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Category: sustainability – Page 312

A new study finds that installing solar farms could become a two birds, one stone situation, as these areas can also double as thriving pollinator habitats if land owners allow meadows to grow around the solar panels.

The study, from researchers at Lancaster University in the UK that will be presented today at an Ecology Across Borders conference, shows that installing solar farms could be greatly beneficial to nature.

“Our findings provide the first quantitative evidence that solar parks could be used as a conservation tool to support and boost pollinator populations. If they are managed in a way that provides resources, solar parks could become [a] valuable bumble bee habitat,” said Hollie Blaydes, associate lecturer and doctorate student at the university. “In the UK, pollinator habitat has been established on some solar parks, but there is currently little understanding of the effectiveness of these interventions. Our findings provide solar park owners and managers with evidence to suggest that providing floral and nesting resources for bumble bees could be effective.”

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BayWa r.e., in partnership with Grüne Energien, has received planning permission for the development of the Rag Lane Solar Farm project near Bristol, UK.

Construction of the 49.9 MW solar project in South Gloucestershire is planned to commence at the beginning of 2023, with grid connection expected in the second half of 2023. When complete, Rag Lane will deliver approximately 52 GWh/year of clean renewable electricity for distribution to the national grid, the equivalent to the annual electrical needs of approximately 15,000 family homes.

BayWa r.e. is committed to ensuring maximum benefit to the local community and environment in the development of Rag Lane. As part of the construction of the project, BayWa r.e. will provide biodiversity enhancements to the local area including the reinforcement and planting of 1.7 km of new hedgerows as a haven for wildlife, as well as ecological connectivity and improvements to the public footpath that runs across the site.

The company also anticipates that at least 20 local jobs will be created through the construction phase, with 2–3 long term jobs through the operational life of the project.

Continue reading “49.9 MW solar farm with biodiversity enhancements” | >

One of the key problems with lithium-ion batteries is that, over time, they do lose some of their battery life. This is why recycling them is so important. But what if there was a way to bring them back to life? And by this, I mean make them as good as new without recycling them. What if you could not only bring them back to life but extend the battery’s life by up to 30%?

Researchers at Stanford University along with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory may have done just that. No, this isn’t the beginning of a zombie horror apocalypse type of story, but it is a potentially revolutionary breakthrough.

Green Car Congress reports that the researchers might have found a way to bring rechargeable lithium batteries back to life with an increased boost to the range of battery life for both EVs and next-generation electronic devices. The study on the work has been published in Nature.

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Bluetti says its first-generation sodium-ion battery excels in thermal stability, fast-charging capacity, low-temperature performance, and integration efficiency, despite slightly lower energy density than its lithium-ion counterparts. The solar generator and battery’s chemical components also feature more abundant materials than traditional lithium-ion batteries, lowering prices and alleviating concerns about resources scarcity.

The NA300 solar generator delivers a 3,000Wh capacity, considerably less than the 5,100Wh of the company’s EP500 Pro model. But the generator capacity shouldn’t be a big issue for consumers, as it supports up to two B480 battery modules (4,800Wh each), which brings the total capacity to 12,600Wh. The unit, recharged by solar panels, can serve a family’s electricity needs for several days or even a week during grid failures or natural disasters.

It is said that the sodium-ion solar generator seamlessly inherits all the style and appearance settings of its predecessor – EP500 Pro – especially four 20-amp traditional wall plugs, as well as a 30-amp L14-30 output port, driven by the built-in 3,000W pure sine wave inverter.

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From the Terminator to Spiderman’s suit, self-repairing robots and devices abound in sci-fi movies. In reality, though, wear and tear reduce the effectiveness of electronic devices until they need to be replaced. What is the cracked screen of your mobile phone healing itself overnight, or the solar panels providing energy to satellites continually repairing the damage caused by micro-meteorites?

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The renewable energy firm Savion is building the 200 megawatts Martin County Solar Project on a former coal mine on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia.

The solar energy generation facility will be located on approximately 1,200 acres on the old Martiki mine site in Martin County, interconnecting with Kentucky Power’s 138-kilovolt Inez Substation. The old Martiki coal mine is an abandoned mountain-top strip mine that was shut down in the 1990s. When completed, the project will produce enough energy to power the equivalent of more than 33,000 Kentucky homes.

The Martin County project that includes up to a $231 million investment recently cleared its last regulatory hurdle. It may be the biggest utility-scale coal-to-solar project in the country. The coal mine in Kentucky was one of the roughly 130,000 such sites that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had earmarked for renewable energy projects.

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