Alternative batteries/storage techniques being tested

By Diane Cardwell and Andrew Roberts (illustrations), NYTimes, 3 June 2017 It’s a question that inventors have been tackling for decades. No one wants the fridge, or the hospital, going on the blink when demand surges or the power plant needs repairs.It turns out to be a surprisingly tricky question to answer. Today, with the rise of green energy sources …

Putting people back to work in Coal Country

By Joe Ryan, Bloomberg, 24 May 2017 Ben Chafin sees the future of clean energy in abandoned coal shafts. The Virginia state senator, whose Appalachian district is pockmarked with empty mines, pushed through legislation in April that encourages companies to transform those tunnels into giant storage devices to hold vast amounts of renewable power. The idea, which Dominion Energy Inc. has been studying, …

Light pole charge system for electric vehicles

By Steve Hanley on Clean Technica, May 20th, 2017. Originally published on Gas2. A year ago, BMW’s carsharing program known as ReachNow folded up shop in San Francisco and moved to Seattle. The service began with 370 cars, including electric BMW i3 sedans and conventional 3 Series and MINI offerings. A year later, the ReachNow fleet has grown to more than …

Vehicle-To-Grid discharge, even at constant power, is detrimental to EV battery performance, study finds

By James Ayre, Clean Technica, May 16th, 2017 There have long been critics of the idea of widespread use of electric vehicle (EV) vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies for a variety of reasons, but largely in relation to the potential damage done to EV batteries, and thus reduced battery lifespan.  New research from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii at …

Renewable energy is ‘unstoppable’, declares Financial Times:  ‘Fossil fuels have lost. The rest of the world just doesn’t know it yet.’

At least 14 battery gigafactories are being built or planned, nine in China.  Joe Romm shares some highlights from a new, must-read, 4000-word article in the Financial Times, “The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable.” Traditional energy companies and mainstream financial publications are finally waking up to the new reality: The shift to renewable energy, electric cars, and …

Fraunhofer working on ceramic EV battery technology that could deliver 1000 km range

By Steve Hanley, 5 May 2017. Originally published on Gas2. Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems in Dresden, Germany, says it has developed new technology in the lab that could increase electric car range to 1,000 kilometers or more. The secret? More batteries in the same space. Ceramics play a large part in the process. In a conventional battery pack, …

Germany demands electric-car quotas as India plans to be all-electric by 2030

By Neil Briscoe, In the Irish Times, 3 May 2017  Germany’s environment agency is calling for a quote system to dramatically increase the sales of electric vehicles across the EU The German environment agency is calling for a quota system to dramatically increase the sales of electric vehicles across the European Union. The chief of the Umweltbundesamtes (UBA), Maria Krautzberger, …

“This is a different world from three years ago” — renewables are no longer “alternative energy”

Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 30, 2017 Renewables and efficiency have already won the battle for the future of electricity according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).  In his keynote talk at the end of April 2017, BNEF founder and chair Michael Liebreich explained that if you blinked, you missed the clean energy revolution: “This is a different world from three …