Alternative Energy

Hydrogen House

Australian energy company Lavo is throwing down the gauntlet to Tesla’s Powerwall with a home battery storage system that doesn’t conventional batteries at all, New Atlas reports — opting for hydrogen as fuel instead.

For both systems, the idea is to soak up any excess energy generated through solar or wind energy systems, as well as provide an emergency ration of power in case the grid ever fails.

Lavo’s massive battery, which it’s calling the Green Energy Storage System, is technically an electrolysis unit that can generate hydrogen from water, store it, and then turn it into electricity using a fuel cell, much like a hydrogen vehicle.

Thanks to its massive 40 kilowatt-hours capacity, Lavo’s battery has nearly three times the capacity of Tesla’s current-gen Powerwall 2. That’s plenty of energy to power an average home for two days straight — and a strident shot across the industry’s bow.

Today, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Seamus O’Regan, launched the Hydrogen Strategy for Canada, an ambitious framework that seeks to position Canada as a global hydrogen leader, cementing this low-carbon and zero-emission fuel technology as a key part of our path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

... into vertical farms that grow produce like leafy greens, herbs, and tomatoes. The farms, of course, require electricity to function, since most ...

It seems like a no-brainer to use clean-burning hydrogen to offset the environmental negatives of natural gas for warming homes, but pilot projects to do just that starting next year illustrate nothing is simple about this trendy new energy source.

Scientists at the Imperial College of London and the University of Aberdeen have proposed a new way to optimize urban rooftop usage, while also providing a choice between rooftop agriculture and rooftop PV power generation. The advantage of rooftop PV would be to reduce reliance on power from the grid. Rooftop agriculture,…

Agrivoltaic systems are a strategic and innovative approach to combine solar photovoltaic (PV)-based renewable energy generation with agricultural production. Recognizing the fundamental importance of farmer adoption in the successful diffusion of the agrivoltaic innovation, this study investigates agriculture sector experts’ perceptions on the opportunities and barriers to dual land-use systems. Using in-depth, semistructured interviews, this study conducts a first study to identify challenges to farmer adoption of agrivoltaics and address them by responding to societal concerns. Results indicate that participants see potential benefits for themselves in combined solar and agriculture technology. The identified barriers to adoption of agrivoltaics, however, include: (i) desired certainty of long-term land productivity, (ii) market potential, (iii) just compensation and (iv) a need for predesigned system flexibility to accommodate different scales, types of operations, and changing farming practices. The identified concerns in this study can be used to refine the technology to increase adoption among farmers and to translate the potential of agrivoltaics to address the competition for land between solar PV and agriculture into changes in solar siting, farming practice, and land-use decision-making.

Carvey Maigue of Mapua University has been shortlisted for the James Dyson Award 2020 for his system called AuREUS, a device that transforms rotten fruit and vegetables into clean, renewable electricity. His invention was among 1,800 entries from young inventors and design engineers from 27 countries…

Village Farms International' wholly-owned subsidiary, Village Farms Clean Energy, has renewed and extended its existing contract with the City of Vancouver under which VFCE receives landfill gas captured by the City of Vancouver at the City's landfill site in Delta, BC (the "COV LFG Contract"). The…

The use of renewable energy in modern greenhouse management is important to achieve efficient and sustainable food supplies for a world with an increasing population. This study assessed the performance of a blind-type shading regulator that can automatically rotate semi-transparent photovoltaic (PV)…

The Dutch horticultural sector is already circular: more and more energy is renewable, there are many savings, rainwater is collected to be used for production purposes. Less water, less pesticides is good for the environment, but also good for the business. Also in Poland, this trend is visible. But considering the fact that…

Building integrated photovoltaics is a new way to conceive of photovoltaics that becomes useful in agriculture and consists in the design of innovative solutions to integrate devices that convert solar energy into electricity directly into the building.   Transparent pane The Italian team includes researchers from…

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar energy is now cheaper than coal. The IEA is an autonomous intergovernmental organization working with governments around the world to implement effective energy policies for a “secure and sustainable energy future for all.” In the majority of countries around the world, solar photovoltaic (solar PV) generation is […]

Leafy Greens

A team of scientists took the same spinach you can buy at the grocery store, added a pinch of salt, and turned it into the catalyst for a clean, efficient fuel cell.

