All of Earth’s civilization could be powered purely on solar energy, says Elon Musk on Twitter. Discover the reason behind his love for solar energy.
Circa 2014
A breakthrough new battery technology could finally deliver the sort of across-the-board improvements many industries have needed for a long, long time now.
A Tesla battery researcher showed updated test results pointing to batteries lasting over 15,000 cycles or the equivalent of over 2 million miles (3.5 million km) in an electric car.
Last year, we reported on Jeff Dahn and his lab, who are under contract to do battery research for Tesla, releasing an interesting paper that shows how the latest Li-ion battery technology can produce batteries that would last 1 million miles in electric vehicles.
In a new presentation, Dahn discussed updated test results from this new battery, which he hopes becomes the new standard Li-ion battery that new battery technologies benchmark themselves against.
From Ted.com.
Biodiversity is the key to life on Earth and reviving our damaged planet, says ecologist Thomas Crowther. Sharing the inside story of his headline-making research on reforestation, which led to the UN’s viral Trillion Trees Campaign, Crowther introduces Restor: an expansive, informative platform built to enable anyone, anywhere to help restore the biodiversity of Earth’s ecosystems.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Continue reading “The global movement to restore nature’s biodiversity” »
Solar panel recycling.
America’s largest solar panel maker is also the world’s largest recycler of panels, with their program recovering 95% of materials for reuse.
NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines of Houston approximately $47 million to deliver a drill combined with a mass spectrometer to the Moon by December 2022 under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The delivery of the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment known as PRIME-1 will help NASA search for ice at the Moon’s South Pole and, for the first time, harvest ice from below the surface.
“We continue to rapidly select vendors from our pool of CLPS vendors to land payloads on the lunar surface, which exemplifies our work to integrate the ingenuity of commercial industry into our efforts at the Moon,” said NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen. “The information we’ll gain from PRIME-1 and other science instruments and technology demonstrations we’re sending to the lunar surface will inform our Artemis missions with astronauts and help us better understand how we can build a sustainable lunar presence.”
PRIME-1 will land on the Moon and drill up to 3 feet (approximately 1 meter) below the surface. It will measure with a mass spectrometer how much ice in the sample is lost to sublimation as the ice turns from a solid to a vapor in the vacuum of the lunar environment. Versions of PRIME-1’s drill and the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations, or MSolo, will also fly on VIPER, a mobile robot that also will search for ice at the lunar South Pole in 2023. NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon’s South Pole the following year.
A peer-reviewed study by scientists at the Environmental Working Group estimates that more than 200 million Americans could have the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS in their drinking water at a concentration of 1 part per trillion, or ppt, or higher. Independent scientific studies have recommended a safe level for PFAS in drinking water of 1 ppt, a standard that is endorsed by EWG.
The study, published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, analyzed publicly accessible drinking water testing results from the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey, as well as state testing by Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina and Rhode Island.
“We know drinking water is a major source of exposure of these toxic chemicals,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., vice president for science investigations at EWG and a co-author of the new study. “This new paper shows that PFAS pollution is affecting even more Americans than we previously estimated. PFAS are likely detectable in all major water supplies in the U.S., almost certainly in all that use surface water.”
Utilizing lands for Right of Ways of Interstate Highways offer a lot of solar potential.
From pv magazine USA
As more states establish renewable energy mandates and expand the penetration of solar onto their grids, officials and developers are finding that locating land for these projects can be tricky. A new study released by the University of Texas at Austin’s Webber Energy Group looks to solve some of these siting issues by using publicly available and underutilized land at interstate exits.
The Tesla Model 3 “refresh” has gone live on the electric car maker’s online configurator, and it comes with several compelling updates. As could be seen in the all-electric sedan’s order page, the Model 3 now comes with better range, better performance, new wheels, new features like a powered trunk, and more.
A look at the Model 3’s updated online configurator shows that the Standard Range variant, which used to have 250 miles of range, now has 263 miles of range per charge. The Model 3 Long Range Dual Motor AWD stands at the top range-wise with a whopping EPA rating of 353 miles per charge, far above the 322 miles that it previously offered. Even the Model 3 Performance, which is not optimized for maximum efficiency, now comes with 315 miles per charge, an improvement over its previous 299-mile EPA rating.
