A solar booster shot for natural gas power plants
Natural gas power plants can use about 20 percent less fuel when the sun is shining by injecting solar energy into natural gas with a new system being developed by the Department of Energy's Pacific...
View Article'Salted' catalysts for chemical energy storage: Basic alkali-metal salts...
(Phys.org) —The storage of hydrogen in the form of methanol is a highly promising method for using excess energy produced by wind and solar power plants. However, this technology requires an effective...
View ArticleWind power—even without the wind
Offshore wind could provide abundant electricity—but as with solar energy, this power supply can be intermittent and unpredictable. But a new approach from researchers at MIT could mitigate that...
View ArticlePower plants: Researchers explore how to harvest electricity directly from...
(Phys.org) —The sun provides the most abundant source of energy on the planet. However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into useful energy.
View ArticleMorocco launches solar mega-project at Ouarzazate
Morocco on Friday officially launched the construction of a 160-megawatt solar power plant near the desert city of Ouarzazate, the first in a series of vast solar projects planned in the country.
View ArticleMorocco to harness the wind in energy hunt
Morocco is ploughing ahead with a programme to boost wind energy production, particularly in the southern Tarfaya region, where Africa's largest wind farm is set to open in 2014.
View ArticleStudy shows wind and solar plant benefits vary by location
(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggesting that governments and utility companies...
View ArticleReport firms up land-use requirements of solar: 1,000 homes would require 32...
The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a report on the land use requirements of solar power plants based on actual land-use practices from existing solar...
View ArticleThe grid of the future
The outlet in your living room doesn't know a lot—yet. Unaware of whether they are drawing power from wind, solar, gas, or coal plants, the electrical lines that bring us power in many ways still...
View ArticleWorld record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin announced today that they have achieved a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into...
View ArticleIvanpah solar plant in California starts energy feed to grid
The world's largest solar thermal plant began to feed energy into the power grid on Tuesday, considered a solar energy milestone, in a project scheduled to be fully operational by the end of the year....
View ArticleArizona solar plant achieves six hours after sun goes down
(Phys.org) —Abengoa's Solana plant in the desert near Gila Bend, Arizona, passed commercial testing this week The 280-megawatt Solana solar thermal power plant producing electricity without direct...
View ArticleAir, water and sun: The ingredients of 'green gasoline'
(Phys.org) —Mimicking a natural process perfected over billions of years to capture solar energy, researchers are creating artificial photosynthetic systems that will turn air and water into transport...
View ArticleProducing your own power in post-Fukushima Japan
A remote Toyota plant in northeastern Japan bears few scars from the devastating quake-tsunami more than two years ago that completely shut it down.
View ArticleJapanese firm proposes LUNA RING to send solar energy from moon to Earth
(Phys.org) —Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corp. has unveiled a proposal that entails building a solar panel array around the moon's equator, then sending the power it collects back to Earth. They...
View ArticleSatellites help power grid keep its balance
Imagine a generator pumping more electricity than a nuclear power plant into the grid, but inconsistently and without the grid's caretakers being able to see what it was doing. How could they maintain...
View ArticleSelf-cleaning solar panel coating optimizes energy collection, reduces costs
Soiling—the accumulation of dust and sand—on solar power reflectors and photovoltaic cells is one of the main efficiency drags for solar power plants, capable of reducing reflectivity up to 50 percent...
View ArticleHuge US thermal plant opens as industry grows (Update 2)
A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a...
View Article'Home-made' electricity creating buzz in Germany
Klaus Meier lists three reasons for generating his own electricity in his family hotel in Germany's southern city of Freiburg—"cost savings, energy efficiency, climate protection".
View ArticleResearchers use real-world data to model the effect of more solar on the grid
American electrical utilities do a pretty fantastic job of getting us electricity when we need it. In 2006, the power was out on average for just 0.03 percent of the year in the United States. But...
View ArticleNew solar power material converts 90 percent of captured light into heat
A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat...
View ArticleHuge US solar plant lags in early production
The largest solar power plant of its type in the world—once promoted as a turning point in green energy—isn't producing as much energy as planned.
View ArticleResearcher suggests storing solar energy underground for a cloudy day
Over the last few years, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, and his colleague, Mark Delucchi of the University of California, Berkeley, have produced a series...
View ArticleFor Israeli firm, an answer to global warming blowing in the wind
For an Israeli start-up, one answer to global warming is blowing in the wind. The company called NewCO2Fuels, or NCF, has been developing its own version of a technology that allows heat-trapping...
View ArticleVast desert sun farm to help light up Morocco
On the edge of the Sahara desert, engineers make final checks to a sea of metal mirrors turned towards the sun, preparing for the launch of Morocco's first solar power plant.
View ArticlePreparing for large-scale solar deployment
Deploying solar power at the scale needed to alleviate climate change will pose serious challenges for today's electric power system, finds a study performed by researchers at MIT and the Institute for...
View ArticleResearchers discover solar heat island effect caused by large-scale solar...
Large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a solar heat island effect that, though much smaller, is similar to that created by urban or industrial areas, according to a new study.
View ArticleLow-cost 'solar absorber' promising for future power plants
Researchers have shown how to modify commercially available silicon wafers into a structure that efficiently absorbs solar energy and withstands the high temperatures needed for "concentrated solar...
View ArticleScientist invents way to trigger artificial photosynthesis to clean air
A chemistry professor in Florida has just found a way to trigger the process of photosynthesis in a synthetic material, turning greenhouse gases into clean air and producing energy all at the same time.
View ArticleFiring up your car with lipids
Sometimes, when a science experiment doesn't work out, unexpected opportunities open up.
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