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Category: solar power

Columbia researchers engineer first technique to exploit the tunable symmetry of 2D materials for nonlinear optical applications, including laser, optical spectroscopy, imaging, and metrology systems, as well as next-generation optical quantum information processing and computing.

Nonlinear optics, a study of how light interacts with matter, is critical to many photonic applications, from the green laser pointers we’re all familiar with to intense broadband (white) light sources for quantum photonics that enable optical quantum computing, super-resolution imaging, optical sensing and ranging, and more. Through nonlinear optics, researchers are discovering new ways to use light, from getting a closer look at ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry to enhancing communication and navigation, solar energy harvesting, medical testing, and cybersecurity.

Columbia Engineering researchers report that they developed a new, efficient way to modulate and enhance an important type of nonlinear optical process: optical second harmonic generation — where two input photons are combined in the material to produce one photon with twice the energy — from hexagonal boron nitride through micromechanical rotation and multilayer stacking. The study was published online on March 32021, by Science Advances.

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The unit has yet to actually send power directly back to Earth, but that technology has already been proven. If the project develops into huge kilometers-wide space solar antennae, it could beam microwaves that would then be converted into fuel-free electricity to any part of the planet at a moment’s notice.

Scientists working for the Pentagon have successfully tested a solar panel the size of a pizza box in space, designed as a prototype for a future system to send electricity from space back to any point on Earth.

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Berlin –Berlin-based HPS Home Power Solutions is pleased to announce it has received the 2021 Handelsblatt Energy Award in the category of “Smart City” for its picea system, the first marketable independent, solar-hydrogen powered CO2 free home energy system worldwide. The award was given by a top-class jury.

Based on a combination of solar energy and innovative hydrogen technology, the picea system is the first year-round, CO2 free, independent power supply for one-and two-family houses. The picea system is highly effective with about 90% utilization rate and offers more than 100 times the storage capacity of standard household-storage batteries.

“We are extremely pleased to receive this award recognizing the development of our picea system into a marketable clean energy solution,” said Zeyad Abul-Ella, co-founder and managing director of HPS Home Power Solutions.” HPS has made hydrogen technology more widely available to household consumers for the first time. Our product will be indispensable in the smart cities of the future. The Handelsblatt award is a recognition of the considerable reduction of CO2 emissions picea offers and the value of German innovation in the field of climate protection technology,“he added.

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Air conditioners and other cooling systems are among our biggest consumers of electricity, so finding ways to passively cool buildings will be important in our increasingly warmer future. Now, researchers at the University at Buffalo have developed a prototype hybrid device that can not only cool buildings drastically without using electricity, it can capture solar energy to heat water.

Created in many forms over the years, radiative cooling systems absorb heat from inside a room or building, and emit it in infrared waves towards the sky. At those wavelengths, the Earth’s atmosphere is “invisible” to the radiation, meaning there’s nothing stopping the heat from venting directly into the cold of outer space.

These devices use panels made of materials that can absorb and emit the heat. The logical way to orient these thermal emitter panels is to have one face pointing towards the sky, like a solar panel, but the team on the new study says that’s not the most efficient method. The panels emit heat from both sides, so in that position some of the heat is being emitted back towards the ground.

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Renewable energy is now the cheapest energy on the planet. Countries all over the globe are rapidly converting from destructive and limited fossil fuels to wind turbines, solar power and even more creative options, including the UK which is now powered more by renewables than other sources.

Despite being one of the best sources of renewable energy, wind turbines have received significant pushback from opposition that claims they kill native bird populations. It is a valid criticism – research has shown collisions with turbine blades do kill birds, albeit at a fraction of the rate fossil-fueled power plants do.

In an attempt to minimize the ecological impact of wind turbines, a new smart camera system developed by IdentiFlight detects the presence of birds, identifies if they are endangered, and shuts down the spinning blades before impact. According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, deploying a curtailment system near a wind turbine site led to a decrease in Eagle fatalities of 82 percent, suggesting the camera systems could have a drastic effect on saving protected bird species.

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Some four years after it was originally due to be completed, and over a decade after first being commissioned, Vincent Callebaut’s twisting Tao Zhu Yin Yuan (aka Agora Garden Tower) in Taipei, Taiwan, is finally nearing completion – and it’s looking like the wait has been worth it. The high-rise residential project has an ambitious DNA-inspired form incorporating thousands of plants on its facade and sustainability features including solar power, rainwater collection, and more.

Rising to a height of 93.2 m (305 ft), Tao Zhu Yin Yuan consists of 21 floors (plus four basement levels), and is defined by an unusual twisting design inspired by the DNA double helix. Twenty of the floors twist 4.5 degrees per floor as the building rises, for a total of 90 degrees from bottom to top.

Though it’s not looking quite as green as was suggested in early renders, this is understandable as the 23000 trees, shrubs and plants that are planted throughout the ground floor garden, balconies and terraces, still have some time to grow. SWA is leading landscaping duties and Vincent Callebaut Architectures (VCA) reckons that all those plants will remove significant amounts of CO2 from the local atmosphere each year.

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