The proof-of-concept fuel cell is the latest development in a long history of scientists trying to exploit spinach’s high density of energy-generating molecules for industrial use, Ars Technica reports.

The federal government says it's investing $20 million in the nuclear industry to help Canada meet its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

As a global leader in nuclear energy and nuclear safety, Canada is poised to be a leader in the safe and responsible development of small modular reactor (SMR) technology.

A Belgian energy research team -led by the KU Leuven- has developed an agrivoltaic pilot project in Bierbeek. They specifically designed the system for orchard crops. The pilot is of the first outcome of a  technology transfer project funded by the Flemish government and co-funded by 20 unspecified companies.…

Mariska Dreschler with GreenTech did an interview with Marit Brommer, passionate about geothermal energy and the Executive Director of the International Geothermal Association. In the interview, they talked about:  Why is geothermal energy a logical source for greenhouses The sustainability factors of sustainable energies…

Tinted solar panels could allow land to be used to grow crops and generate electricity simultaneously, with financial gains, according to researchers in the UK and Italy. The orange solar panels absorb some wavelengths of light, while allowing those that are best for plant growth to pass through. The…

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the regulatory body that governs nuclear energy, just approved designs for the country’s first scaled-down, low-cost fission reactor.

The small modular reactor (SMR) build by NuScale Power is the first of its kind in the U.S., Scientific American reports, and experts suggest it could revitalize the country’s dormant nuclear energy industry by providing cleaner energy at a more local scale. But there’s a long way to go before any of these reactors can actually be built.

Step One

For now, the NRC approval means that utility companies can apply to construct the NuScale reactors, which are about 65 feet tall and nine feet in diameter. Before they can build them, however, further safety evaluations need to be completed.

“I am sorry to say that what lies ahead is risky and expensive,” M. V. Ramana, a nuclear expert at the University of British Columbia, told SciAm.

Quick Fix

Advocates for SMRs suggest that they could serve as a way to quickly transition away from fossil fuels and cut down on carbon emissions, according to SciAm. As such, NuScale expects to deliver its first reactors in 2027 and have it online by 2029.

But it’s possible that there will be delays down the road, experts told SciAm, as gaps in current safety reports for the smaller, modular nuclear reactors give them pause.

The team with Solho (Solar Horticulture) recently went and visited the SPRHOUT (Solar Powered Off-grid Horticultural UniT) in France. Read more about this installation in this article.  The novel control unit and software for safe and autonomous operation was installed successfully, and is now generating solar…

In a future world, leafy vegetables may not be grown in rows of crops under the sun. Instead, they may be grown indoors beneath tinted semi-transparent solar panels that will allow farmers to grow food and produce energy. That’s the future imagined in a recent study that shows how the use of this…

New Zealand’s first large-scale food waste-to-bioenergy facility gets underway at Reporoa, in the central North Island. Following the blessing of the land by Ngati Tahu-Ngati Whaoa, construction will begin on the new anaerobic digestion facility which is owned by Ecogas – a joint venture between Pioneer…

Today, engineers started construction of the world’s largest nuclear fusion project in southern France, The Guardian reports, with operations planned to begin in late 2025.

The project, called ITER, is an international collaborative effort between 35 countries with enormous ambitions: prove the feasibility of fusion energy with a gigantic magnetic device called a “tokamak,” as per the project’s official website.

“Enabling the exclusive use of clean energy will be a miracle for our planet,” ITER director-general Bernard Bigot said during today’s virtual celebration, as quoted by The Guardian.

Fusion power, in theory, works by harnessing the energy released by two lighter atomic nuclei fusing to form a heavier nucleus, and turning it into electricity.

In a big step forward toward making BIO-photoelectrochemical cells (BIOcells) a mainstream clean energy source in the future, researchers from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have overcome an efficiency hurdle by successfully combining the power of…