Bitcoin mining energy consumption revised down

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, one of the key resources in this area, has had its first major revision since its launch in 2019, leading to a reduction, albeit relatively small, in consumption.

For example, for 2021 where the largest discrepancy occurs, the earlier estimate of 104TWh is revised downward by 15TWh to 89TWh.

For 2023 the estimated anticipated consumption based on the year-to-mid-August is 70.4TWh, rather than 75.7TWh of the earlier model.

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The Cambridge team attribute the change to the modelling of the Bitcoin mining hardware and technology, taking into account both the increased efficiency and power of the evolving application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

With the progressive reduction in chip size, there has been a corresponding reduction in power needed to transmit data.

However, this now appears to have slowed and steadied as the advances have approached the physical limits of semiconductor technology, with smaller chip manufacture becoming more challenging and expensive.

The Cambridge team expresses confidence in their estimates and regards each update as a progressive step toward enhancing their reliability, but the team acknowledges that Bitcoin’s actual electricity consumption remains elusive and can only be approximated.

Moreover, while electricity consumption is a crucial element in determining Bitcoin’s environmental footprint, it is one and the energy sources used in mining are just as important. Further research is planned to focus on developing a more nuanced perspective of Bitcoin’s electricity mix and more closely examining the climate risks and opportunities associated with cryptocurrency mining.

Samsung to add generative AI to home appliances

Samsung has been reported as planning to add a generative AI feature to its home appliances in the next year.

Yoo Mi-young, head of the software development team of Samsung’s digital appliances division, was reported speaking at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin: “Generative AI technologies will be applied to voice, vision and display” to enable the household electronic products to have a better understanding of what consumers do and want and to be able to respond accordingly.

It will enable the gadgets to communicate with users in a more conversational manner, and to better respond to their questions based on past exchanges and in context.

They will also be able to provide recipes and dietary suggestions based on for example the food ingredients stored in the refrigerator.

Yoo Mi-young was also quoted as reporting the development of an energy-efficient chip to process the increasing amounts of data of smart appliances, with features such as generative AI.

Hydrogen-powered van doubles the range of EV counterparts

Canadian hydrogen company First Hydrogen has reported that its hydrogen fuel cell powered light van supplied to GB fleet management provider Rivus has achieved an “unbeatable range”, easily more than doubling the upwards range to 240km of other modern light commercial electric vehicles.

The vehicle was trialed with Rivus for just over 4 weeks, and covered over 1,100km in that time. Tests were completed on diverse routes, providing data on how the vehicle operates under different conditions including urban city centre driving and extra urban routes covering both low-speed city centre roads and motorways.

The tests also covered the van both empty and loaded to 90% of its maximum weight capacity, reflecting the way vans will be used in the real world.

The vehicle was found to be not heavily affected by the speed or the payload, and performed well under the different load cycles compared to the electric counterparts, which can experience reductions in range by approximately 10%.

“The main benefit of the vehicle is the refuelling times are quicker than battery electric vehicles charge times. And of course, unlike internal combustion engines, hydrogen vehicles produce zero emissions,” Gemma Horne, Warranty Controller at Rivus, commented.

Electrification and renewables top McKinsey’s tech trends

McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2023 report has electrification and renewables as the largest of the 15 trends identified in terms of interest and investment.

The survey finds there was a $288 billion equity investment in the area in 2022 and a 27% increase in job postings over the previous year, which is also among the largest recorded for all the trends.

Alongside this climate tech beyond electrification and renewables, such as carbon capture, attracted less interest, with $86 billion equity investment and a modest 8% increase in job postings.

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Other tech trends identified include applied AI, which tops the innovation axis, next-gen software development, cloud and edge computing and web3, these and others are all identical to the previous year.

Except for the one new entrant to the line-up, namely generative AI. McKinsey records generative AI as representing the next frontier for AI and also attributes to providing much of the credit for an observed resurgence of enthusiasm in the first half of 2023 about technology’s potential to catalyse progress in business and society after a tumultuous 2022.

Building upon existing technologies such as applied AI and industrialising machine learning, generative AI has high potential and applicability across most industries, states McKinsey.

Interest in the topic, as gauged by news and internet searches, increased threefold from 2021 to 2022 and generative AI is poised to add as much as $4.4 trillion in economic value from use cases that increase productivity.

DEWA innovates on battery performance

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA)’s Research and Development (R&D) Centre has filed a new patent for an innovation for improving the performance of electrodes in lithium-ion batteries, sodium–sulphur batteries and electrolyte distribution batteries.

