Energy Efficiency

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The Department of Energy has announced about $6 million in funding for projects that will develop and demonstrate supply chain technologies to deliver commercial-scale lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks to biorefineries across the country.
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SAKOR Technologies, Inc. (Okemos, MI) designed and installed a complete turnkey Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Test System for UQM Technologies, Inc. (Longmont, CO), a manufacturer of high-efficiency electric propulsion systems. UQM will use the system to test inverters and traction motors for use in hybrid and electric vehicles for the automotive, commercial truck, bus, and military markets.
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Thin, conductive films are useful in displays and solar cells. A new solution-based chemistry developed at Brown University for making indium tin oxide films could allow engineers to employ a much simpler and cheaper manufacturing process.
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A University of Southern California research team has developed a cheap, rechargeable battery that could be used to store energy at solar power plants for a rainy day. The air-breathing battery uses the chemical energy generated by the oxidation of iron plates that are exposed to the oxygen in the air — a process similar to rusting.
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Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) have made a breakthrough in the development of colloidal quantum dot (CQD) films. The researchers created a solar cell out of inexpensive materials that was certified at a world-record 7.0% efficiency.
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Electrical energy storage is the obstacle preventing more widespread use of renewable energy sources. Due to the unpredictable nature of wind and solar energy, the ability to store this energy when it is produced is essential for turning these resources into reliable sources of energy. The current U.S. energy grid system is used predominantly for distributing energy and allows little flexibility for storage of excess or a rapid dispersal on short notice. Drexel University researchers believe they have a solution.
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Researchers creating electricity through photovoltaics want to convert as many of the sun’s wavelengths as possible to achieve maximum efficiency. For this reason, they see indium gallium nitride as a valuable future material for photovoltaic systems. Changing the concentration of indium allows researchers to tune the material’s response so it collects solar energy from a variety of wavelengths.
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Today there are multiple devices available for harnessing solar energy. Each device offers a different set of characteristics. Wafer-based devices consist of mono or polycrystalline and are the most mature technology due to the experience borrowed from the microelectronics industry.
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Researchers at Rice University have created a coaxial cable that is about a thousand times smaller than a human hair and has higher capacitance than previously reported microcapacitors. The nanocable was produced with techniques pioneered in the burgeoning graphene research field and could be used to build next-generation energy-storage systems.
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A study of over four million absorbent minerals has determined that industrial minerals called zeolites could help electricity producers slash as much as 30 percent of the parasitic energy costs associated with removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions. The research was done by scientists at Rice University, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Electric Power Research Institute.
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Copper is one of the few metals that can turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels with relatively little energy, but it is temperamental and easily oxidized. MIT researchers have engineered nanoparticles of copper mixed with gold - which is resistant to corrosion and oxidation - making the copper much more stable. They coated electrodes with the hybrid nanoparticles and found that much less energy was needed for conversion.
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Multi-hop wireless networks can provide data access for large and unconventional spaces, but they face significant limits on the amount of data they can transmit. North Carolina State University researchers have developed a more efficient data transmission approach that can boost the amount of data the networks can transmit by 20 to 80 percent.
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The U.S Department of Energy has recently announced up to $4 million available this year to accelerate the development and deployment of wireless charging systems for light-duty electric vehicles (EVs).

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A team of MIT researchers is building cubes or towers that extend solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. The results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.
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Touted as possible first responders, insect cyborgs could be the research community's next big breakthrough. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University have discovered that an insect's internal chemicals can be converted to electricity - potentially providing power to sensors and recording devices.
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Using high-precision microscopy and X-ray scattering techniques, University of Oregon researchers have gained new insights into the process of applying green chemistry to nanotechnology - resulting in high yields, improved efficiency, and a dramatic reduction of waste and potential negative exposure to human health or the environment.
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Graphene has been touted as the next silicon, but it is too conductive to be used in computer chips. A University of Manchester team led by Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov has literally opened a third dimension in graphene research.
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An online tool developed by MIT researchers called “Impurities to Efficiency” - or I2E - allows companies or researchers exploring alternative manufacturing strategies to plug in descriptions of their planned materials and processing steps. After about one minute of simulation, I2E gives an indication of exactly how efficient the resulting solar cell would be in converting sunlight to electricity.
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Electrically conductive meshes made of metal nanowires promise exceptional electrical throughput, low cost, and easy processing in applications like video displays, LEDs, and thin-film solar cells. However, in processing, these meshes must be heated or pressed to unite the crisscross pattern of nanowires that form the mesh - damaging them in the process.
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An international team of researchers has developed a process that improves the efficiency of generating electric power using molecular structures extracted from plants. The system taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.
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Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with Jamie Johnson of Solar Power Electric™, have developed PV Value™ - an electronic form to standardize appraisals of homes and businesses outfitted with photovoltaic (PV) installations.
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Check out the newly redesigned Jan/Feb issue of Lighting Technology. Cutting-edge research news, industrial lighting application stories, feature articles, products, and new technologies for license help bring in the new year.
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Join SEMA and SMTA for presentations and discussions focusing on the reliability testing of PV modules, covering gaps and where future work needs to be done. The conference will highlight various reliability programs being done in the industry with an assessment of current and evolving standards in manufacturing and reliability.
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A cost-competitive solution for increasing the light extraction efficiency of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with efficient and stable color rendering index (CRI) for solid-state lighting (SSL) was developed and demonstrated. Solution-processable quantum dot (QD) films were integrated into OLED indium tin oxide (ITO)-glass substrates to generate tunable white emission from blue-emitting OLED devices.
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Power generated by a wind turbine largely depends on wind speed. In a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different shapes, such as turbulence, to the wind profile, a turbine will produce different amounts of power. Two researchers say that this variable power can be predicted by looking at atmospheric stability.
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