And you won’t need an FAA pilot’s license to fly it either, since Opener’s Blackfly is certified as an ultralight aircraft.
Category: sustainability
With Gauss Rifles [military squads] could pitch a solar panel, charge their guns’ batteries, and fire nuts and bolts off the ground as ammunition.
“You can hold far more energy in batteries than you can with gunpowder,” Wirth told Futurism. And a battery eliminates the need for “explosive chemical propellants.”
But it’s an entirely new type of armament that could have some potentially dangerous consequences, opening the doors to turn anything from metal rods to nuts and bolts into deadly projectiles. And its creators are already imagining military applications.
“Imagine a scenario where a military squad is pinned down behind enemy lines and they’re out of ammunition,” Wirth told us. “With Gauss Rifles they could pitch a solar panel, charge their guns’ batteries, and fire nuts and bolts off the ground as ammunition.”
In yet another bid to push forward its solar business, electric vehicle maker Tesla has launched a new solar roof tile that has a higher power output while retaining the dimensions of the old one.
Tesla entered the clean energy business when it acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion in 2016. It makes switching to solar energy sleeker by replacing regular roof tiles with energy-generating solar roof tiles, instead of having to install bulky solar panels. Tesla offers a 25-year warranty on the tiles and takes end-to-end responsibility for installing the new solar roof.
However, the company has so far struggled to make its product mainstream due to fluctuations in pricing, Electrek reported. With variations across house designs, Tesla has found it difficult to create a streamlined product and even introduced a roof-complexity factor, earlier this year to determine cost estimates.
Electrify America announced that it has now deployed over 30 MW of battery capacity using Tesla Powerpacks at over 140 charging stations.
In 2019, Tesla and Electrify America, VW’s electric vehicle charging network, announced that they reached a deal for the former to deploy Powerpacks at more than 100 charging stations operated by the latter.
We have been tracking their progress in deploying those battery systems since it appears to be the largest deployment of energy storage at electric vehicle charging stations.
An Italian energy storage company, Energy Dome, has announced the close of its $11M Series A fundraise, with the goal of deploying the first commercially viable CO2 battery in a demonstration project in its native Sardinia, Italy. The proposed 100 megawatt-hours (MWh) CO2 Battery could support the increased use of renewable power in the generation mix and address the growing need for energy storage on electrical grids.
The CO2 Battery’s optimal charge/discharge cycle ranges from 4 to 24 hours, positioning it perfectly for daily and intra-day cycling. The company points out that this is a fast-growing market segment, not well served by existing battery technologies. Significantly, the CO2 Battery can be charged during the daytime when there is a surplus solar generation and dispatched during the subsequent evening and next-morning peaks, when solar generation falls short of demand. The modular, scalable energy storage solution will allow for solar and wind generation to be dispatchable 24 hours per day.
Using low-cost, off-the-shelf components, the company claims that its CO2 battery achieves a 75–80% round-trip efficiency. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which degrade significantly in performance after roughly a decade of use, the battery maintains its performance during its expected 25-year operational life. This means the cost of the storage will be about half of the cost of storing with similar-sized lithium-ion batteries.
NASA and the U.S. Dept. of Energy have come together to solicit design proposals for a nuclear reactor that will power Lunar and Martian exploration!
Over the next fifteen years, multiple space agencies and their commercial partners intend to mount crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. In addition to placing “footprints and flags” on these celestial bodies, there are plans to establish the infrastructure to allow for a long-term human presence. To meet these mission requirements and ensure astronaut safety, several technologies are currently being researched and developed.
At their core, these technologies are all about achieving self-sufficiency in terms of resources, materials, and energy. To ensure that these missions have all the energy they need to conduct operations, NASA is developing a Fission Surface Power (FSP) system that will provide a safe, efficient, and reliable electricity supply. In conjunction with solar cells, batteries, and fuel cells, this technology will allow for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars in the near future.
For NASA, having fission reactors for lunar surface operations is a vital part of the Artemis Program, which aims to create a program of “sustained lunar exploration.” This means infrastructure is required, like the Lunar Gateway (where spacecraft will dock and resupply) and the Artemis Base Camp on the surface, where astronauts will eat, exercise, and sleep when not conducting extravehicular activities (EVAs) – i.e., surface operations.
So can solar energy cut it?
Can we really move to a society not harnessed to the unsustainable practices of the old way.
I look at exactly how much land might be required & whether the lights will be able to stay on in the future as they have in the past.
I’m sure most know the answer, but this gives real facts and figures that can be used to defend against the fossil fuel apologists, and shared with friends, family and colleagues who are still learning.
Have an amazing day wherever you are…
Can the sun power the earth.
We need energy, and more than that we love energy.
And why not, it does work for us, and the more work is done for us, the less work we need to do to maintain a certain lifestyle. A level of luxury as it were and why should life not be nice! Surely the whole reason for existence is to experience and so therefore the more you can have conscious control of what fills your time the better.
What is it going to cost and will it do the job as well as the old way?
We all know the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow.
So can solar cut it?
And if you enjoyed that why not watch another video that talks about the future energy dividends ahead, follow this link.
And why not leave your thoughts below.
Primary sources for data within this video can be found in the Rethinking Humanity book released by RethinkX.
https://www.rethinkx.com/
Solar car can be better.
The cost of electric vehicle battery packs has fallen to $132 per kWh – continuing decades of cost improvements. However, it might go up over the next year as increased material prices are catching up to incremental cost improvements.
Price per kWh is the metric used to track the price of batteries. It can be used to talk about the cost of battery packs or battery cells.
For example, if Tesla were achieving a cost per kWh of $150 for its Model S battery pack, it would mean that the battery pack costs $15,000 since it has a capacity of 100 kWh.
The extra juice comes from a secret ingredient…corn starch.
Could a simple materials change make electric car batteries able to four times more energy? Scientists in South Korea think so. In a new paper in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters, a research team details using silicon and repurposed corn starch to make better anodes for lithium ion batteries.
This team is based primarily in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), where they’ve experimented with microemulsifying silicon, carbon, and corn starch into a new microstructured composite material for use as a battery anode. This is done by mixing silicon nanoparticles and corn starch with propylene gas and heating it all to combine.
Using biowaste corn starch is already pretty popular, with products like biodegradeable “corn plastic” cutlery, packaging, and the infamous nontoxic packing peanut. The same qualities that make corn starch attractive in these applications apply to the silicon anode project. Existing lithium-ion batteries use carbon anodes, and scientists know silicon would work better in many ways but have struggled to stabilize the silicon enough for this use to be practical. “To enhance the stability of silicon, Dr. Jung and his team focused on using materials that are common in our everyday lives, such as water, oil, and starch,” KIST wrote in a statement about the paper.
