Elon Musk via Insider Monkey/Flickr

By now you’ve probably heard of the big merger between automotive innovator Tesla and rooftop solar guru SolarCity. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, claims that the integration will create “the world’s first vertically integrated energy company,” set to offer the full spectrum of clean energy products to customers.

While both companies have gotten a lot of attention from investors over the years, there has been a lot of skepticism when it comes to the financial future of the joining of these two companies.

First, neither companies have made any money independently last year. In fact, combined they lost $1.7 billion.

But the financial losses are not the real concern. As MIT Technology Review points out, the technology that would make an end-to-end clean energy system feasible has not yet been developed by either company.

Musk’s vision for the newly integrated company is to set up consumers to solely utilize renewable energy. That would mean electric vehicles, rooftop solar panels, and of course, a battery to store energy when the sun goes down.

Although Tesla has already premiered their home Powerwall battery, it fell short of expectations. The seven-kilowatt-hour battery was expected to be able to store enough energy to power your home and send energy back to the grid (converting homes to microgrids) for a flat rate of $3,000, but the actual cost turned out to be closer to $10,000.

Pair that cost with SolarCity panels and analyses show that you’ll be paying over double for your electricity than a typical rate user.

“At the end of the day, the Powerwall has the same Li-ion battery cells in it as any other Li-ion-based storage product: Asian-sourced batteries that are arranged in packs,” Jay Whitacre, ECS member and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told MIT Technology Review. “It’s basically off-the-shelf cell technology.”

ECS Vice President Johna Leddy is an established researcher in electrochemical power sources and a highly respected mentor to the students of the Leddy Lab. Always the educator, Leddy’s most recent side project was creating a door plaque that explains her research to those passing by at the university (see below). The Venn diagram pictured on right is featured (click on it to expand). Leddy explains herself:

The Venn diagram is a map of my research at the current time. Energy and electrocatalysis are at the center and various things evolve from there. Largely, we focus on unusual ways to electrocatalyze reactions that are important in energy generation and storage.

The unusual means of electrocatalysis include: introduction of micromagnets on the electrode to increase rates of electron transfer; use of ultrasound in a thin layer to activate the electrode surface; and modification of electrodes with algae to make ammonia.

At the edges of the Venn diagram are places where these fundamental studies are implemented in energy technologies and voltammetric analysis. The bottom ring is a list of the tools that we use. It all ties together: theory and fundamentals to experiments to devices and back to theory. Experiments inform theory and devices, that lead to questions that generate more experiments.

Image: Greg Robson/Wikimedia Commons

University of Iowa researchers have teamed up with California-based startup HyperSolar to progress the science in producing clean energy from sunlight and water. The goal of this research is to develop a way to efficiently and sustainably produce low-cost renewable hydrogen for commercial use.

Hydrogen has huge potential as an alternative form of energy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, hydrogen has the highest energy content of any fuel we use today (carbon dependent fuels included).

But hydrogen is not a naturally occurring element on this planet, so it needs to be produced. Currently, most hydrogen is produced via steam reforming – a process using fossil fuels and creating carbon dioxide. While the end produce is clan, renewable energy, the means of getting to that product were carbon dependent. The new study hopes to help move hydrogen production away from the traditional means of creation and toward electrolysis, which requires only electricity and water to create hydrogen.

“Developing clean energy systems is a goal worldwide,” says Syed Mubeen, HyperSolar’s lead scientist and chemical engineering professor at the University of Iowa. “Currently, we understand how clean energy systems such as solar cells, wind turbines, et cetera, work at a high level of sophistication. The real challenge going forward is to develop inexpensive clean energy systems that can be cost competitive to fossil fuel systems and be adopted globally and not just in the developed countries.”

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How solar panels can save everyone money

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When talking about the benefits of solar energy, one challenge always makes its way into the conversation: cost. While many see solar as a costly alternative to conventional means of generating electricity, a study out of Boston University is showing how solar not only saves those who own panels money, but even those who generate electricity conventionally.

According to the study, the 40,000 solar panels deployed in Massachusetts have effectively cut electricity prices for the nearly three million power users in the state (even those households and businesses not utilizing the panels).

“Until now, people have focused on how much was being saved by those who owned PV,” says Robert Kaufmann, professor of Earth and environment at Boston University. “What this analysis quantified was that it actually generates savings for everybody.”

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Image: James Almond/Flickr

New research from the University of Washington is opening another avenue in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. But this research is not a breakthrough in efficiency or longevity, rather a tool to more closely analyze how batteries work.

