Industry News

January 2021
Stefan Schaffhauser becomes CEO of the Traco Power Group
Stefan Schaffhauser will assume the CEO position with the beginning of the business year on April 1, 2021. As of this date, he will lead the Traco Power Group together with the CFO, Adrian Berger. As before, Rolf Caspar – company owner and Chairman of the Board – will continue to concentrate his efforts
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Date:
01/31/2021
584 Hydrogen Fueling Stations Launched in 33 Countries
The hydrogen fueling station market is witnessing a dramatic acceleration in growth, with 584 hydrogen stations deployed by year-end 2020, according to a study released by Information Trends, a market research company. The study, "Global Market for Hydrogen Fueling Stations, 2021" says the number of
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Date:
01/28/2021
The World's Largest Integrated Solar-Powered Battery System
Florida Power & Light Company announced that construction has begun on the FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center, which is expected to shatter industry records as the world’s largest integrated solar-powered battery system, capable of powering Disney World for approximately seven hours.  Located in Parris
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Date:
01/28/2021
East Raymond Operational as RWE U.S. 27th Onshore Wind Farm
RWE Renewables' East Raymond (Raymond) facility, a 200-megawatt (MW) onshore wind farm located in Willacy and Cameron counties, Texas, has achieved commercial operation. "We're excited to announce our 27th onshore wind farm in the U.S. and our eighth project on the Texas Coast," said Silvia Ortin, Chief Op
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Date:
01/20/2021
Anode-Free Zinc Battery Could Someday Store Renewable Energy
Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, could help decrease the world's reliance on fossil fuels. But first, power companies need a safe, cost-effective way to store the energy for later use. Massive lithium-ion batteries can do the job, but they suffer from safety issues and limited lithium ava
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Date:
01/20/2021
New Metamaterial Offers Reprogrammable Properties
Over the past 20 years, scientists have been developing metamaterials, or materials that don't occur naturally and whose mechanical properties result from their designed structure rather than their chemical composition. They allow researchers to create materials with specific properties and shapes. Metamaterials are
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Date:
01/20/2021
A New Tool to Facilitate Quicker, Error-Free Software Design
Any building project requires the formulation of a series of initial plans prior to starting construction to serve as a basis and guide for the whole process. A similar procedure is followed in software development, with the inclusion of a specific step known as modelling. "The process is equivalent to th
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Date:
01/18/2021
Artificial Intelligence Beats us in Chess, not in Memory

The brain strategy for storing memories may lead to imperfect memories, but in turn, allows it to store more memories, and with less hassle than AI.

In the last decades, Artificial Intelligence has shown to be very good at achieving exceptional goals in several fields. Chess is one of them: in 1996, for the first time, the computer Deep Blue beat a human player, chess champion Garry Kasparov. A new piece of research shows now that the brain strategy for st
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Date:
01/18/2021
Renesas, Microsoft Push Connected Vehicle Development
Renesas Electronics Corporation announced its collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate the development of connected vehicles. Renesas’ R-Car Starter Kit, based on Renesas’ R-Car automotive system-on-chip (SoC), is now available as a development environment for the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP). MCVP combines a partner ecosystem with a horizontal pla
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Date:
01/12/2021
Solar FlexRack Supplies Trackers for CT Solar Projects
Solar FlexRack announced that the company has supplied its TDP 2.0 Solar Trackers for a portfolio of distributed generation solar projects located in Connecticut. Part of Solar FlexRack's tracker growth phase into the northeastern region of the US, the solar projects are being developed by TRITEC Americas, a lea
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Date:
01/12/2021
Boeing Satellites use Radiation-Tolerant Vicor Power Modules
Vicor announced the launch of its first radiation-fault-tolerant DC-DC converter power modules, housed in the new Vicor plated SM-ChiP package. Capable of powering low-voltage ASICs of up to 300 watts from a 100V nominal power source, the ChiPs were tested by Boeing to be resilient to 50krad of total ionizing do
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Date:
01/07/2021
$2.6 million DOE Grant for Solar Energy Research
A team of researchers from Binghamton University has been selected to receive $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to develop ways to reliably support higher amounts of solar power on the grid. The three-year project will focus on advanced grid-forming photovolt
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Date:
01/07/2021
Scott Family Housing Expands Solar Rooftop Project
Hunt Military Communities (HMC), the largest U.S. military housing owner, announced its project to expand on its leading initiatives to integrate additional solar rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems across its facility at Scott Air Force Base. This community includes more than 1,500 homes serving 3,000 residents. Th
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Date:
01/06/2021
A 1.6-Megawatt Solar Carport System for CentraState Medical
KDC Solar LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of CI Renewables LLC, has commenced commercial operations of its 1.6 megawatt (MW) solar carport at CentraState Medical in Freehold, New Jersey.  The new system will generate approximately 2.1 million kilowatt hours of solar electricity per year. This is the equivalent of
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Date:
01/01/2021
Spontaneous Robot Dances = A New Kind of Order in Matter

When a swarm of smarticles is made to interact in a confined space, they form stunningly symmetric dances whose choreography emerges spontaneously from the physics of low rattling.

Predicting when and how collections of particles, robots, or animals become orderly remains a challenge across science and engineering. In the 19th century, scientists and engineers developed the discipline of statistical mechanics, which predicts how groups of simple particles transition between order and
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Date:
01/01/2021
Stretching Diamond for Next-Generation Microelectronics

Stretching of microfabricated diamonds pave ways for applications in next-generation microelectronics.

Diamond is the hardest material in nature. But out of many expectations, it also has great potential as an excellent electronic material. A joint research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has demonstrated for the first time the large, uniform tensile elastic straining of microfabricated diamond a
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Date:
01/01/2021
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