Lifeboat Foundation

This solar-powered boat turns seawater into fresh water.

Could the electric car save our climate?

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From electric cars that travel hundreds of miles on a single charge to chainsaws as mighty as gas-powered versions, new products hit the market each year that take advantage of recent advances in battery technology.

But that growth has led to concerns that the world’s supply of lithium, the metal at the heart of many of the new rechargeable batteries, may eventually be depleted.

Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found new evidence suggesting that batteries based on sodium and potassium hold promise as a potential alternative to lithium-based batteries.

Continue reading “Sodium- and potassium-based batteries could be key for smart grid of the future” »

A contentious proposal to link oversight of California’s electric grid with other western states faces a crucial test Tuesday in a state Senate committee.

Supporters say regionalizing the grid would make it easier and cheaper to deploy renewable energy across the western United States. But critics, including some environmentalists and consumer advocates, say California would jeopardize its efforts to require the expansion of renewables.

California has greatly expanded the use of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, but that’s brought new challenges for grid operators to manage supply and demand as weather patterns and sunlight vary.

Continue reading “California lawmakers debate creating regional electric grid” »

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Solar energy is clean and abundant. But when the sun isn’t shining, you must store the energy in batteries or through a process called photocatalysis—in which solar energy is used to make fuels. In photocatalytic water splitting, sunlight separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen can then be recombined in a fuel cell to release energy.

Now, a new class of materials—halide double perovskites—may have just the right properties to split water, according to a newly published paper in Applied Physics Letters.

“If we can come up with a material that can be useful as a water-splitting photocatalyst, then it would be an enormous breakthrough,” said Feliciano Giustino, a co-author on the paper.

Continue reading “Promising new material has the right properties to capture solar energy, split water into hydrogen and oxygen” »

RIPPA, a fully autonomous robot, can cover five acres a day on a solar charge — finding and exterminating pests and weeds on every single plant over the equivalent of four football fields. Are robots like RIPPA the future of farming?

RIPPA stands for “Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application”.

Continue reading “RIPPA The Farm Robot Exterminates Pests And Weeds” »

She retired from NASA on Friday after blazing a trail for countless female astronauts.

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, the 58-year-old from Iowa farm country who spent a record-breaking 665 days in space, retired from the space agency on Friday.

“I have hit my radiation limit,” Whitson told Business Insider during a recent interview. “So not going into space with NASA anymore.”

Continue reading “The incredible career of NASA’s Peggy Whitson, who applied to become an astronaut 10 times before she broke the American record for space travel” »