While we’ve come a long way from the voltaic pile of the 1800s, there is still much work to be done in the field of energy storage to meet modern day needs. In a society that is looking for ways to power electric vehicles and implement large scale grid energy storage for renewables, batteries and fuel cells have never been more important.

A research team from the University of Washington – including ECS members Stuart B. Adler and Timothy C. Geary – believes that these improvements will likely have to happen at the nanoscale. But in order to improve batteries and fuel cells at that microscopic level, we must first understand and see how they function.

The newly developed probe offers a window for researchers to understand how batteries and fuel cells really work.

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Image: Ludie Cochrane/Flickr

Researchers from the University of Connecticut are pushing toward a hydrogen economy with the development of a new catalyst for cheaper, light-weight hydrogen fuel cells.

The catalyst — made of graphene nanotubes infused with sulfur — could potentially work to make hydrogen capture more commercially viable.

This development comes during a time where many people are looking to hydrogen in the search for a new, sustainable energy source. While hydrogen may be abundant, it often requires a costly and energy-consuming process to produce. However, if scientists could find an affordable and efficient way to capture hydrogen, it may begin to shift society away from the fossil fuel-driven economy toward a hydrogen economy.

The material developed by the University of Connecticut professors currently shows results that are competitive with some of the top materials traditionally used in these processes, but at a fraction of the cost.

The secret lies in the non-metal catalyst that has many of the same electrochemical properties as rare earth materials.

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Image: Kathy McLeod/Flickr

From televisions screens we can roll up like newspapers to see-through batteries, researchers are moving electronics toward a more flexible, more transparent future.

The most recent development in this area comes from a group that has developed transparent, flexible supercapacitors made of carbon nanotube films. But this development goes far beyond wearable electronics, with potential applications in both energy storage and harvesting.

“Potential applications can be roughly divided into two categories: high-aesthetic-value products, such as activity bands and smart clothes, and inherently transparent end-uses, such as displays and windows,” co-author of the study Tanja Kallio, told Phys.org. “The latter include, for example, such future applications as smart windows for automobiles and aerospace vehicles, self-powered rolled-up displays, self-powered wearable optoelectronics, and electronic skin.”

With the thin films demonstrating 92 percent transparency and high efficiency compared to other carbon-based counterparts, the researchers believe that further improvements to the supercapacitors durability and energy density could make the product commercially viable.

Image: Kyocera

A joint venture between two Japanese companies has embarked on building the world’s largest floating solar project.

The project is estimated to harvest 16,170 megawatt hours per year – enough to power around 4,970 households.

Not only will the floating solar farm – which will consist of 50,904 panels – produce a large amount of renewable energy, it will also play a major role in offsetting over 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually (the equivalent of 19,000 barrels of oil).

Japan is making the move to “floatovoltaics” due to the lack of open land suitable for solar farms, but plentiful water surfaces. Proponents believe floating solar farms will be cheaper to produce than their land counterparts due to less strict regulations held on water surfaces.

Image: Al Pavangkanan/Wikimedia Commons

After Toyota’s 2015 release of the first mass-market fuel cell car, the Japanese automaker is gearing up to release the second generation of its fuel cell vehicle in 2019.

The initial version of the Mirai, which was heralded by Toyota as the ultimate “green car,” could travel up to 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen and refuel in less than five minutes. The starting price for the vehicle is currently $57,460.

Toyota’s new version of the Mirai promises to be more affordable than its predecessor, potentially making the clean energy vehicle well-received among consumers.

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May the 4th be with you

Image: William Tung/Wikimedia Commons

Whether you’re a Star Wars superfan or find yourself lost when the conversation turns to discussions of the feasibility of the Death Star, you can probably identify the epic space series’ iconic lightsaber. The lightsaber has become one of the most recognizable images in popular culture, but is it purely fiction or could it be a reality?

According to the Star Wars books, lightsabers are pretty complex devices but essentially boil down to a few key elements: a power source and emitter to create light, a crystal to focus the light into a blade, a blade containment field, and a negatively charged fissure. In the Star Wars galaxy, a lightsaber creates energy, focuses it, and contains it.

But that’s fiction and those ideas are not in line with current science and technology. So how could we build a lightsaber with the tools we have today?

Many people look initially to laser technology when discussing a practical lightsaber. It’s unrealistic to say that light could be the source of the blade seeing as light has no mass (creating a pretty insufficient weapon), but lasers could be an alternative. It may seem contradictory to say that lasers could be the blade in a lightsaber when lasers are essentially light focused to a very fine point, but as Looper puts it, light is to a laser what a tree is to paper.

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