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Category: sustainability – Page 157

Transparent solar windows are not only generating news as demonstration projects—many have already been set up. On the list of installations for UE Power are its own offices in Redwood City, California, at the R&D facility of its partner in Northwood, Ohio, a commercial office building in Boulder, Colorado, and in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, it has an installation at Michigan State University. UbiQD also claims to have installations in multiple U.S. states, which include a Holiday Inn hotel, its own headquarters in Los Alamos, and the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

What’s the premium for transparency?

UbiQD’s product isn’t commercially available yet, but McDaniel expects the premium for transparent solar power to be not more than 30 percent over ordinary windows. He said that “Traditional solar cells are not sold at a cost per watt, not based on area, like windows. The additional window cost, per watt, is similar to utility-scale solar. We have a similar payback time to traditional solar [before incentives].”

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It’s the first of its kind model and it can suggest countermeasures for dealing with natural disasters.

Global warming is causing more and more natural disasters which often lead to devastating consequences including loss of life. These take the shape of extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, droughts, tsunamis, cyclones, landslides, avalanches, earthquakes and forest fires.

Now, civil engineers at Monash University have conceived of a first-of-its kind software called GeoXPM that can not only predict where a geo-disaster might occur but also assess the event’s impact on its surrounding environment in order to mitigate its consequences. This is because the model can make suggestions of next steps to take to avoid dire loss of life and save as much property as possible.

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SEATTLE — Undergirding recent budget guidance from the Biden administration to federal research and development organizations is a recognition of a steady and growing demand for microelectronics as a key enabler for advancement in nearly every technology sector, according to a senior White House technology advisor.

The White House on Aug. 17 issued its research and development priorities for the fiscal 2025 budget, offering direction to federal offices as they plan to submit their spending requests to the Office of Management and Budget in early September. The high-level focus areas include strengthening the nation’s critical infrastructure amid climate change, advancing trustworthy AI, improving healthcare and fostering industrial innovation alongside basic and applied research.

According to Steven Welby, deputy director for national security within the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, most of those priorities have some sort of connection to the nation’s goals for boosting the microelectronics industrial base.

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Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday spoke about his desk, or lack of it, at the company headquarters in Texas.

What Happened: Previously, Musk said, he would move his desk around the factory to wherever the biggest problem was. However, now, he doesn’t have a desk, the CEO said.

“These days, I don’t have a desk, but the room I use for meetings at HQ overlooks the Model Y end of line,” Musk wrote. He was responding to a fan on X.com who shared an old video of Musk showing his desk in the middle of the factory.

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The Tesla Semi has been a groundbreaking innovation in the transportation industry. With a promised range of 500 miles on a full charge, it represents a significant step towards sustainable freight transportation. This range is not just a theoretical figure, it’s based on real-world testing with the truck fully loaded at 82,000 pounds gross combination weight. The 500-mile range has been a focal point of discussion, sparking interest and curiosity among both enthusiasts and skeptics.

While the Tesla Semi’s range has been applauded by many, it has also been met with skepticism and criticism. The debate centers around the truck’s practicality, particularly in winter conditions where electric vehicles are known to suffer range loss. Critics argue that the range might not be sufficient for long-haul trucking, especially in regions with harsh winters. They point to potential issues like battery efficiency loss in cold temperatures, raising questions about the Semi’s ability to replace traditional diesel trucks.

According to recent studies and real-world testing, the Tesla Semi can be a suitable replacement for approximately 87% of semi-truck loads, even considering winter range loss. This introduction sets the stage for a comprehensive exploration of the Tesla Semi’s 500-mile range, its performance in winter conditions, and its potential to revolutionize the freight transportation industry.

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Earlier this year, two-layer solar cells broke records with 33 percent efficiency. The cells are made of a combination of silicon and a material called a perovskite. However, these tandem solar cells are still far from the theoretical limit of around 45 percent efficiency, and they degrade quickly under sun exposure, making their usefulness limited.

The process of improving tandem solar cells involves the search for the perfect materials to layer on top of each other, with each capturing some of the sunlight the other is missing. One potential material for this is perovskites, which are defined by their peculiar rhombus-in-a-cube crystal structure. This structure can be adopted by many chemicals in a variety of proportions. To make a good candidate for tandem solar cells, the combination of chemicals needs to have the right bandgap—the property responsible for absorbing the right part of the sun’s spectrum—be stable at normal temperatures, and, most challengingly, not degrade under illumination.

The number of possible perovskite materials is vast, and predicting the properties that a given chemical composition will have is very difficult. Trying all the possibilities out in the lab is prohibitively costly and time-consuming. To accelerate the search for the ideal perovskite, researchers at North Carolina State University decided to enlist the help of robots.

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A recent press release from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has revealed that Tesla will be providing Virtual Power Plant (VPP) services to the state’s grid. The program is part of the Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource (ADER) project that the PUCT pushed last year.

With the VPP in place, Texas could now evaluate how consumer-owned small energy devices, such as home battery units, can be virtually aggregated to provide grid-scale services. Similar programs have been launched by Tesla in California and Australia, to much success.

As per the PUCT’s press release, the two ADERs that are launching the initiative involve Tesla Electric customers who have Powerwall batteries in their homes. The participants of the program have agreed to sell their surplus power in the ERCOT market, and will be compensated for doing so. One ADER is comprised of Houston-area CenterPoint Energy customers, while the other is comprised of Dallas-area customers served by Oncor Electric Delivery Company.

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SBUDNIC was a small cube satellite, about the size of a bread loaf, that was launched on a SpaceX rocket in May 2022.

Space junk is a serious issue that threatens the safety and sustainability of orbital activities. To address this problem, a team of students from Brown University designed and built a low-cost cube satellite that successfully deorbited itself after completing its mission. The satellite, named SBUDNIC, used a simple plastic drag sail to increase its atmospheric drag and hasten its reentry.

As per the press release, the small cube satellite has burned up high above Turkey after 445 days in orbit. Its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on Tuesday, Aug. 8, marked the successful conclusion of a low-cost experiment aimed at reducing space debris, five years ahead of schedule.

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Recycling is now cheaper than mining.

Sandy visits the teams at RecycLiCo Battery Materials and Kemetco Research for an in-depth discussion on battery recycling and a tour of a facility that’s making this dream a reality.

Purchase the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Hydrometallur-gical-Recycling-of-L…1032216027

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Sandy on X/Twitter: @teardowntitan.

Continue reading “Lithium-Ion Batteries CAN Be Recycled! RecycLiCo Battery Materials & Kemetco Research Tour” | >