We’ve all seen the massive damns and aqueducts that provide power to cities around the world, but there’s an untapped potential beneath our cities. Gallons of high-pressure water flowing through our water pipe infrastructure every day; wasted energy dissipating through pressure-reducing valves and canal drops. It’s possible
Between our obsession with mobile electronics and the growing popularity of electric vehicles, lithium ion battery demand is growing at an astonishing rate. Most of that demand is being driven by automotive sales which consume 60% of lithium ion batteries, even though they only account for about 1% of automotive
Wind power is one of the fastest-growing renewable sources that works well at scale, but it isn’t perfect. A wind turbine’s massive size and moving parts make them challenging to roll out because of the space they take up, as well as maintenance. But what if we could
When Tesla released their Solar Roof it really piqued consumer interest in solar tiles. And it caught a lot of people by surprise when Tesla recently increased the Solar Roof’s cost by a pretty big margin. But they’re not playing this game alone. Let’s explore how Tesla
Nowadays you can use 3D printing for producing pretty much everything. Vegan meat1, fancy shoes2 or even a wall-climbing robot.3 …Wait…a what? Anyway, what if you could print your house? That would be a life-changer, right? The winner of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge4 developed a living environment
The transportation sector accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions, and heavy-duty trucks account for 23% of that. Even though transitioning passenger cars to electric is well underway at this point, we’re right at the beginning of transitioning trucks and semis. But there’s a major wrinkle. While EVs
The increased use of lithium-ion batteries in everything from portable electronics to grid-scale energy storage has also spurred on battery research. It’s the never-ending quest for the next big thing. And for years, now solid-state batteries have been promised as that thing. Companies like Samsung, Quantum scape, and Toyota
Hydrogen and fuel cells are often held up as one of the big solutions to getting off fossil fuels, but what if I told you that 95% of hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels? 1 This is when green hydrogen typically comes up. But what is it and how
With solar panels and wind turbines sprawling across the globe, clean energy is taking over fossil fuels, which seem to be dead and buried, but are they? Is our renewable energy future really inevitable? The technologies that made recent history As of 2019, renewable technologies accounted for only 11% of
Last year a friend of mine and his wife sold their home, bought an RV, installed solar panels and a battery system, and then hit the road with their two dogs. All while working as a software developer from the road. I couldn’t help myself … between the solar panels,
Imagine traveling inside a levitating capsule within a vacuum tube while going 200 mph faster than a 747, powered by renewable energy. Could Elon Musk and The Boring Company be digging cost efficient tunnels to lay the groundwork for a system like that? Let’s explore the Hyperloop, where things
Thanks to the rise of intermittent renewable energy sources, we’ve seen increased demand for new energy storage technologies, like batteries, pumped storage hydropower, and flywheels. But what if I told you that this little toy, a 200-year-old invention, combined with thermal energy storage might be