Archinect - News

California to mandate solar panels for new buildings

2021-08-12T13:26:00-04:00

California is set to mandate the inclusion of solar panels and battery storage for new buildings. Following a unanimous vote of approval by the California Energy Commission, the measure is expected to be included in an overall revision of the state’s building code in December of this year, before coming into effect on January 1st, 2023. The move, made as part of the new 2022 California Energy Code, will make California the first state in the U.S. to mandate solar panels and battery storage for new commercial and high-rise residential buildings.

The new measures will apply to a wide range of buildings, including hotels, offices, retail, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, and civic spaces such as theaters, auditoriums, and convention centers. The measures would also require new homes in California to be wired in an accessible way, to enable the future transition of heating and appliances away from natural gas and towards electric sources. Other measures include the encouragement of...

Cement-based batteries could turn concrete buildings into giant energy stores

2021-05-21T08:58:00-04:00

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have published unique research into the idea of rechargeable batteries made from cement. The team, led by Doctor Emma Zhang and Professor Luping Tang at the institution’s Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, believes the development of this technology may yield a future where twenty-story concrete buildings can store energy as one giant battery.

The concept for Chalmers’ battery system begins with a cement-based mixture, to which small amounts of short carbon fibers are added to increase the material’s conductivity. A metal-coated carbon fiber mesh is then embedded within the mixture, with iron for the anode and nickel for the cathode, forming a high-strength battery system on an architectural or urban scale.

Schematic illustration of a design for the metal-coating battery. Image: Emma Zhang and Luping Tang

The research, published in the scientific journal Buildings, estimates that the new battery’s capacity ...

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.

How solar battery storage will affect microgrids and off-grid living

2017-08-14T17:32:00-04:00

In March, Tesla cut the ribbon on this groundbreaking grid-scale battery installation, a key test of the viability of energy storage in making renewable energy a more reliable part of the grid. With 50,000 solar panels and 272 batteries, the combined solar-and-storage plant provides enough energy to power 4,500 homes for four hours. If Tesla can help keep Kauai solar-powered around the clock with its batteries, then it can apply what it has learned elsewhere in the country, and around the world

In her Longreads/Grist piece, author Amelia Urry explains the changing nature of solar power challenges that off-grid dwellers as well as smaller, geographically isolated microgrids face now that battery storage on an industrial scale is becoming more lucrative.

The article tells the story of a young couple struggling to live off the grid on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, when at the same time, the local utility cooperative switches on its brand-new bank of Tesla batteries to store the abundant solar power it generates during daytime but couldn't offer during peak times in the early morning and late evening hours: "It’s not about getting off the grid. It’s about building a better one."

Tesla's 'Tiny House' goes on roadshow to promote its solar tech

2017-08-14T14:19:00-04:00

Tesla revealed today that it created what it calls the ‘Tesla Tiny House’ to feature its energy products, like solar panels and Powerwall. The company is bringing the house on tour using a Model X “to educate the public on how to generate, store and use renewable energy for their home.” The tiny house contains a Tesla mobile design studio and configurator to help home owners configure a solar plus energy storage system for their home.

Needless to add that the Tesla Tiny House itself gains all its electricity via a solar installation on the tiny roof.

The exhibition tour is limited to four major Australian cities for now, but the economic gain could be far from tiny — as the world's leader in capita penetration of rooftop solar installations (15% of households / 1.5 million households), Australia is a highly lucrative market for Tesla even though it hasn't started selling solar panels there.

IKEA starts selling home battery storage with its solar panels

2017-08-03T14:18:00-04:00

Ikea is now offering solar panels and home batteries to its customers in the UK. The Scandinavian furniture chain is partnering with solar firm Solarcentury for the venture, with prices for solar battery storage starting at £3,000 (about $3,970 USD). The home batteries are designed to work with existing solar panels, or as part of a new combined home solar panel / battery storage system that Ikea is selling.

The Swedish furniture retail giant first starting solar panels in the UK back in 2013 to grow on a (then) heavily subsidized green energy market but ceased sales in 2015 when the British government announced its plans of cutting solar subsidies by up to 90%. Just a few months later, IKEA returned with a new lineup of home solar panels, this time partnering up with the firm SolarCentury.

"An average solar home in the UK will typically consume around 40% of all the solar electricity generated, or even less if they are regularly out during the day," IKEA explains in a new statement. "The remaining 60% of unused solar electricity is sent back to the National Grid, at a loss compared to its value. This means that homeowners currently lose out on making further cost savings. By adding Solar Battery Storage, unused solar electricity can be stored and used at a later time, meaning the amount of solar electricity an average home can use doubles to 80%."

With the launch of its Solar Battery S...

Ceiling tile that wirelessly charges devices unveiled at CES 2017

2017-01-05T17:24:00-05:00

The days of having to purchase astonishingly expensive replacement charging plugs accidentally left behind on trips, or for that matter of lugging around charging plugs in general, may be over. At this year's CES in Las Vegas, licensing company Ossia is unveiling a drop ceiling tile that purports to wirelessly charge a variety of devices, depending of course on how close the device is to the tile. The more tiles, the chargier: up to four Cota Tiles can be combined to provide the maximum radius and charge to those battery-draining devices. As the press release explains:

Each Cota Tile contains Ossia's wireless power smart antenna technology that automatically powers Cota-enabled devices — from tablets to smoke alarms. Cota Tile has proven safe for operation around people, pets and plants. It is environmentally friendly and does not interfere with Wi-Fi or other wireless technologies while continuously streaming power to multiple Cota-enabled devices, even as they move around a room. C...

Tesla's 5.8 million square foot "Gigafactory" to open in 2017

2016-07-27T13:38:00-04:00

Sixty-five hundred people and a sizable compliment of robots will work in the enormous, solar-panel topped, rail-adjacent Gigafactory when it opens in 2017, a structure which is described as a "joint venture" between Tesla, Panasonic and other supply partners. In this case, the drive to inexpensively produce lithium-ion batteries has created the need for the colossal structure.

As Wired notes:

The assembly lines will do everything from make the individual cells—cylinders a bit bigger than an AA battery—to assembling the immense packs that power a Model S or store energy in someone’s garage. Tesla doesn’t disclose its costs, but says doing it all in-house will drive down the cost of a battery by 30 percent.

Tesla in the news:

A look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."

2015-11-19T13:24:00-05:00

Musk had warned me that the scale of the place would be overwhelming. "It will blow your mind. You see it in person and then realize, Fuck, this is big." He was right. It was impossible not to feel awestruck by the sprawling, 71-foot-tall structure stretched out, miragelike, before me as I drove into a shallow canyon. [...] When the Gigafactory is finished, it will be only slightly smaller than Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant, which is the world’s largest building by volume.

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.