This, a low-cost, environmentally friendly method, is achieved by treating the electrodes chemically using a polymer to increase the number of active groups on the surface of the electrodes, which leads to improving their performance.

The patent supports the pilot project for energy storage that DEWA has inaugurated at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park using Tesla’s lithium-ion battery solution. The project has a power capacity of 1.21MW and an energy capacity of 8.61MWh with a life span of up to 10 years.

“DEWA relies on research and innovation to support the development of energy storage technologies and increase the share of clean and renewable energy,” says HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD and CEO of DEWA.

“This supports the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai Net Zero Carbon Emissions Strategy 2050 to provide 100% of Dubai’s total power production capacity from clean energy sources by 2050.”

This pilot project is the second battery energy storage pilot project by DEWA at the solar park. The first project was implemented in collaboration with AMPLEX–NGK to install and test a sodium sulphur energy solution with a power capacity of 1.2MW and an energy capacity of 7.5MWh.

Solar table for gardens

German solar technology innovator Technaxx is launching its latest product – a solar table for householders to place in gardens or on balconies or terraces and which can double both as a table and a solar power generator.

The table, which is approximately 173cmx114cm in size and can seat up to eight people, has a fold-up top that can be adjusted to set angles up to 35o to maximise the solar generation capacity and produce up to 410W peak power.

With it is a pre-assembled micro inverter, which converts the generated solar power into AC and can be easily plugged into a household socket to supply power to the home.

Superfast charging LFP batteries for EVs

A 10 minute charge providing a driving range of 400km and a full charge delivering 700km?

That would satisfy most EV drivers and eliminate range anxiety – and it is claimed to be coming with Chinese battery manufacturing company CATL’s new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery named ‘Shenxing’.

CATL reports leveraging the super-electronic network cathode technology and fully nano-crystallized LFP cathode material to create a super-electronic network, which facilitates the extraction of lithium ions and the rapid response to charging signals.

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Its latest second-generation fast ion ring technology is used to modify the properties of graphite surface, which increases intercalation channels and shortens the intercalation distance for lithium ions, creating an expressway for current conduction.

A new superconducting electrolyte formula, which effectively reduces the viscosity of the electrolyte, resulting in improved conductivity, also has been developed.

Other improvements include reduced resistance of lithium-ion movement, while cell temperature control technology ensures that cells heat up to the optimal operating temperature range rapidly, allowing a 0-80% charge in just 30 minutes in temperature as low as -10°C.

CATL anticipates that mass production of Shenxing will be achieved before year-end and the first vehicles with the battery will be available on the market in the first quarter of next year.

Improving Bitcoin mining efficiency

With Bitcoin mining notoriously energy intensive and miners rushing to adopt greener and more sustainable operations, another alternative, which is being pursued by the London-based Quantum Blockchain Technologies, is to improve the efficiency of the mining itself and thus in turn its energy consumption.

The company’s ‘Method A’, unlike the standard approach of running as many hashes as possible within the available period, decides at the beginning of each block hashing whether to hash using a traditional search or a spaced confined search, with testing demonstrating an approximately 10% in mining speed.

But its ‘Method B’, for which a patent application was recently filed, is even more efficient, based on partial pre-computation on upcoming blocks prior to the current one being closed and guiding the search by deciding where the most promising winning hashes are likely to be found.

With this approach, the number of logic gates on the chip is reduced and the processing of a large number of hashes is avoided to obtain the results in less time.

In this case, there should be a 2.6x improvement in the ability to find a winning hash, compared to standard search, while saving up to 4.3% of energy.

However, its implementation requires a new architecture and the design of a new mining chip.

Setting sail with ‘Windwings’

Mitsubishi Corporation’s ‘Pyxis Ocean’, a 229m long bulk carrier vessel on charter to the global food giant Cargill, has become the first to be fitted with a novel wind propulsion system that could be key for the decarbonisation of shipping.

The two ‘Windwings’, which were designed by BAR Technologies in the EU Horizon 2020 supported initiative, are large wing sails measuring up to 37,5m in height with a 10m wide central component and front and rear 5m wide flaps that can be fitted to the deck of cargo ships, both new and as a retrofit, to harness the power of the wind.

The windwings can rotate and also pivot, right down to deck level, to allow for the differing wind angles and speeds.

With this wind assist, the windwings are expected to deliver average fuel savings of up to 30%.

