Renewable Energy

May 2015
A niche market only a few years ago, the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry is now becoming a mainstream electricity provider, and changing the way the world is powered. Following a difficult period of industry consolidation and economic crisis, PV installations saw another record year in 2013, with more than 38
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Date:
05/29/2015
Energy harvesting has been around for a very long time. I still remember my 1980s pocket calculator with a solar cell powering the computing unit as well as the LCD display. But even much before that, usable energy was harvested in the early days of the electrical revolution with putting generators on river mi
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Date:
05/29/2015
The distributed intelligence that has been the defining characteristic of the Smart Grid can do more than enable smart homes and help utilities distribute power more efficiently. These two well-known advantages will be enhanced by two revolutionary changes at the edge of the power grid. The first change is
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Date:
05/29/2015
Many fields of research focus on achieving a combination of more powerful batteries and devices that consume less and less energy. However, Moore's law does not apply to batteries. The performance and component density of processors and memory chips double approximately every 18 months. Gordon E. Moore pred
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Date:
05/29/2015
Designing the future

Alix Paultre, Editorial Director, PSD

The first modern wave of rapid human development, also known as the first industrial revolution, began in the middle of the 18th century. The development of devices that could be used to magnify a human’s capabilities immediately changed the face of the planet, impacting everything from agriculture to warfare. T
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Date:
05/29/2015
Today’s power conversion and power management applications demand compact yet robust power switching circuitry that supports high-voltage, high-frequency operation with the minimum of losses from the smallest possible PCB area. By definition, the choice of MOSFET technology has a significant impact on how su
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Date:
05/29/2015
The iPod of power?

Alix Paultre, Editorial Director, PSD

There has been a tremendous amount of buzz around the recent unveiling of Elon Musk’s Tesla Powerwall, and even if the product does not completely live up to the hype it has already changed the debate on power management in the grid. Once focused on grid-level solutions, the discussion of energy storage in a
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Date:
05/28/2015
Towards a new era in power electronics

Jim Witham, CEO, GaN Systems

GaN material offers orders of magnitude improvement in switching and conduction performance and, when produced on GaN-on-Silicon substrates, can reduce power system costs.  Only diamond power semiconductors have been proposed as a superior material system to GaN, but the consensus is that we are decades aw
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Date:
05/28/2015
As power levels are increased and output voltages drop, it is common to have just a few turns in the windings of inductors and transformers. When this happens, standard round wires are usually not the best choice for building magnetic structures, and foil is often used. With a foil winding, the width of the fo
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Date:
05/28/2015
New carbon emission targets are driving significant changes around how electricity is generated, transported and consumed in the United Kingdom. With the increase in small-scale generation technology onto the network, DNO's are met with great challenges to facilitate a future low carbon network. As one of sev
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Date:
05/28/2015
We thought it would be helpful to assemble a top five list of the most common mistakes or “don’ts” that occur during the design of efficient power systems – and how to avoid them. This information comes from our observations and yes, some of our own experiences during Electrocube’s 50-plus years in th
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Date:
05/28/2015
Did you know that every 10°C rise in ambient temperature reduces every component’s lifetime by 50%? That power supplies with drop-offs or variances can lead to premature failures and even completely fried parts in your system? Indeed, most agree that power-intensive applications need, and really must have, lo
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Date:
05/28/2015
System architects of embedded systems, networking, and datacom equipment are constantly being pushed to increase the data throughput and performance of their systems as well as add functionality and features. At the same time, pressure is being applied to decrease the system’s overall power consumption. For ex
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Date:
05/28/2015
There is near-consensus in the UK that smart grids and smart meters will substantially advance the way energy networks operate in the coming years. According to a recent report, more than two-thirds of utilities executives expect the benefits of the smart grid to actually be greater than the industry’s original ex
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Date:
05/28/2015
Catalyst solar prize competition announces 5 winners

The five winning Catalyst prize competitors pose with their award checks at Demo Day in San Francisco

Five solar start-up companies were named winners at SunShot Catalyst prize competition Demo Day on May 14 in San Francisco. The winners -- Gridmates, PVComplete, Savenia Solar Ratings, Solar Site Design, and UtilityAPI -- each took home $30,000 prizes to help advance their early-stage solutions towards commercialization. Th
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Date:
05/26/2015
Novel magnetic field harvesting project wins 2015 CWIEME Challenge

The 2015 finalists from left to right – Benedict Schmitz-Rode and Mario Boxhiemer from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany; Lucas Kistner and Marc England from Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany; Sheng Yuan from the University of Liverpool, UK; and Łukasz Waluś from the Bialystok University of Technology, Poland.

At last week’s CWIEME Berlin exhibition, key players in the electrical and electromagnetic industries gathered to watch four student teams battle it out for a €1,000 technology prize in the first ever CWIEME Challenge. This new initiative, sponsored by longstanding CWIEME exhibitor Marsilli (who also provided th
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Date:
05/19/2015
Samsung SDI, a leader in energy solutions and electronic materials, has agreed to acquire the battery pack business of Magna International, a leading global automotive supplier. 'The acquisition is a key strategic step for Samsung SDI to strengthen the competitiveness of our automotive battery business” The acquisitio
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Date:
05/15/2015
SEIA supports legislation to increase government use of renewables

Today, the U.S. solar industry employs 174,000 Americans nationwide

Saying it will “benefit both the economy and environment,” the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has announced its strong support for legislation introduced by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), allowing the General Services Administration (GSA) to enter into 30-year renewable energy power purchase agreements (P
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Date:
05/15/2015
The Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released its assessment of leading utility green power programs. Using information provided by utilities, NREL has developed "Top 10" rankings of utility green power programs for 2014 in the following categories: total sales of
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Date:
05/14/2015
The Energy Institute (EI)'s annual awards competition is now open and the EI is calling for entries from all sectors of the global energy industry. These awards, run by the EI for over 15 years, celebrate the best of the energy sector, highlighting the invaluable contribution that the industry makes to society. Ian Marchant F
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Date:
05/11/2015
Tesla throws down energy gauntlet with Powerwall

Tesla Powerwall

Power Systems Design has long predicted that energy storage would be the next major development in power electronics, from portable devices to grid-level infrastructures. From American Vanadium's CellCube energy storage system to Princeton Power's energy management technology, most approaches PSD has seen targeted
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Date:
05/04/2015
3D-printed aerogels improve energy storage

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have made graphene aerogel microlattices with an engineered architecture via a 3D printing technique known as direct ink writing

A new type of graphene aerogel will make for better energy storage, sensors, nanoelectronics, catalysis and separations. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have made graphene aerogel microlattices with an engineered architecture via a 3D printing technique known as direct ink writing. The research ap
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Date:
05/01/2015
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