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Category: energy

Hydrogen is the simplest element in the universe. And excitement is growing from nations and investors looking to harness its power to make clean, green energy. In this edition of Bloomberg Green, we speak to Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest about his big pivot from dirty coal to clean hydrogen. And Snam CEO Marco Alvera talks to us about his price target for the gas over the next decade. Plus, we break down the difference between gray, blue and green hydrogen, and speak to our BloombergNEF analysts about the possible limitations of the gas.

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RWE is using used lithium batteries from electric vehicles in the new storage unit. The 60 battery systems in the innovative storage unit on the site of the RWE pumped storage power plant in Herdecke, North Rhine-Westphalia, can buffer around 4.5 megawatt hours of electricity.

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A wind turbine sitting idle on a calm day or spinning swiftly when power demand is already met poses a problem for renewables, and is one researchers think can be tackled under the sea.

In one vision, could use seawater to essentially store until it’s needed, helping wean humanity off fossil fuels.

“We came up with a solution that we call the battery,” Frits Bliek, CEO of Dutch startup Ocean Grazer told AFP while showing off the at the CES tech fair in Las Vegas.

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In the two weeks since its launch on December 25 at 7:20 am ET, Webb has successfully completed many milestones:

✨ Webb released and deployed its solar array, which means the telescope went off battery power and began to use its own generated power.
✨ Webb has had two planned mid-course correction burns. Webb was launched on a direct path to an orbit around the second Lagrange Point (L2), but its trajectory required correction maneuvers to get there.
✨ The 5-layer sunshield has been fully deployed and tensioned. Did we mention it is the size of a tennis court? 🤯
✨ Webb’s secondary mirror, which plays an important role in reflecting light collected by the primary mirror into the telescope’s instruments, has been deployed.

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All-solid-state batteries are now one step closer to becoming the powerhouse of next-generation electronics, as researchers from Tokyo Tech, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Yamagata University introduce a strategy to restore their low electrical resistance. They also explore the underlying reduction mechanism, paving the way for a more fundamental understanding of the workings of all-solid-state lithium batteries.

All-solid-state lithium batteries have become the new craze in and engineering as conventional lithium-ion batteries can no longer meet the standards for advanced technologies, such as electric vehicles, which demand high energy densities, fast charging, and long cycle lives. All-solid-state batteries, which use a instead of a liquid electrolyte found in traditional batteries, not only meet these standards but are comparatively safer and more convenient as they have the possibility to charge in a short time.

However, the solid electrolyte comes with its own challenge. It turns out that the interface between the positive electrode and solid electrolyte shows a large electrical whose origin is not well understood. Furthermore, the resistance increases when the electrode surface is exposed to air, degrading the battery capacity and performance. While several attempts have been made to lower the resistance, none have managed to bring it down to 10 Ω cm2 (ohm centimeter-squared), the reported interface resistance value when not exposed to air.

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Many of these systems are kept out of equilibrium because individual constituents have their own power source — ATP for cells, gas for cars. But all these extra energy sources and mismatched reactions make for a complex dynamical system beyond the reach of statistical mechanics. How can we analyze phases in such ever-changing systems?

Vitelli and his colleagues see an answer in mathematical objects called exceptional points. Generally, an exceptional point in a system is a singularity, a spot where two or more characteristic properties become indistinguishable and mathematically collapse into one. At an exceptional point, the mathematical behavior of a system differs dramatically from its behavior at nearby points, and exceptional points often describe curious phenomena in systems — like lasers — in which energy is gained and lost continuously.

Now the team has found that these exceptional points also control phase transitions in nonreciprocal systems. Exceptional points aren’t new; physicists and mathematicians have studied them for decades in a variety of settings. But they’ve never been associated so generally with this type of phase transition. “That’s what no one has thought about before, using these in the context of nonequilibrium systems,” said the physicist Cynthia Reichhardt of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “So you can bring all the machinery that we already have about exceptional points to study these systems.”

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Recently, a group of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology researchers made a major breakthrough in the graphene based desalination process. They were able to remove 97% of common salts in an energy efficient way. The current reverse osmosis desalination technology is energy intensive, and desalination plants’ capital costs are high. By the year 2025, 14% of the world’s population will experience water scarcity, which makes this discovery very important. Moreover, graphene-based filtration technology could come to your kitchen very soon.

Links to their work — https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2017.21#:~:text=Abstract, of%20common%20salts4%2C6. 0, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/752

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Pumped hydropower is great. This method might be even better.

Two new compressed air storage plants will soon rival the world’s largest non-hydroelectric facilities and hold up to 10 gigawatt hours of energy. But what is advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES), exactly, and why is the method about to have a moment?

Compressed air is part of a growingly familiar kind of energy storage: grid-stabilizing batteries. Like Elon Musk’s battery farm in Australia and other energy overflow storage facilities, the goal of a compressed air facility is to take extra energy from times of surplus and feed it back into the grid during peak usage.

Here’s how the A-CAES technology works: Extra energy from the grid runs an air compressor, and the compressed air is stored in the plant. Later, when energy is needed, the compressed air then runs a power-generating turbine. The facility also stores heat from the air to help smooth the turbine process later on.

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One of the best thing about electric and hybrid vehicles is that the energy doesn’t get completely wasted when you need to brake. By using an electric motor as a generator, you can slow a vehicle down and put some of that kinetic energy into a battery pack so you can use it again later. Sure, there are conversion losses both going into the battery and coming back out to the wheels, so you don’t get a lot more than half of the energy back, but an ICE vehicle turns all of that energy into heat, which gets dissipated into the air.

Electric bikes, scooters, and other micromobility options can do regenerative braking, too. This is great for getting better range and doing fewer brake jobs, just like in a car.

But can this be done without batteries and electric motors? Can you store energy away for later use? It turns out that you can, and this guy built a bicycle that does it.

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