The ‘Pyxis Ocean’ is currently on its maiden voyage with the windwings from Shanghai, where they were fitted, to Paranagua in Brazil with their performance being closely monitored to further improve their design and operation.

Hundreds of wings are planned to be built over the next few years and BAR Technologies is also researching new builds with improved hydrodynamic hull forms.

DEWA files 3D printing patent

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA)’s Research and Development Centre is something of a pioneer with 3D printing and has just filed a new patent for an innovative build plate and method to detach 3D printed objects automatically.

This is intended to improve the performance of 3D printers by easing the removal of 3D printed objects during the printing process and thereby making it feasible to have a continuous 3D printing operation.

The invention supports DEWA’s intensive efforts to develop advanced infrastructure and specialised software in 3D printing and additive manufacturing, and invest in them to overcome challenges in the energy sector, according to the utility.

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HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, says that the utility supports Dubai’s endeavours to become the global hub for 3D printing by finding innovative solutions and technologies that modernise the manufacture of spare parts in its business.

“We adopt 3D printing as an innovative solution for our internal operations to print spare parts for devices and equipment, in addition to extending the lifespan of our equipment,” he says, adding that DEWA is the first organisation in the GCC to apply metal 3D printing technology using threads and wires.

DEWA reports having achieved a Guinness World Records title for its 3D printed laboratory and previously a patent has been registered for an adhesive device for 3D printers, which automatically distributes the adhesive material on the 3D printing plate, to ensure that the printed material sticks adequately to the build plate.

Harnessing the power of quantum for solar energy harvesting

Northeastern University professor Sijia Dong has been awarded a US Department of Energy grant to explore algorithms for simulations on quantum computers that may further the pursuit of renewable energy sources.

Specifically what Dong wants to do is develop quantum algorithms that can enable quantum chemical simulations of macromolecules that may be leveraged for solar energy harvesting and conversion.

“In photosynthesis, a plant can convert solar energy to make sugar, a chemical that can help the plant survive,” says Dong, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology as well as affiliated faculty of physics and chemical engineering at Northeastern.

“If we can do something like this artificially – convert the solar energy into chemical energy to make materials or useful chemicals – that will be very helpful for society.”

To date, Dong and her team have been using traditional digital computers to simulate the photochemistry of macromolecules and materials that could lead to new forms of clean energy.

However, it is a hard problem computationally and if the simulations can be carried over to a quantum computer, that should greatly accelerate the capability of developing such molecules and materials.

A Samsung Galaxy Ring

This column doesn’t normally cover rumours, but those about Samsung mobile products tend to be quite reliable so we have no hesitation in reporting the likely release of a Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Why a Galaxy Ring is of interest is because early patents indicate that it has potential for smart home integration and to control connected devices.

What we know so far is that a smart ring is almost certainly under development with a possible launch in 2024.

Based on the patents filed, other possible integrations include health tracking, such as heart rate and temperature monitoring, and coupled with XR glasses, finger and hand tracking in XR applications based on their positional information.

The concept of a connected ring isn’t new and the Oura ring as a fitness monitor has been around since 2015.

For Samsung, it would mark the company’s continuous evolution in the wearables market as an adjunct to its mobiles, while potentially providing a significant step up in convenience for smart home enthusiasts.

Kaluza heads ‘down under’

UK headquartered energy software company Kaluza is planning to expand its activities in Australia and New Zealand with an office in Melbourne led up by former London-based client solutions director, Conor Maher-McWilliams.

Over the next 12 months, Kaluza intends to build a local team of experts to support activity in the region.

The team will work closely with Kaluza customer AGL Energy, one of Australia’s largest energy retailers and generators, on the ‘OVO Energy Australia’ joint venture to accelerate the adoption of clean energy solutions across the country and develop new EV and solar propositions for AGL’s customers.

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Kaluza is also expanding its managed charging programme to New Zealand with Meridian Energy. Through this new service, Kaluza will manage the charging of Meridian Energy’s customers’ EVs in response to their needs as well as market signals and pricing data.

Scott Neuman, CEO of Kaluza, described the development as “an important milestone” for the company’s global expansion, which so far has extended to Europe, North America and Japan.

Training for the energy transition

Britain’s Heriot-Watt University, known for its technical training, is launching a new Master of Science degree programme to provide advanced training in the energy transition.

The programme, run from the University’s Orkney campus, is taught both in person and online, with a focus on the technologies, systems, processes and economics, alongside the design of transition projects to move away from fossil fuels and accelerate the integration of renewable energy.

