Lifeboat Foundation

Vector today launched a new programme to raise awareness of the need to keep trees well clear from power lines, by planting thousands more of them to launch the initiative.

The Vector Urban Forest initiative means the power company will replace every tree it must cut down for network management or safety purposes, with two new natives, planted in areas that help with local ecological restoration schemes.

“The Vector Urban Forest is a promise from Vector to plant two native seedlings where they are needed most, and far away from Auckland’s powerlines which will mean Aucklanders’ power supply is better protected”, said Andre Botha, Vector’s Chief Networks Officer.

Wireless startup WiTricity wants cars to power up without human help and feed utilities energy during peak demand.

A devastating solar storm which could wipe out communications on Earth and fry power grids is a matter of ‘when not if’ the head of the Met Office’s Space Weather Monitoring centre has warned.

Extreme space weather has already caused widespread disruption, with a geomagnetic storm leaving six million people without power in 1989 while Apollo astronauts narrowly missed being exposed to deadly radiation in 1972 and solar flares in 2003 forced the crew of the International Space Station to take cover.

The largest solar storm ever recorded, The Carrington Event in 1859, knocked out Telegraph systems and even set fire to paper in offices.

Continue reading “Devastating solar storm is a matter of ‘when not if’ warns Met Office as Solar Orbiter begins testing” »

Carbon dioxide is society’s ultimate waste product: We inject billions of tons of it into the air every year. Now, researchers have found two efficient ways to recycle CO₂ into energy-rich fuels. # Science MagArchives

Carbon dioxide–splitting techniques could store excess electricity from renewable sources.

Filling up a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) is one of those unknowns that many buyers might not consider until it’s time to actually head to a station and fill up for the first time. We are in the unique position to try out many of the latest and greatest vehicles, including a handful of FCEVs.

A key part of the ownership experience is the fueling experience, including finding stations and the physical process of fueling up the vehicle. Thankfully, filling up is a fairly painless experience, but it is different enough to warrant a quick introduction.

Continue reading “A Look At Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure In 2018” »

Engineers at the University of Maryland have created a thin battery, made of a few million carefully constructed “microbatteries” in a square inch. Each microbattery is shaped like a very tall, round room, providing much surface area – like wall space – on which nano-thin battery layers are assembled. The thin layers together with large surface area produces very high power along with high energy. It is dubbed a “3D battery” because each microbattery has a distinctly 3D shape.

These 3D batteries push conventional planar thin-film solid state batteries into a third dimension. Planar batteries are a single stack of flat layers serving the roles of anode, electrolyte, cathode and current collectors.

But to make the 3D batteries, the researchers drilled narrow holes are formed in silicon, no wider than a strand of spider silk but many times deeper. The battery materials were coated on the interior walls of the deep holes. The increased wall surface of the 3D microbatteries provides increased energy, while the thinness of the layers dramatically increases the power that can be delivered. The process is a little more complicated and expensive than its flat counterpart, but leads to more energy and higher power in the same footprint.

Expect hundreds of megabits per second, maybe even a gigabit, even in sparsely populated areas — as long as homes are near power lines.

by

• Stephen Shankland

The world’s largest offshore windfarm has officially opened. The project commanding the Numero Uno status is the Walney Extension. An official inauguration was marked as September 6, and it now means that the Walney Extension overtakes the London Array as the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

How large? Stats say the farm, located in the Irish Sea off the Walney Island coast in Cumbria, covers an area of around 145 sq km (55 square miles). Project watchers are talking electricity for nearly 600,000 UK homes. It’s especially being touted as having been built on time and on budget.

Continue reading “World’s largest offshore wind farm Walney Extension swings into action for energy” »

One day in the not-so-distant future, light sails may hurtle through space at speeds of around 20% of the speed of light (or 60,000 km/sec), propelled not by fuel but rather by the radiation pressure from high-power lasers on Earth. Traveling at these relativistic speeds, laser-powered light sails could reach our nearest neighboring star (other than the Sun), Alpha Centauri, or the nearest known potentially habitable planet, Proxima Centauri b, in about 20 years. Both objects are a little more than four light-years away.