Electric Power

Department of Energy 3D prints an all-electric Shelba Cobra

Carroll Shelby's iconic Cobra roadster has been making jaws drop for half a century now. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cobra's debut the US Department of Energy built one of its own. The new Cobra's entire chassis and bodywork--from the passenger monocoque to the grille and headrests--were 3D printed from carbon fiber reinforced ABS using the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And while the exterior of the new Cobra is nearly indistinguishable from its predecessor, they look nothing alike under the hood. The DoE's Cobra is, in fact, completely electric.

Perovskite Solar Cell Bests Bugbears, Reaches Record Efficiency 

Perovskite solar cells are one of the hottest prospects in clean energy research, offering good power outputs from low-cost materials that are relatively simple to process into working devices. But their rapid progress has not been without some stumbling blocks. Firstly, the cells’ power conversion efficiency often varies depending on how it is measured, suggesting an underlying instability in the cells’ light-gathering perovskite materials. That’s bad news for photovoltaic panels that need to work for a decade or more. Secondly, researchers were struggling to extend the range of the light wavelengths that the cells could harvest, a key strategy for improving their efficiency beyond the 20 percent or so achieved by typical silicon or thin-film solar cells. Some of the field’s leading lights have spent much of last year grappling with these issues. Now a team researchers in South Korea has developed a perovskite blend that addresses both these challenges, and delivers what they say is the highest-efficiency perovskite cell to date.

Storing Solar Energy: A great idea caught on contested ground

Adding energy storage to sites with rooftop solar power generation offers a range of potential benefits. A battery can help smooth out solar’s inherently variable supply of power to the local grid, and even keep buildings powered during blackouts. Consequently, power-conversion innovators are developing a host of new products designed to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of integrated solar-storage systems. Some analysts project a boom in the co-location of solar and energy storage. GTM Research, for example, foresees that co-located PV and storage will grow from $42 million in 2014 to more than $1 billion by 2018. However, the market is moving slower than it might thanks to a little-discussed regulatory roadblock in the United States. According to Vic Shao, CEO for the Santa Clara, California-based energy storage startup Green Charge Networks, tightly integrating storage with photovoltaics in some key states—including Hawaii and California—runs afoul of the “net metering” rules by which PV owners earn lucrative retail rates for the surplus power they feed to the grid. Adding storage can disqualify solar systems for net metering, in which utilities can pay their owners wholesale power rates that are several times lower than retail. “That is obviously a pretty big problem for anybody considering solar. That could kill a lot of projects,” says Shao.

This Supercapacitor Is Paper-Thin, Stores Energy as Well as a Battery

A team of researchers from UCLA Berkeley has developed a new supercapacitor which is paper-thin, super-fast to charge and can match batteries with its energy storage density. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain how they've developed the supercapacitor. Using laser-scribed graphene in combination with manganese-dioxide, the team has produced a supercapacitor which is one-fifth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The production methods don't require complex dry labs or or extreme temperatures, either. Supercapacitors are attractive because they charge in seconds as opposed to hours. But they currently lack the energy density to plausibly power most energy-hungry devices. More after the break.

Drop-in LED bulb could save the energy of 210 power plants | DVICE

Voxan Wattman Motorcycle

While billed as the world's most-powerful all-electric bike, the Voxan Wattman Motorcycle ($TBA) may also just be the world's ugliest. Wrapped in a light-weight aluminum exoskeleton chassis that houses all of its drivetrain components, this bike would likely be more comfortable on the set of a Tron sequel than an actual motorway. What's really impressive about this bike is a little harder to see at first glance: the 200 horsepower electric engine makes it easily the most powerful EV on two wheels, propelling it to 100mph in just under six seconds, while still retaining the ability to recharge in less than 30 minutes.

Yamaha Shows Off Snazzy, Impossibly Light Electric Bike Concepts

Yamaha is going all-out at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, bringing a handful of concepts that point the way forward, along with one firmly rooted in the past, just to balance things out.

The headliner is the PES1 above. It’s Yamaha’s latest electric bike concept, and at an unbelievably lightweight 220 pounds, it’s the electric motorcycle we’ve been waiting for. The battery pack is mounted in the middle and acts as a stressed member of the chassis, with the headstock and swing arm integrated into the exceptionally lithe frame. A brushless DC motor is fixed low in the body, with the rear shock below. The transmission is a fully automated box, with the ability to go from manual to automatic control with the flick of a switch. Despite the lack of indicators, mirrors, and a license plate holder, the PES1 looks remarkably production ready, although that gaping hole in the “tank” would be better used to pack a few extra kWh of battery cells, and we have no idea how Yamaha could keep the curb weight so low without severely limiting the range.