Lifeboat Foundation

Remember just 2 years ago when the utility companies that supply electricity to customers in Arizona went into a tizzy over a ballot initiative that would mandate them to get 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by the year 2030? Oh, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth could be heard from sea to shining sea. It was a direct frontal assault on the American way of life. It was so dire, the utilities ponied up $40 million of their own money (actually it was their customers’ money) to defeat it.

Circa 2008

Industrial motors can spin at a head-spinning 250,000 revolutions per minute. But a new matchbook-sized motor runs circles around the competition.

Researchers from ETH Zurich’s Department of Power Electronics created a drive system in cooperation with its industrial partners that exceeded 1,000,000 rpm in tests.

New types of cathodes, suitable for advanced energy storage, can be developed using beyond-lithium ion batteries.

The rapid development of renewable energy resources has triggered tremendous demands in large-scale, cost-efficient and high-energy-density stationary energy storage systems.

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have many advantages but there are much more abundant metallic elements available such as sodium, potassium, zinc and aluminum.

Geneva (AFP)

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than four million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars.

The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the universe”, said Will Percival of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Circa 2019 o.o

Extreme power-to-weight ratio and efficiency will be key to electrification of aviation.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy ventured out on their third spacewalk over the past few weeks to replace outdated batteries with more powerful new ones.

A team from the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a new kind of battery that mixes the best of both worlds of liquid- and solid-state batteries. The design is the first all-liquid metal battery that can work at room temperature and is claimed to outperform lithium-ion batteries.

Liquid metal batteries are less susceptible to wearing out than solid batteries because dendrites don’t form and damage the components. The only downside is, most of these batteries need to be heated to at least 240°C (464°F) to keep the metals liquid and the equipment required to do that is bulky and energy-consuming.

For the study, published in the journal Advanced Materials, the UT team examined alloys that could remain liquid at useful temperatures. They decided to use a gallium-indium alloy for the cathode and a sodium-potassium alloy for the anode, which was able to stay liquid at 20°C (68°F). The researchers say it’s the lowest operating temperature ever recorded for a liquid-metal battery.

Western Digital has launched its WD Gold 16TB and 18TB drives using EAMR (Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording) and has a 20TB SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) version of the drive on the way. After being a bit slow for several years, drive capacities are growing more quickly again.

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have built a new type of battery that combines the many benefits of existing options while eliminating their key shortcomings and saving energy.

Most batteries are composed of either solid-state electrodes, such as lithium-ion batteries for portable electronics, or liquid-state electrodes, including flow batteries for smart grids. The UT researchers have created what they call a “room-temperature all-liquid-metal battery,” which includes the best of both worlds of liquid- and solid-state batteries.

Solid-state batteries feature significant capacity for energy storage, but they typically encounter numerous problems that cause them to degrade over time and become less efficient. Liquid-state batteries can deliver energy more efficiently, without the long-term decay of sold-state devices, but they either fall short on high energy demands or require significant resources to constantly heat the electrodes and keep them molten.