Colombian renewable energy startup E-Dina developed a wireless lantern, called WaterLight, that converts salt water into electricity and is more reliable than solar-powered lamps, a Dezeen article explains. And it can also be charged by urine in emergency situations.
The portable device acts as a mini generator that produces light using ionization — by filling it with 500 milliliters of seawater, the salt in the water reacts with magnesium and copper plates inside the device, converting it into electrical energy.
Tesla has launched “Tesla Electric” to become an electricity retailer through its Powerwall owners – starting with some markets in Texas.
After gaining experience through its virtual power plants (VPPs), Tesla is taking things a step further with the launch of “Tesla Electric.”
Instead of reacting to specific “events” and providing services to your local electric utilities, like Tesla Powerwall owners have done in VPPs in California, Tesla Electric is actively and automatically buying and selling electricity for Tesla Powerwall owners – providing a buffer against peak prices.
Standing among solar arrays and power grid equipment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), you might hear a faint, distorted melody buzzing from somewhere. You are not hallucinating—that gray box really is singing the Star Wars Theme, or the ice cream truck song, or Chopin’s Waltz in A minor. Power system engineers are just having some fun with an NREL capability that prevents stability problems on the electrical grid.
Usually, the engineers send another kind of waveform through the inverters and load banks: megawatts of power and voltage vibrations at many frequencies. The purpose of their research is to see how energy devices and the grid interact—to get them “in tune” and prevent dangerous electrical oscillations that show up like screechy feedback or a booming sub-bass.
The engineers can do this analysis at high fidelity with NREL hardware using the lab’s advanced impedance measurement system, and they have also produced a commercially available software called the Grid Impedance Scan Tool or GIST that can do the same with simulated power on device models, allowing any manufacturer or grid operator to certify grid stability with renewable energy resources.
Deep in the Constellation of Centarus lies a star 50 light-years away from the Earth. This star is so…unique that astronomers nicknamed it “Lucy.” Lucy, also known as V886 Centauri and BPM 37093, is (at first glance) an ordinary white dwarf star. But it seems to hide something rather special.
As many of you may know, a white dwarf is the hot cinder left behind when a star uses up its nuclear fuel and, in essence, dies. It is made mostly of carbon and oxygen and surrounded by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.
In 1992 it was discovered that Lucy pulsates as a result of its core temperature dropping below 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,600 Celsius). And in 1995 scientists decided to use Lucy for an experiment. They wanted to see what she was made of. The experiment was to use the pulsation of the star to see if the crystallization theory was true.
The Kardashev Scale has become a standardized way of classifying (hypothetical) advanced civilizations. The lowest rank, Type 1, is still way ahead of us — but by how much? When will we achieve Type 1 status and exactly how could we plausibly do so? In this video, we go through some estimates of when humanity might become Type 1, and in particular what kind of energy sources we could harness to achieve this feat.
► Kardashev (1964), “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations”, Soviet Astronomy, 8217: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964SvA… ► Michio Kaku video clip from BigThink: https://youtu.be/7NPC47qMJVg. ► Wind map movie credit to Rufinoman and earth.nullschool.net: https://youtu.be/cj2JHsQUoRs. ► Wind energy calculation based off Smil (2004), “Inherent limits of renewable energies“ ► References for the 3.7TW figure for tidal energy dissipation are: Cartwright 1993 (Theory of ocean tides with application to altimetry, in Satellite Altimetry in Geodesy and Oceanography, edites by R. Rummel and F. Sanso, pp. 99–141, Springer-Verlag, New York), Ray 1994 (Tidal energy dissipation: Observations from astronomy, geodesy, and oceanography, in, The Oceans, edited by S. Majumdaret al., pp. 171–185, Pa. Acad. of Sci., Easton, Pa.), Kagan & Sundermann 1996 (Kagan Dissipation of tidal energy paleotides, and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, Adv. Geophys., 38, pp. 179–266) ► Solar video comes from NASA SDO and GSFC: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12706 ► Learn more about the Carno cycle here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle. ► Learn more about the planetary equilibrium calculation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_equilibrium_temperature. ► Tidal power map comes from Gunn & Stock-Williams (2012): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112001310 ► Outro music by Thomas Bergersen “Final Frontier”: http://www.thomasbergersen.com. ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu. ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu.
Clean energy will reduce dependency on Russia and Arab countries for oil and gas.
What if the weight could instead be distributed between multiple support poles? That’s the design Eolink has in mind; its floating turbine swaps out the single large pole for four thinner ones angled towards each other in a pyramid shape. This not only distributes the weight of the turbine’s pieces, it allows the whole structure to be lighter.
The turbine Eolink plans to build as a proof of concept will have a generating capacity of five megawatts and weigh 1,100 tons. Its base will be a square with each side 171 feet (52 meters) long, and its rotor’s diameter will be 469 feet (143 meters). For reference, that’s about one and a half Big Bens, or four-fifths of the Washington Monument.
You wouldn’t think that such a huge piece of machinery would be simple to build and transport. But compared to conventional offshore turbines, Eolink’s design does carry a myriad of advantages in terms of both cost and ease.
Go to https://buyraycon.com/isaacarthur for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon. They say you should always attack from the high ground, and there’s no higher ground than from orbit. Today we’ll examine orbital strikes, asteroid bombardment, kinetic weapons, dropships, and how to defend from them.
It will be jointly built by a Swedish and a Turkish company.
Eco Wave Power (EWP) has signed a deal with Oren Ordu Eneas to build the world’s largest-ever wave power plant on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, according to a press release by the Swedish company published on Thursday.
The project would start with a 4MW pilot in the port of Ordu. It would then move forward to a 77MW plant which would consist of a fixed, modular array of steel floats hinged to piston-equipped arms.
A s of 1 February 2021, there are about 280 million domestic LPG (liquified petroleum gas) consumers in India, according to Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. By March 2022, the Government of India expects that there will be over 300 million consumers. Indian Oil, the country’s largest fuel refiner, claims that it will import 50% more cooking gas to ensure the supply of LPG remains uninterrupted for its bottling plants.
It’s imperative to find heating solutions that are more efficient.
Moreover, the Government of India has been encouraging wider adoption of LPG to replace coal and firewood to improve air quality as well. But according to researchers at IIT-Guwahati, the thermal efficiencies of conventional domestic LPG cooking stoves available in the market are low (60–68%), and emissions are high (CO: 220–550 ppm, NOx: 5–25 ppm).
And the galaxy from which the GRB came from is also strange. It is young and still forming stars – the opposite of the only other known nearby galaxy that has played host to such an event.
“This event looks unlike anything else we have seen before from a long gamma-ray burst,” said Jillian Rastinejad, from Northwestern University, who led the study. “Its gamma rays resemble those of bursts produced by the collapse of massive stars.
Given that all other confirmed neutron star mergers we have observed have been accompanied by bursts lasting less than two seconds, we had every reason to expect this 50-second GRB was created by the collapse of a massive star. This event represents an exciting paradigm shift for gamma-ray burst astronomy.