The MSc in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition, to give its full title, has been developed by the mechanical and energy systems engineer Susan Krumdieck and is built around the rapidly growing discipline of ‘transition engineering’, an interdisciplinary approach to change for unsustainable systems across power, transport, industry, real estate and other sectors, according to a statement.

Krumdieck, who hails originally from New Zealand, is Chair of Energy Transition Engineering at Heriot-Watt and her research group has led the development of ‘transition engineering’ as a discipline since the early 2000s.

“If the world is to decarbonise and reach net zero emissions by 2050, whole systems will have to be redesigned and redeveloped, including energy infrastructure, technology, regulation and markets,” she commented.

“A new generation of transition engineering specialists is needed to drive this change – and our MSc ReSET is firmly focused on helping students and professionals develop these vital skills – so they can help to reset global energy systems.”

The MSc programme has four themes: Transition Engineering, Economics and Commercialisation, Renewable Energy Technology and Energy Systems.

Hydrogen trains – before their time?

Germany has been a pioneer with hydrogen-powered trains over the past five years and the rail operator Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LNVG) was the first, a year ago, to launch a network of such trains using Alstom’s Coradia iLint rolling stock.

But now the company has decided that its future – at least for the next generation – is with battery-powered trains, citing their cheaper operating costs.

LNVG is now planning to obtain 102 new units with battery-powered technology, which will progressively replace its diesel rolling stock from 2029 onwards until the last diesel is withdrawn in 2037.

Hydrogen has been billed as the option for emission-free trains on lines that have not been electrified. However, an advantage of the battery-powered trains is that they can run on both electrified lines, drawing on the power and recharging batteries via the pantograph, and non-electrified lines using the battery power with charging from purpose-built charging islands.

LNVG has not specified what the cost differences are or where they arise. But like hydrogen for road transport, undoubtedly the ‘chicken and egg’ of infrastructure availability vs demand is likely to be a factor.

With hydrogen-powered trains under test in other locations such as Canada, their potential is very much a space to watch.

Acoustic spalling – key to cheaper solar PV?

III-V solar cells grown out of periodic table groups III and V alloys such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) are the most efficient but also costly, which has limited their use to applications such as powering satellites in space.

But that may be about to change, according to US DOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers, who say that the application of sound waves in a new process called ‘acoustic spalling’ holds the potential for significantly reducing their manufacturing costs.

The key is the ability to repeatedly reuse the substrate upon which the cells are grown. Whereas existing technology uses a sacrificial etch layer, which allows a cell to be lifted off a GaAs substrate so that the substrate can be used again, the process is time consuming and leaves behind a residue that requires an expensive polishing step.

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In contrast, spalling, which uses sound waves to control the fracture, takes seconds, with the fracture within the substrate nearly parallel to its surface and allowing the cell to be easily removed, revealing a new, contaminant-free surface from within the substrate that does not require polishing.

“This is super promising for the substrate reuse,” said Kevin Schulte, a scientist in NREL’s High-Efficiency Crystalline PV group and lead author of the study.

“This alone will not make III-V solar cells cost-effective, but as part of this portfolio of research, we’re trying address cost from multiple different angles.”

The researchers were able to make a cell on a previously spalled substrate with an NREL-certified efficiency of 26.9% – similar to that from a new substrate.

However, additional research is needed to determine how many times the substrate can be reused after being subjected to acoustic spalling.

Quantum computing to advance fuel cells for e-mobility

Fuel cells are an emerging option for future mobility, with their competitiveness dependent on improving performance and reducing costs.

This in turn depends on a deeper understanding of the chemical processes involved but modelling is complex and challenging. Moreover, with the quantum properties of the chemical mechanisms involved, they are a good candidate for quantum computers – which is why the BMW Group and Airbus have teamed up with quantum technology company Quantinuum.

The three companies have now developed a hybrid quantum-classical workflow to speed up such research using quantum computers and have reported successfully modelling the oxygen reduction reaction, which converts hydrogen and oxygen into water and electricity in a fuel cell. It is relatively slow and requires a large amount of platinum catalyst, so there is great interest and value in better understanding the underlying mechanisms involved in the reaction.

Dr Peter Lehnert, vice-president, Research Technologies at BMW Group, says that circularity and sustainable mobility are putting us on the quest for new materials to create more efficient products and shape the future user experience.

