The US military just approved funding for a new silicon-based battery, charging forward into commercialization. But why the push? NanoGraf’s silicon oxide-graphene (SOG) batteries aren’t just an upgrade to lithium—they’re versatile enough for everything from phones and backup storage to EVs. The DOD recently signed a
Oh hydrogen, that clean, green fuel that would solve so many emissions problems — if only it didn’t come with a few emissions problems of its own. If you’ve written off hydrogen as the fabled emissions free fuel panacea that's never gonna live up to its promise
Recently, some pretty strange solar tech has caught my eye. Before you lies three new contraptions for every kind of conjurer: a coating that could someday transform objects into miniature solar panels, a memory alloy that can shift panels into different shapes, and a dye that can transmute a solar
Solar panels are typically made with silicon as their semiconducting material. But you know what they say: The grass is always greener with cadmium telluride … wait, what do you mean you’ve never heard of that? Well, I don’t blame you. Cadmium telluride-based photovoltaics (or CdTe for short) are
The U.S. wind industry kinda blows. Okay, that might be a bit harsh, but the past few years haven’t been great for turbines in the States. 2023 was particularly nasty. The weather got us off to a bad start with less resources to work with in the first
If you’ve been following my channel for a while, you’ll know that I built my forever home with the goal of reaching net zero energy status. In other words, I wanted my home designed so that I produce as much energy as I use over the course of
It’s already difficult to conceptualize the scale of wind turbines themselves. It can be even harder to wrap your head around how much energy they can supply. Just one gigawatt is enough energy to power between 750,000 to a million US homes.1 Here in the United States,
We can’t control the weather (yet). But we can control how we store weather-dependent renewable energy. So how do we snatch up our lightning in a bottle? Lithium-ion batteries can only go so far…and our historical large-scale go-to, pumped storage hydropower, only works in certain locations. What if
Nothing lasts forever, and batteries are no exception. So as popular as lithium-ion tech may be for energy storage, it’s not without its weaknesses. Chief amongst them is degradation. You can’t expect lithium-ion to operate at peak performance for very long. But what if we could somehow create
Algae. It’s gross green goo that collects in still water…and can possibly make our future greener, too. Researchers are finding weird and unique ways to turn living algae into solar panels and hydrogen farms. So how exactly can algae do all this? And will they end up on
Developing reliable energy storage is just as, if not more, important as improving methods of obtaining the energy itself. But among the slew of new batteries and energy storage systems, how can you tell which tech is worthy and which is just hype? Well, let's break down what
Growing the world’s renewable energy capacity has always been a delicate balancing act, and one of the many plates we have to spin during that act is land use. Utility-scale solar and wind parks are rapidly expanding in size and prevalence all over the world, including right near my