solar energy

Do Floating Solar Panels Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

February 28, 2025
Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

The use of floating solar panels on freshwater bodies is an increasingly popular way of generating renewable energy. Such systems convert the sun’s rays into electricity while minimizing water evaporation. What’s more, they spare land that could be better used for agriculture or housing. But like all energy systems, floating…

September 11, 2024
Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

For decades, progress on organic solar cells has been stymied by how quickly light can break them down. Now AI has discovered organic light-harvesting molecules with a five-fold improvement in stability over their predecessors. Moreover, the new system can explain what makes these novel compounds more stable, to help scientists…

14 Apr 24

Getting the Grid to Net Zero

Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

It’s late in the afternoon of 2 April 2023 on the island of Kauai. The sun is sinking over this beautiful and peaceful place, when, suddenly, at 4:25 pm, there’s a glitch: The largest generator on the island, a 26-megawatt oil-fired turbine, goes offline. This is a more urgent problem…

09 Nov 23

Indonesia launches South-east Asia’s largest floating solar farm

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Indonesia has opened a $108m (£88m) floating solar plant in a significant renewable energy milestone for the country. The project was developed by PLN Nusantara Power and the renewable energy company Masdar from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The plant was built on Cirata reservoir, 108km (67 miles) south-east of…

21 Sep 23

A New Energy-Efficient Hydrogel Pulls Water From Air

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Using a new kind of hydrogel material, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have pulled water out of thin air at temperatures low enough to be achieved with sunlight.Atmospheric water harvesting draws water from humidity in the air. If the humidity levels are high enough, a system can…

19 Sep 23

The Practical Power of Fusing Photons

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Color plays a huge role in most of our lives. It signals danger or caution, like the patterns on a poisonous frog or the color of a stoplight. It evokes joy and inspiration through nature, art, and fashion. It can even trigger the recollection of a favorite memory, through pictures…

24 Aug 23

This Nigerian Startup’s Minigrid Began as a School Project

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

When Ifeanyi Orajaka was an undergraduate engineering student in 2008, he had his career all mapped out. After he graduated from the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Nigeria, his plan was to get a high-paying job at one of the multinational oil and gas companies based in the country.…

15 Aug 23

Record number of solar panels and heat pumps installed in UK homes

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

More UK homes than ever are turning to low-carbon technology, with the country on track to install certified renewable technologies in nearly a quarter of a million homes, according to a report by MCS, the official standards body for renewable technologies. The body has found that, in the first half…

25 Jul 23

Solar energy could help purify water, researchers find

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have suggested that renewable solar energy could play a crucial role in purifying water. Currently, water purification processes rely on electrochemical separation processes that are able to separate different particles within a solution. Although energy-efficient, this technique relies on energy derived…

05 Jun 23

Caltech team achieve wireless energy transfer in space

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

The achievement was made by MAPLE (Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment), an array of flexible lightweight microwave power transmitters with precise timing control. MAPLE is one of the three experiments carried out by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as part of its Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), an…

Do Floating Solar Panels Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

AI Makes Effective Solar Cells—And Explains the Results

Getting the Grid to Net Zero

Indonesia launches South-east Asia’s largest floating solar farm

A New Energy-Efficient Hydrogel Pulls Water From Air

The Practical Power of Fusing Photons

This Nigerian Startup’s Minigrid Began as a School Project

Record number of solar panels and heat pumps installed in UK homes

Solar energy could help purify water, researchers find

Caltech team achieve wireless energy transfer in space

Google won two major awards at MWC Barcelona 2025.

Expanding AI Overviews and introducing AI Mode

This MRI Can Run on Batteries

The Tiny Star Explosions Powering Moore’s Law