In honor of Earth Day, the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, is highlighting its efforts toward harnessing the Sun’s energy, converting it to radio frequency, or RF, and beaming it to the Earth providing a green power source for the U.S. and allied forces. Key technologies need to be developed to […]
On April 18, NASA decided to move forward with plans to complete the deployment of the Lucy spacecraft’s stalled, unlatched solar array. The spacecraft is powered by two large arrays of solar cells that were designed to unfold and latch into place after launch. One of the fan-like arrays opened as planned, but the […]
A major challenge for producers of electricity from solar panels and wind turbines is akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. Both solar and wind increasingly generate electricity amid little demand, when market prices are too low to cover costs. At noon on sunny days, for example, wholesale power prices in areas with high […]
A detailed view of how electrical charges behave inside perovskites could guide efforts to improve the performance of next-generation solar cells based on these materials, KAUST research has shown. When light hits a perovskite, it excites negatively charged electrons and leaves behind positively-charged “holes” within the material’s crystalline structure. These electrons and […]
Proton batteries are an innovative and environmentally friendly type of battery in which charge is carried by protons, which are positively charged hydrogen ions. A team of researchers has now developed organic sulfonamides as a robust and flexible material for cathodes in these batteries. As the team explain in the journal Angewandte Chemie, sulfonamide […]
While the hot summer sun pulls you back into the shade and sleeps on the SPF, you can put the intense rays to work to provide clean energy for your home. The solar panels you see today are leaps ahead of those installed at the end of solar energy. It is no longer futuristic or […]
