Lifeboat Foundation

The internet giant has spent years migrating the source of electric power at its giant data centers to sources like wind turbines and solar panels.

In Brief

• By combining the fields of quantum physics and biology, researchers have developed more efficient solar cells inspired by photosynthesis.
• With current solar cells wasting about 80 percent of the energy absorbed, it will be interesting to see what future innovative approaches will allow in the pursuit toward universal clean energy.

Science once again reaches a milestone in technology by modeling it after nature. Researchers have devised a new type of highly efficient photocell by studying photosynthesis in plants.

Nathan Gabor, assistant professor for physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, led research spurred by a simple question as to why plants are green. This eventually led to a quest to mimic plants’ ability to efficiently harvest energy from the Sun regardless of how erratic the sunlight is.

Continue reading “Light Harvesting ‘Quantum Photocells’ Herald A New Age in Solar Energy” »

A University of California, Riverside assistant professor has combined photosynthesis and physics to make a key discovery that could help make solar cells more efficient. The findings were recently published in the journal Nano Letters.

Nathan Gabor is focused on experimental condensed matter physics, and uses light to probe the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics. But, he got interested in photosynthesis when a question popped into his head in 2010: Why are plants green? He soon discovered that no one really knows.

During the past six years, he sought to help change that by combining his background in physics with a deep dive into biology.

Continue reading “Team combines quantum physics and photosynthesis to make discovery that could lead to highly efficient solar cells” »

Tesla completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries that will supply “nearly 100 percent” of power needs for Ta’u’s 600 residents.

The project seems intended to show off the potential benefits of the SolarCity acquisition, with Ta’u’s microgrid comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. But buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that’s far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales). Nevertheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk describes the acquisition as “blindingly obvious” — a necessary step in his so-called “Master Plan” to integrate clean energy generation and storage.

Continue reading “Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops” »

The solar revolution.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the solar roof that will be sold under a combined Tesla-SolarCity will likely cost less than a normal roof to install.

Tesla and SolarCity shareholders voted in favour of the US$2 billion deal Thursday. In late October, Musk unveiled a new solar roof product to show his vision for a combined company with SolarCity, but did not provide specifics on how much it would cost.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Says a Tesla Solar Roof Could Cost Less Than Your Crappy Normal Roof” »

Immensely concentrated sunlight provides a novel method for the synthesis of many nanomaterials that possess remarkable photonic, tribological, electronic, and catalytic properties.

The solar paradigm of creating singular nanomaterials that possess unprecedented photonic, tribological, electronic, and catalytic properties is arguably far less familiar than the energy-saving paradigms of solar photovoltaics and solar thermal systems. Much of the research in this field has evolved over the past decade from our collaborations (i.e., between researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel).

Continue reading “Solar-energy paradigm for generating singular nanomaterials” »

Viral solar panels could be most efficient ever.

A revolutionary and emerging class of energy-harvesting computer systems require neither a battery nor a power outlet to operate, instead operating by harvesting energy from their environment. While radio waves, solar energy, heat, and vibrations have the ability to power devices, harvested energy sources are weak leading to an “intermittent execution”, with periodic power failures and unreliable behavior.

Brandon Lucia, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and his Ph.D. student Alexei Colin created the first programming language designed to build reliable software for intermittent, energy-harvesting computers. Colin will present the work at the 2016 SPLASH conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on November 3^rd.

Continue reading “Making energy-harvesting computers reliable” »

“A new floating solar photovoltaic system in Singapore is just one hectare in size and is meant as a prototype. But it could help usher in a new wave of PV placements on water resources globally.”

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