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Category: sustainability – Page 32

SpaceX Engineers Are Racing To Build a Smarter Stronger Energy Future

🏭 Q: What upgrades are needed for the grid to handle increased energy demand by 2050? A: The grid needs to be upgraded to handle tripled energy throughput by 2050, requiring more power plants, wires, transformers, and substations to support increased demand from EVs, heat pumps, and AI. Innovative Charging Solutions.

🔋 Q: How do Electric Era’s charging stations reduce grid capacity requirements? A: Electric Era’s charging stations with batteries buffer the load, reducing grid capacity requirements by 70% and allowing for faster deployment in better locations like retail amenities and gas station parking lots.

⏱ Q: What capabilities do Electric Era’s charging stations offer for energy management? A: Electric Era’s stations offer time of use charging and virtual power plant capabilities, storing energy upstream and providing the best time of use pricing to customers, making them more efficient and cost-effective. Energy Storage and Distribution.

☀ Q: How can the “duck curve” phenomenon be addressed? A: The duck curve can be solved by building extra energy storage to store excess electrons, such as Tesla’s 10–12 GWh deployed last quarter and Electric Era’s smaller storage at more localized locations.

🔌 Q: What is the transformer scarcity problem and how can it be addressed? A: Transformers are being hoarded due to scarcity and strategic importance, exacerbating grid infrastructure issues. A strategic transformer reserve is needed to address this problem, according to Quincy from Electric Era. ## ## Key Insights ## Grid Infrastructure Challenges.

🔌 The 130-year-old grid infrastructure is antiquated and breaking apart, making it expensive and challenging to upgrade for increased energy demand.

Continue reading “SpaceX Engineers Are Racing To Build a Smarter Stronger Energy Future” | >

Carbon battery startup aims to make energy storage circular

Ukrainian startup SorbiForce said they’ve created the world’s first sustainable battery using four key ingredients: carbon, water, salt and agricultural waste.

“With the current way energy storage systems and batteries are designed, they have really big sustainability implications for the planet,” Kevin Drolet, SorbiForce’s CMO, told pv magazine USA. He explained that material scientist Serhii Kaminskyi, SorbiForce’s CEO and co-founder, had long been bothered by those environmental ramifications.

Kaminskyi pulled together a team of experts in the late 2010s to work on solving the problem. This ultimately landed them a spot in the University of Arizona Center for Innovation startup incubator following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war through the U.S. Department of State’s Global Innovation through Science and Technology initiative.

SorbiForce, a Ukrainian energy storage company now in Arizona, has developed metal-free organic batteries made entirely from agricultural waste.

New technology helps turn seawater into drinking water

Desalination can offer a relief in probably trillions of dollars of savings for countries even when drought comes.

Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water.

A study describing the new technology has been published in Nature Water by engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University.

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