Tech Scrape

A study says 35 percent of electricity could come from solar and wind–without expensive new backup power plants. More than a third of the electricity in the western United States could come from wind and solar power without installing significant amounts of backup power. And most of this expansion of renewable energy could be done without installing new interstate transmission lines, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. But the study says increasing the amount of renewables on the grid will require smart planning and cooperation between utilities.

Levant Power saves fuel by turning road shocks and vibrations into electricity. Shock absorbers that generate electricity, which are being developed by Cambridge, MA-based Levant Power, can lower fuel consumption by 1.5 to 6 percent, depending on the vehicle and driving conditions. The system can also improve vehicle handling.

The DOE accounts for its spending of stimulus funding. Over a year after the Recovery Act of 2009 was signed into law, the U.S. Department of Energy says that $32.5 billion of the $36.7 billion it was authorized to spend is “spoken for,” and nearly 5,000 projects have been funded. The department has selected all but 1 percent of the proposals that will receive grants and contracts. So far, however, only $3.5 billion has actually been spent, and the money has only directly created 22,841 jobs.

New material could cut the use of expensive platinum by 80 percent. A new type of catalyst could lead to fuel cells that use a fifth of the platinum they use now. The new material, developed by researchers at the University of Houston, Technical University of Berlin in Germany, and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA, consists of nanoparticles with cores made of a copper-platinum alloy and an outer shell that is mostly platinum. The material is up to five times as efficient as regular platinum.

A Caltech group has created materials that could improve the efficiency of solar cells. In an advance that could lead to solar cells that more fully utilize sunlight, researchers at Caltech have designed materials that can bend visible light at unusual but precise angles, no matter its polarization. The scientists hope the materials are a step toward perfectly transparent solar-cell coatings that would direct all the sun’s rays into the active area to improve solar power output.

Both Siemens and GE bet on direct-drive generators. Wind turbine manufacturers are turning away from the industry-standard gearboxes and generators in a bid to boost the reliability and reduce the cost of wind power.

Both Siemens and GE bet on direct-drive generators. Wind turbine manufacturers are turning away from the industry-standard gearboxes and generators in a bid to boost the reliability and reduce the cost of wind power.

New ultracapacitor material could be fabricated directly on chips and solar cells. Energy storage devices called ultracapacitors can be recharged many more times than batteries, but the total amount of energy they can store is limited. This means that the devices are useful for providing intense bursts of power to supplement batteries but less so for applications that require steady power over a long period, such as running a laptop or an engine.

Fatal disasters might be averted if existing tech was more fully deployed. In the days after a mining disaster killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia and another accident killed at least 35 in China’s Shanxi province, experts are saying that existing technology could make coal mining significantly safer–if only it was used.

Saudi Arabia’s newest purification plant will use state-of-the-art solar technology. Saudi Arabia meets much of its drinking water needs by removing salt and other minerals from seawater. Now the country plans to use one of its most abundant resources to counter its fresh-water shortage: sunshine. Saudi Arabia’s national research agency, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), is building what will be the world’s largest solar-powered desalination plant in the city of Al-Khafji.