Nature-Inspired Green Energy Technology Clears Important Development Hurdle
A new design has put the long-sought idea of artificial photosynthesis within reach
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Renewable Energy
How communication about environmental issues can bridge the political divide
A relatively new theory that identifies universal concerns underlying human judgment could be key to helping people with opposing views on an issue coax each other to a different way of thinking, new research suggests.
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Argonne researchers focus on grid cybersecurity to pave the way for a clean energy future
Distributed energy resources use electronics to communicate with each other or with a control center. Yet this presents opportunities for cyber attacks that could become real threats to the electric power system. Argonne experts are developing ways to protect power systems from these threats before they can occur.
Read moreQuadrupling turbines, U.S. can meet 2030 wind-energy goals
The United States could generate 20% of its electricity from wind within 10 years, without requiring any additional land, according to Cornell University research published in Nature Scientific Reports.
Read moreCould water solve the renewable energy storage challenge?
Seasonally pumped hydropower storage could provide an affordable way to store renewable energy over the long-term, filling a much needed gap to support the transition to renewable energy, according to a new study from IIASA scientists.
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How to Make it Easier to Turn Plant Waste into Biofuels
Researchers have developed a new process that could make it much cheaper to produce biofuels such as ethanol from plant waste and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Their approach, featuring an ammonia-salt based solvent that rapidly turns plant fibers into sugars needed to make ethanol, works well at close to room temperature, unlike conventional processes, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Green Chemistry.
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Tests Measure Solar Panel Performance Beyond Established Standards
In testing solar panels, the sun’s intensity, the spectral composition and the angle of light are important factors in understanding why certain panels are successful and others degrade more quickly. To address the knowledge gap in degradation mechanisms for various photovoltaic types, researchers performed tests over five years in which they collected weather data and panel performance information. The results are published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.
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Supporting Structures of Wind Turbines Contribute to Wind Farm Blockage Effect
Much about the aerodynamic effects of larger wind farms remains poorly understood. New work in this week’s Journal of Renewable and Sustainably Energy looks to provide more insight in how the structures necessary for wind farms affect air flow. Using a two-scale coupled momentum balance method, researchers theoretically and computationally reconstructed conditions that large wind farms might face in the future, including the dampening effect that comes with spacing turbines close to one another.
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Second act: Used electric vehicle batteries charge up the grid
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an innovative control system for repurposed electric vehicle battery packs to store electricity for home use and are scaling up the technology to a large, power grid-level project.
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Saving Bats from Wind Turbine Death
Wind energy holds great promise as a source of renewable energy, but some have wondered addressing climate change has taken precedence over conservation of biodiversity. Wind turbines, for example, kill some birds, and the fatality rate for bats is even higher. In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, scientists report the results of a survey of stakeholders in the wind energy field about attitudes toward the relative emphasis on climate change versus biodiversity issues.
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Maintaining reliability, resilience while integrating renewable energy
Energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines interfaces to the electricity grid using power electronic converters—but how will these converter-based and traditional-based control systems interact to ensure voltage and frequency stability?
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Go With the Flow: Scientists Design New Grid Batteries for Renewable Energy
Scientists at Berkeley Lab have designed an affordable ‘flow battery’ membrane that could accelerate renewable energy for the electrical grid.
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