“Woah …. Woah! This is massive!” -Matt “Welcome to the JET tokamak” -Fernanda Rimini Getting to see the JET tokamak fusion reactor in person was an eye-opening experience, but not in the way you might expect. What I got to see during my time at the Culham Science Center in the
With the recent news of China producing one of the largest wind turbines yet, with a rotor diameter of 260 meters (853 feet) and a rating of 18MW, it got me wondering why they’re so big. They’re almost defying imagination at this point. Bigger is always better in
I’ve been living with solar panels for almost 5 years now here in Massachusetts, and I thought it was time to take a look at how it’s been going. There’s been some twists and turns with solar production and how it’s fared going through the cold
The solar industry has a potentially fatal flaw: its reliance on silver. As a precious metal, silver is costly and difficult to come by, yet critical to pretty much every kind of solar panel.1 Worldwide solar capacity has officially crossed into terawatt territory and silver is putting that continued
We recently covered a bunch of novel approaches to bring nuclear fusion to the market sooner than you may think. One form of fusion research we didn’t touch on in depth was Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) using lasers… and shortly after publishing that video some major news broke about
Wind generates enough energy to produce about 35 times more electricity than the entire planet could even use each day.1 It’s free, clean, and renewable, so why don’t we see more wind turbines used on rooftops like solar panels? In a nutshell, it’s the blades. More
The southwestern U.S. is in the throes of a “megadrought” so severe that we’ve broken the record — all 1,200 years of it. According to a study published earlier this year, soil hasn’t been this dry since the scientific record began around the year 800.1 This
Fusion is considered by many as the holy grail for supplying all of our clean electricity needs. However, the old joke is that nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, no matter what advances or promises are made. But maybe not this time; , there are several privately funded startups that
Forty-four million households rent their homes12, but are they left out of the solar energy world entirely? As the solar industry grows we’re seeing innovations not just on rooftop solar panels and efficiency, but we’re seeing new areas and ideas for how we use solar, like community solar
There’s always the promise of some big breakthrough that’s going to change everything. Well, scientists have just smashed the solar panel efficiency record, and it could mean a big change for the future of renewable energy. This isn’t just more hype, but a sign of where things
Geothermal energy has the potential to be an always-on power source for countries around the world. However, it hasn’t been the hottest renewable energy option because drilling deep enough into the earth to reach sufficiently high temperatures is difficult and costly. Yet, a startup has recently unearthed a solution
It’s been almost 4 years since I had solar panels installed on my house, which is located in Massachusetts. In general they’ve been performing pretty close to what was promised, but last year threw us some curveballs that made me a little concerned. I saw a pretty sharp