Tag: solar
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New Type Battery Designed for Solar, Wind Grid Storage
Engineers at Stanford University and Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory developed a lower-cost design for long term storage of wind and solar energy on the power grid. The team led by Yi Cui, a materials science and engineering professor at Stanford and part of a joint materials and energy science institute at SLAC, published its…
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Solar Nanoscale Protein Filter Cleans Antibiotics from Water
Engineers at University of Cincinnati in Ohio developed a nanoscale filter powered by sunlight that can clean biochemical compounds, such as antibiotics, from lakes and rivers. Environmental engineering professor David Wendell and Ph.D. candidate Vikram Kapoor published their findings online last week in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). The presence of antibiotics from…
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Study: Solar Panel Industry Now a Net Energy Producer
The global photovoltaic industry has reached a point where solar panels are now likely generating more energy than needed to produce the panels, concludes a new study by Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. The findings of postdoctoral fellow Michael Dale and project director Sally Benson appear in the 2 April issue of the…
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Material Developed to Reflect Sun’s Heat, Cool Buildings
Engineers at Stanford University in California developed a new type of cooling material based on nanotechnology that radiates sunlight back into space. The team led by Stanford engineering professor Shanhui Fan published its findings earlier this month in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). Fan, with doctoral candidates Eden Rephaeli and Aaswath Raman, engineered…
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NSF Funding Organic Crystals Research for Electronics
A physics professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant for research on the physical structure and electronic properties of organic semiconductor crystals. The five-year award to Wake Forest’s Oana Jurchescu was made under NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. Organic semiconductors are hydrocarbon substances like…
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R&D Project Aims To Cut Time, Cost of Solar Installations
A new research and development project led by North Carolina State University in Raleigh seeks to reduce the time and cost of installing rooftop solar energy systems. The five-year, $9 million grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to a consortium of NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center — an energy engineering research lab…
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Solar Cell Developed from Carbon-Based Nanotech Materials
Researchers at Stanford University in California developed a solar cell made entirely of carbon, instead of silicon and more expensive materials found in current solar cells. The team that included contributors from University of Rochester in New York and Nankai University in China published their findings today in the online issue of the journal ACS…
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Americans Use More Gas and Renewables, Less Coal in 2011
Americans used less energy overall in 2011 than in 2010 due mainly to reductions in the amount of energy wasted, along with natural gas and renewable sources increasing, and coal declining. The findings were published in an annual accounting of national energy supply and demand by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, based on data from the…
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Solar Cells Built to Power Portable Devices in Low Light
Chemistry researchers at University of Warwick in the U.K. and Molecular Solar Ltd., a Warwick spin-off company in nearby Coventry, created an organic solar cell that generates enough power to recharge a lithium-ion battery directly and can work in various levels of light, including partial shade. The team led by Warwick professor Tim Jones (pictured…
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Prototype Net-Zero Energy Home Being Tested
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, unveiled this week a two-story suburban-style home to demonstrate that a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year. The year-long pilot is expected to improve testing methods for residential energy efficiency and develop…