Renewable Energy

Exploring everything within renewable energy like solar panels, wind turbines, hydro, geothermal energy, battery technology, and more.

How We Will Be Growing Batteries - Wood Battery Explained

With the ever-growing demand for electrifying everything, we need more sustainable batteries. Li-ion devices are cost-effective but rely on lithium, graphite, and other materials, whose sourcing has significant environmental and social impacts. One potential solution is being developed where wood is used to replace these materials with a bio-based alternative.

137 Year Old Battery Tech May Be The Future of Energy Storage

As good as lithium-ion batteries are, they have their limitations and challenges, but there’s also plenty of battery alternatives. Flow batteries alone have enough variations in chemistry to make your head spin. Zinc-bromine batteries are one up-and-coming contender … and calling them up and coming sounds funny when you consider

Did We Use More Or Less Energy During the Pandemic?

by Greg Makrigiorgos

Hindsight is 20/20. And we can all clearly give thanks that 2020 is in the rearview. But if we had to pick one silver lining or winner for the year, the power grid would be a strong contender. A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh reports a 7.5% nationwide decrease in energy consumpti

How Solar Panels Can Help Solve California’s Drought

by Nicole Warner

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

Can This Metal Really Beat the Lithium Battery?

As the renewable energy sector continues to grow, so does our need for better and cheaper energy storage, which is why our reliance on lithium could become a bit of a problem. While there are already an assortment of energy storage options available today beyond lithium batteries for grid scale

Why Nuclear Fusion is Closer Than You Think

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

The Breakthrough Battery That The US Gave Away to China

When it comes to grid-scale energy storage, redox flow batteries (RFB) are one of the big competitors for lithium-ion batteries. In preliminary tests, RFBs can be manufactured with longer lasting lives, be made more scalable, and are easier to recycle than other battery technologies. Yet, after investing millions of US

This Invention Could Supercharge Solar Panels

We're always chasing better performing and more efficient solar panels to help power our renewable future, but no matter how efficient a panel is there are location-based impacts to performance. Tilt angle and orientation can either boost or decrease performance, and it's hard to achieve optimum