Caltech researchers say the power output of wind-farms can be increased by an order of magnitude – at least tenfold – simply by optimizing the placement of vertical wind turbines on a given plot of land. Details of the experimental wind-farm, located in northern Los Angeles County, appear in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable […]
The amount of electricity required to run today’s computers, data centers and mobile devices is increasing rapidly and this growing hunger for power makes the digital world a significant greenhouse gas contributor. Most energy saving projects so far have focused on more efficient cooling systems or energy-saving power modes, but researchers from the University of […]
The Japanese researchers behind an innovative laser spark plug system say it will improve fuel economy and reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, the major components of smog. Importantly, the new laser system is made from ceramics, and can be produced inexpensively in large volumes. The research will be presented at the upcoming Conference on Lasers […]
One of the problems with common photovoltaic cells is that the sun’s rays can be highly destructive to the materials used in the cell, leading to a gradual degradation of its performance. But plants have adopted an interesting strategy to address this issue: They constantly break down their light-capturing molecules and reassemble them from scratch, […]
An ultra-powerful femtosecond laser flash can make regular incandescent light bulbs as cost-effective as their fluorescent cousins, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process, according to the researchers, can make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper than a fluorescent […]
Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) have set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled using SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility. Serial #3 is part of a […]
University of Delaware (UD) researchers have managed to crank up the efficiency of silicon solar cells to a record-breaking 42.8 percent under standard terrestrial sunlight conditions. The new record is an important milestone on the path to the 50 percent efficiency goal set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its Very High […]
