batteries

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Despite all the heat of the Tesla vs. New York Times interlude, however, it illustrates something we already know: batteries are finicky beasts, relatively speaking.[read more]

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After a prolonged development program and costly production delays, Boeing started delivering its latest state-of-the-art airplane just 15 months ago, three years behind schedule. Although the company has a lucrative backlog of nearly 800 787s on order, worth roughly $200 billion in revenues, production rates have been limited, as only 50 units have been delivered in a little over a year.[read more]

Normally, when a scientist spends a good portion of their life in a lab, trying to engineer a technological breakthrough, the last they want is to see that work destroyed. But as researchers at Rice University recently discovered, crushing their previous work can sometimes be the only way to make progress.A Rice team has been trying...[read more]

Everyone knows that the development of low-cost, large-scale electricity storage technologies will be critical to the future of wind and solar energy--or at least everyone who reads The Energy Collective knows that! The ability to cheaply store electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing and use it later when...[read more]

Photo by mariordo59 via Flickr, Creative Commons

If you could wave your handy dandy magic wand and create a single technological breakthrough that would make a huge impact on our intertwined climate and energy challenges, you’d be hard pressed to come up with something better than a killer battery.Find a way to make a battery pack that greatly exceeds the range of those in the Leaf,...[read more]

American history buffs and foodies know the story of the three sisters of agriculture, a brilliant combinatorial planting technique practiced by Native Americans.  This uniquely American agricultural invention elegantly illustrates the concept of synergy.  Synergy is defined as the interactions of two or more things combined to...[read more]

America pioneered many of the clean energy technologies now being used and manufactured around the world, but the edge we once held in clean tech is slipping to foreign competitors. Five years ago, scientists warned the U.S. was falling behind other nations and Congress responded by creating the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-E, to help fund the development of breakthrough energy technologies. Now, this initiative faces political headwinds and the U.S. risks any momentum gained since ARPA-E was founded. In this one-on-one interview, ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar discusses the energy challenges America faces from other countries and how the U.S. must “out-innovate” its competitors to spur new economic growth.[read more]

Senior analyst Dave Hurst believes that we shall see growth in world use of hybrid locomotives due to “new diesel locomotive emissions regulations scheduled to go into effect in the European Union in 2014 and in North America in 2015″. New regulations will result in real change: exhaust treatments and retiring the most polluting engines...[read more]

As the world begins to adopt electric and hybrid vehicles and rely increasingly on renewable resources to satisfy its thirst for power, the battery industry stands to benefit from an unprecedented level of growth. Addressing these key issues, the Battery Show Conference, across two separate tracks, will examine the market and future business opportunities whilst the second track will evaluate how technical advances are likely to impact performance, safety and cost.[read more]

  Earlier this year the Department of Energy (DOE) started the SunShot Initiative – an inter-organizational effort to speed up efforts to make solar energy cheaper than fossil fuels.  The initiative harmonizes and refocuses the work and funds of numerous labs and programs working on solar technology.DOE should adopt a...[read more]

Many of the benefits of storage are national in scope and do not, and never will, enter into the cost/benefit analysis that utilities and state regulators make in deciding on energy storage investments. The energy security benefits of storage are, however, very real. Federal energy policy must find a way to recognize those benefits and to share them with the utilities and local ratepayers that are being asked to invest in energy storage systems. If the energy security benefits of storage could be recognized and shared, the $700-750 per kilowatt hour value attributed to storage by EPRI could turn out to be much higher, and the 14 gigawatt market much closer, than assumed.[read more]

If Congress is serious about reducing the burden of high petroleum prices on U.S. taxpayers, it must do what is necessary to build a market for an important petroleum replacement: advanced batteries. By simply extending to stationary advanced batteries the same investment tax credits that Congress has already made available to fuel cells (which are a promising but a much longer term solution to the problem of petroleum dependence), it would do much to help that market grow.[read more]

While the rest of the nation watched in horror as gas prices crept up, attendees from last week's Electric Drive Transportation Association Conference in DC were delighted; they know that EVs are on the precipice of taking off, and that mainstream consumer EV adoption will be faster with high gas prices.Though the size of the crowd at...[read more]

There’s been an intriguing, and possibly even useful, advancement in batteries thanks to researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Of all the criticisms of electric vehicles, probably the most commonly-heard is that their batteries take too long to recharge – after all, limited range wouldn’t be such a big deal if the...[read more]

Providing soldiers with the newest, most advanced military systems has historically been a bipartisan issue, and provides an opportunity for cooperation on energy innovation funding in the near future. The Army’s recent report on how investments in energy innovation are making our soldiers more mobile and combat ready,...[read more]