New design brings world's first solar battery to performance milestone


After debuting the world's first solar air battery last fall, researchers at The Ohio State University have now reached a new milestone.

In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report that their patent-pending design--which combines a solar cell and a battery into a single device--now achieves a 20 percent energy savings over traditional lithium-iodine batteries.

The 20 percent comes from sunlight, which is captured by a unique solar panel on top of the battery, explained Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

The solar panel is now a solid sheet, rather than a mesh as in the previous design. Another key difference comes from the use of a water-based electrolyte inside the battery.

Because water circulates inside it, the new design belongs to an emerging class of batteries called aqueous flow batteries.

"The truly important innovation here is that we've successfully demonstrated aqueous flow inside our solar battery," Wu said.

As such, it is the first aqueous flow battery with solar capability. Or, as Wu and his team have dubbed it, the first "aqueous solar flow battery."

"It's also totally compatible with current battery technology, very easy to integrate with existing technology, environmentally friendly and easy to maintain," he added.

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Japan has started turning abandoned golf courses into solar power plants


During real estate booms, developers have a tendency to build more than is necessary. When those booms go bust, we get to sit back and watch as people come up with creative uses for all that waste.

This is what’s happening in Japan, where developers built too many golf courses over the last few decades after demand shot up in the 1980s. Now the industry is in decline, with participation in the sport down 40% from the 1990s, and abandoned golf courses are starting to pop up.

Kyocera’s solution: turn the abandoned green space into solar farms. Japan has been hungry for alternative energy ever since the 2011 Fukushima disaster made nuclear power an unattractive option in the country, and golf courses just happen to be perfectly suited for solar power — they’re large open spaces that often get lots of sunlight.

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World’s First Integrated Geothermal and Biomass Plant Goes Online


Enel Green Power has announced the completion of a 5 megawatt (MW) biomass power plant in Italy’s Tuscany region that integrates biomass with geothermal steam generation.

A first of its kind, the newly constructed biomass plant will use locally sourced virgin forest organic matter and a “super-heater” boiler to increase steam temperatures at the nearby 13-MW Cornia 2 geothermal plant. Geothermal steam temperatures entering the Cornia 2 plant will be raised from 300 degrees to over 700 degrees (Fahrenheit). The result, according to Enel Green Power, will be an increase in the geothermal plant’s net electricity generation capacity.

It is projected that the integration of the biomass plant will boost the overall Cornia 2 geothermal plant output by some 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) a year. It will also mitigate the emission of 13,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. This innovative technological approach will result in minimal local environmental impact and secure “total renewability” within the resources used and the cycle of energy generation.