“Being able to simulate material properties to relevant chemical accuracy with the benefits from the accelerating quantum computing hardware is giving us just the right tools for more speed in innovation for this decisive domain.”

The companies intend to investigate various industrial challenges and believe the approach could have wide ranging benefits, such as for metal-air batteries among others.

Toyota adapts fuel cell vehicle tech for the Moon

Toyota is working on a project to provide its regenerative fuel cell technology, evolved from that developed for its road vehicles, to power a pressurised lunar rover, nicknamed the ‘Lunar cruiser’.

A regenerative fuel cell is a system that provides both power and storage. During the day, powered by solar PV, the system would produce hydrogen and oxygen and then at night, this would be converted to provide power and water.

The system is considered ideal for lunar applications, drawing on local water ice resources but also enabling operations to continue during the long, 14-day lunar night.

Toyota is partnering on the initiative with Mitsubishi, which is working on the Lupex (lunar polar exploration) concept for an earlier phase rover to investigate inter alia the availability of usable water resources on the Moon.

Both initiatives are being undertaken for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which is contributing to NASA’s Artemis mission and is expected to supply the Lunar Cruiser for a 2029 launch date.

The Lunar Cruiser is being developed to normally carry a crew of two – four in a contingency or unmanned – and to have a life span of 10 years and a travel distance of 10,000km, with an off-road driving performance aimed to meet the varied environments on the Moon, including regolith and rocks and craters with their varying slopes.

Energy metaverse – the building blocks securely in place

The metaverse may seem very conceptual to many at this stage but it is coming in the energy sector – and coming big, according to a new report from Guidehouse Insights, which estimates that over the next decade global investment in core technologies will grow from just over $6 billion in 2022 to nearly $80 billion in 2031 – a compound annual growth rate of no less than 33%.

Core energy metaverse technologies include digital twins, AI and machine learning, unmanned aerial systems and drones, extended reality and blockchain-based applications.

“When the energy metaverse is fully realised – admittedly more than a decade away – utilities and O&G concerns can envision a day when employee onboarding and training take place via XR in a metaverse-based training centre,” says Richelle Elberg, principal research analyst with Guidehouse Insights.

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“Much like it was difficult in the early 1990s to imagine all the ways a smartphone or the internet would change how business is conducted, in 2023 it can be hard to see just how radically metaverse technology stands to change the operating dynamics of energy industry verticals.”

Potential examples cited by Guidehouse include utility storefronts in metaverse malls that could provide virtual customers with real-world benefits such as product comparisons and purchasing, energy use analysis and evaluation of a premises’ suitability for solar.

In-demand specialised experts in a field could work on a virtual offshore rig, advising onsite workers how to address a problem. And drones could conduct ongoing inspections of critical assets, feeding real-time data into digital twins equipped with advanced AI to predict and prevent wildfires or methane emissions.

Flexible solar panels coming to market

Solar panels only a few millimetres thick that are claimed integrable on all kinds of surfaces are about to become available from the Belgian startup EnFoil (derived from ‘Energy enabling foil’).

The panels, which are based on copper-indium-gallium-selenium technology, are the outcome of years of research by the Hasselt University and microelectronics research organisation imec within the Energyville collaboration, with EnFoil a spin-off from the two organisations.

Potential applications range from buildings to tents and swimming pool covers, with what is said a pliable but robust format manufacturable in all shapes and sizes and offering greater flexibility than the current mostly flat and predetermined size formats.

“As a result, the technology was mainly limited to exclusive construction projects or as an expensive extra option for the roof of your car. With Enfoil, we are changing this,” says Marc Meuris, CTO.

He adds that talks with industry to bring EnFoil’s solar films to market are “in full swing”, with the current focus mainly on the logistics sector, where the proposal is to integrate the materials on the roofs and sidewalls of trucks to power their sensors and track and trace systems.

An edible rechargeable battery

Children’s toys, gastrointestinal tract disease diagnosis and treatment and food quality monitoring are considered some potential areas where edible electronics would be of interest.

As a step towards this researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology have created a first totally edible and rechargeable battery.

With inspiration from the biochemical redox reactions that happen in the body and materials consumed as part of the daily diet, the battery utilises riboflavin or vitamin B2 as anode and the plant pigment quercetin as cathode, along with activated charcoal to increase the electrical conductivity and a water-based electrolyte.

The separator was made from nori seaweed, the kind found in sushi.

Then, electrodes were encapsulated in beeswax from which two food-grade gold contacts – the foil used by pastry chefs – on a cellulose derived support come out.

