits were taken into account, Georgetown signed the deal primarily for financial reasons.

Solar energy that doesn't block the view

2014-08-25T14:47:00-04:00

A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface.

Why SolarCity and Tesla are going to replace your utility

2013-11-27T15:00:00-05:00

SolarCity, the Silicon Valley solar installer, has quietly begun to offer some homeowners a lithium-ion battery pack made by electric carmaker Tesla to store electricity generated by their rooftop photovoltaic arrays. Stem, another Silicon Valley company, will sell or lease a $100,000, 54-kilowatt-hour battery pack to businesses so they can arbitrage the grid by storing electricity when rates are cheap and then using that energy when they’re high.

L.A. to S.F. in 30 Minutes: Tesla's Hyperloop Would Make CA's High-Speed Rail Blush

2013-08-13T12:43:00-04:00

Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this [transit] paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods. Hyperloop is also unique in that it is an open design concept, similar to Linux. Feedback is desired from the community that can help advance the Hyperloop design and bring it from concept to reality.

CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, posted on the Tesla blog his proposal for an alternative to the California High-Speed Rail plan, the Hyperloop. The solar-powered transportation system is proposed to function somewhat like a pneumatic tube, where capsules of up to 28 passengers on air-bearings are transported between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about 30 minutes.

Read Musk's entire proposal here.

Feedback and contributions to the Hyperloop design should be directed to: hyperloop@spacex.com or hyperloop@teslamotors.com.

German building uses algae for heating and cooling

2013-04-25T17:54:00-04:00

A new apartment complex in Hamburg, Germany, intends to generate heat, as well as revenue, from growing the micro-organism. The five-story Bio Intelligent Quotient (B.I.Q.) building, which was expected to become fully operational on Wednesday, has a high-tech facade that looks like a cross between a Mondrian painting and a terrarium but is actually a vertical algae farm.

Powering Mumbai with Magic Mushrooms

2012-07-18T14:52:00-04:00

... a cache of biological samples appeared through the criminal networks of Mumbai, in the vain hope that it might provide new marketable narcotic opportunities. The collective drive and expertise of the refugees managed to turn theses genetically-engineered fungal samples into a new type of infrastructure - providing heat, light and building material for the refugees. Dharavi rapidly evolved it's own micro-economy based around the mushrooms.