Founded by former Airbus engineers, Airseas has designed a 10,000-square-foot kite system dubbed Seawing. It can be deployed at the touch of a button and help tow large cargo ships by harnessing the power of the wind. Think of it like an epic kitesurfing setup, where the kite is operated by an automated flight control system first developed for the aerospace industry—and the kitesurfer is, well, a 50,000-ton cargo ship.
LDES encompasses a group of conventional and novel technologies, including mechanical, thermal, electrochemical, and chemical storage, that can be deployed competitively to store energy for prolonged periods and scaled up economically to sustain electricity provision, for days or even weeks. What they can provide is system flexibility—the ability to absorb and manage fluctuations in demand and supply by storing energy at times of surplus and releasing it when needed. It offers a way of integrating and providing flexibility to the entire energy system, comprising power, heat, hydrogen, and other forms of energy
Long-duration batteries, often massive in scale, capture the intermittent power generated by windmills and solar. They can distribute energy over extended periods of time, such as several days, as customers need it. Lithium-ion batteries, by contrast, can only discharge for four or five hours. Much of the technology remains expensive and unproven on a large scale, but an electric grid powered by renewable energy is impossible without it.
A secret weapon for researchers at Argonne is the Advanced Photon Source, a massive high-energy X-ray device that gives scientists the ability to peer inside batteries as they operate. The device can help discover new chemical combinations to maximize battery performance. An upgrade currently under way that will be completed in the next few years will make it 500 times brighter, Argonne scientists said.
One in a series of Best of 2021 posts, this one about cars, SUVs and trucks from Motor Authority
“We're in the middle of a changeover from the internal combustion engine to electric propulsion. The good news for auto enthusiasts is power comes easily for EVs. The bad news is they'll mark the end of manual transmissions and rumbling V-8 soundtracks. As the market turns toward more and more luxury and performance EVs, we'll have a decision to make here at Motor Authority: At what point does an EV win our Best Car To Buy award?
This could be the year. After driving 24 luxury cars, trucks, and SUVs that were new or significantly updated this year, we've narrowed down the list of nominees for the Motor Authority Best Car To Buy 2022 award to eight vehicles, including three EVs. We'll announce our winner, be it gas- or electron-powered, on Jan. 3, 2022.”
One of the 8 in the running is the Rivian R1T electric pickup truck which Motor Trend has also named its Truck of the Year
"Many of the leaders, experts, and spokespersons of the nuclear lefties have been women. This wasn’t a completely new development, as Marie Curie and Lise Meitner had founded nuclear physics by discovering radioactivity and nuclear fission, respectively. Yet the arrival of a force of fierce female fission freedom fighters on the political battlefield is having a real impact, reshaping the nuclear message into a form congenial to progressives.
An “existential crisis” is one that threatens human existence. While green fanatics can shout “radiation danger” as hard as they like, the fact of the matter is that not a single person in the world has ever been harmed by a radiation release from any of the thousand or so pressurized-water reactors that have operated on land and sea for the past 67 years. If you believe that human existence is at risk from fossil fuels, you would have to be insane to continue to shun or sabotage the demonstrably practical nuclear alternative.
Next-gen nuclear will be smaller and expected to be safer as the video below discusses
In September, Rolls-Royce announced it had completed a 15-minute flight of its first all-electric aircraft, as part of its Accelerating the Electrification of Flight program. This marked the beginning of the company’s extensive testing to better understand the performance potential of the new aircraft and part of its broader aim to support the net-zero carbon emissions national target.
The company announced that its Spirit of Innovation plane used a 400kw electric powertrain “with the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft.” The aim is to eventually achieve speeds of over 300 miles an hour. In addition, the aircraft’s three electric motors allow it to achieve a 90 percent energy-efficient flight.
"Indiscriminate voiding of excreta by cattle contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and soil and water contamination. Emissions are higher in animal-friendly husbandry offering cattle more space — a trade-off we call the ‘climate killer conundrum’.
Using a backward chaining, reward-based training procedure, we here show that cattle can control their micturition reflex and use a latrine for urination."
BusinessWeek (sub required) on mining and lab based alternatives to cobalt, a critical metal in making EV batteries
KoBold’s 35 employees come from places like Google, Microsoft Corp., and Slack and tend to be coders who also have doctorates in the physical sciences. Asked why they joined the startup, they mention the satisfaction of speeding the energy transition, of course, but they also mention the opportunity to see if they’re really right about something. KoBold isn’t making software to sell to someone else. It’s staked claims, either solely or in joint ventures, in around 20 areas across Australia, Canada, the Central African Copperbelt, Greenland, and the U.S. In early September it announced an exploration alliance with BHP Group Ltd., the world’s second-largest mining group. Those ventures will either turn up ore or they will not. “What I love about KoBold,” says Jef Caers, a Stanford geophysics professor who is a research partner and shareholder in the company, “is that they will face the consequences of their machine learning.”
Tampa, FL based Genesis Systems LLC, the latest startup touting a contraption that sucks water out of the air, says it has found a way to do it in a cheaper and more scalable way than rivals.
Closely-held Genesis’s portable machine -- called Water Cube -- makes 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of fresh water a day at costs below competitors, said Stuckenberg, a research fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and a former combat pilot.
“Water scarcity, hunger: These are dragons we can slay with technology,” he said. “We’re not in a race against a competitor. We’re in a race against conditions.”
Raman, a materials science and engineering professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the co-founder of SkyCool Systems, a startup trying to flip the script on the technology we depend on to create chill. As the world warms, demand for air conditioning and refrigeration is going up. But these systems themselves expel a tremendous amount of heat, and the chemical compounds they use can escape skyward, where they act as a planet-warming greenhouse gas. According to the Birmingham Energy Institute in the UK, these substances and the power involved accounted for at least 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. By 2050, more than 4.5 billion air conditioners and 1.6 billion refrigerators are projected to consume nearly 40 percent of all electricity. If it goes mainstream, SkyCool’s tech—and similar approaches in the works from competitors and other researchers—could slow the cycle by naturally lowering building temperatures and easing the energy burden on conventional methods.
If you're looking to live off the grid — like so many of us have been dreaming about as climate change ravages cities and the pandemic made us crave space — there are some things you may want to consider.
Why do you want to do it? What kind of off-the-grid dweller do you want to be? Can you afford the hefty up-front costs? And do you have what you'll need? Do you have what it takes?
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