Alternative Energy

In industrial automation machinery, regenerative braking is a technique employing the existing structures and energy of electric motors (and their drives) along with dedicated subcomponents to slow, stop, and re-actuate axes. Rolf Horn of Digi-Key Electronics explains further.

Energy storage is a key enabler for the ongoing electrification of carbon-intensive sectors, namely the automotive and energy industries. Developments in energy storage are driven by the increased uptake of EVs and the balancing of renewable electricity grids to provide power during low solar and wind periods. IDTechEx have developed a portfolio of energy storage research to help clients make strategic business decisions and capitalise from these...

New solar photovoltaic inverters will be showcased by Delta at Intersolar 2021 in Munich (October 6–8).

Semtech Corporation has announced its collaboration with Cloud Energy, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) solution provider in Vietnam, for the development and deployment of a network running on the LoRaWAN standard for a wireless solar power system installed onfacility rooftops.

Either offshore or inland, wind farms endure all kinds of harsh environments. Inland, wind farms are exposed to the elements, while offshore turbines operate in highly corrosive conditions where in-person maintenance and repair are hard to conduct. Therefore, as Martin Frederiksen, Managing Director at Recab UK points out, condition monitoring for wind farms is essential and relies upon rugged embedded computing, points out.

The need for energy storage is growing tremendously, and battery applications are everywhere - from mobile phones to handheld power tools, to electric vehicles using grids tied to alternative energy. Meanwhile, the boundaries between storage cells and supercapacitors are getting blurred. Supercapacitors are taking over the jobs previously done by battery cells, such as in memory retention applications. The science of energy storage for both batte...

The delivery of tomorrow’s clean electricity will be through an infrastructure characterised by diverse and widely distributed generating sites and predicated on technologies that must deliver continuously increasing performance and energy efficiency. Mark Patrick, Mouser Electronics, explains.

New investment in renewable energy projects and companies totalled $174bn in the first half of 2021, supported by record public market financing and record levels of venture capital and private equity commitments, according to the latest Renewable Energy Investment Tracker from research company BloombergNEF (BNEF). This is the highest total ever recorded in the first half of any year, and 1.8% more than during the same time a year prior, although...

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly published its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), laying out the body’s blueprint for tackling global challenges through to 2030. Six years later, progress has been slower than anticipated from governments and businesses alike. Here, Ben Smye, Head of Growth at Matmatch, looks at how manufacturers and material suppliers can bolster their sustainability strategies.

Researchers have made a major breakthrough in the use of solar energy to generate hydrogen fuel, a potential green power storage medium. New research on barium tantalum oxynitride semiconductors has uncovered a technique that makes the technology 100 times more efficient. The breakthrough could help make practical an alternative, solar power-based hydrogen generation method.