The battery cell operates at 0.65V, a voltage low enough not to create problems in the human body when ingested, and can provide current of 48μA for 12 minutes or a few microamps for more than an hour – enough to supply power to small electronic devices, such as low power LEDs, for a limited time.

Ivan Ilic, who co-authored the study, said the edible battery is also very interesting for the energy storage community.

“Building safer batteries, without usage of toxic materials, is a challenge we face as battery demand soars. While our edible batteries won’t power electric cars, they are a proof that batteries can be made from safer materials than current Li-ion batteries. We believe they will inspire other scientists to build safer batteries for a truly sustainable future.”

Cybersecurity labelling introduced in US

A cybersecurity certification and labelling programme, the Cyber Trust Mark, has been launched in the US as a voluntary initiative for manufacturers to indicate the cyber worthiness of their devices.

The programme, which was proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, will be applicable to common devices such as smart refrigerators, smart microwaves, smart televisions, smart climate control systems, smart fitness trackers, etc.

Several major manufacturers and retailers have already made commitments to the programme, including Amazon, Best Buy, Google, LG Electronics, Logitech and Samsung.

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Under the proposed programme, which is expected to be up and running in 2024, consumers can expect to see a distinct shield logo applied to products meeting established cybersecurity criteria.

With this, they can then make informed decisions on the relative security of products they choose to purchase and retailers will be encouraged to prioritise labelled products on their shelves and online.

A national registry of certified devices with specific and comparable security information also is planned.

While cybersecurity certification schemes are not uncommon, the consumer labelling proposal appears to be a first and will likely be replicated for other smart devices and in other regions.

In parallel with the launch of the US Cyber Trust Mark programme the US Department of Energy announced an initiative to work with national labs and industry partners to research and develop cybersecurity labelling requirements for smart meters and power inverters as essential components of the smart grid.

Detecting EV charging vulnerabilities

Idaho National Laboratory intern Jake Guidry has developed a cybersecurity research tool that could improve the security of electric vehicle charging.

The AcCCS tool, a combination of hardware and software that emulates the electronic communications that occur between an EV and an extreme fast charger during the charging process, provides access capabilities through the CCS (combined charging system) communications protocol.

The AcCCS hardware includes a charging port and a charging cable, both of which can be plugged into real-world equipment.

No charging power flows through the device. If one plugs the AcCCS into an EV, the vehicle’s computer thinks the battery is receiving a charge. If the tool is plugged into a 350kW fast charging station, the station thinks it is charging an electric vehicle.

“It’s basically acting like one to trick the other,” says Guidry, a master’s degree student in mechanical engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who explains that with it not only can normal operations be skewed but also cyber attacks can be introduced.

In a demonstration, researchers used AcCCS to hack a charging station and a vehicle.

Future experiments should help them to develop best practice recommendations for the industry.

Vortex rings may speed nuclear fusion

Vortex rings – those rings of smoke that are the aspiration of novice cigarette smokers – may hold a key to advancing fusion energy as well as research on supernovae as the most explosive objects in the universe.

Nuclear fusion is the process of pushing atoms together until they merge. But part of the problem is that the fuel can’t be neatly compressed and instabilities cause the formation of jets that penetrate into the hotspot, with the fuel spurting out between them – similar to that of the juice of an orange that is squashed in a hand.

Modelling of the phenomenon by researchers at the University of Michigan has shown that the vortex rings that form at the leading edge of these jets are mathematically similar to smoke rings as well as the plasma rings that fly off the surface of a supernova.

Michael Wadas, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, explains that in a supernova the vortex rings move outward from the collapsing start whereas in fusion it moves inward, disrupting the stability of the burning fuel and reducing the efficiency of the reaction.

With their findings, the researchers hope to be able to understand the limits of the energy that a vortex ring can carry, and how much fluid can be pushed before the flow becomes turbulent and harder to model as a result.

In ongoing work, the team is validating the vortex ring model with experiments.

Lunar power satellite conceived

With the European Space Agency’s Solaris initiative to develop space-based solar power for transmission to Earth just getting underway, the organisation also is starting to investigate the potential for space-based solar to deliver power to the Moon.

With support from ESA’s innovation programme, the Swiss startup Astrostrom has developed a design concept of a ‘Greater Earth Lunar Power Station’ that could be constructed on the Moon mainly from resources there and that could deliver microwave power down to receivers on the lunar surface, for example for powering a base there.

The design features V-shaped Moon-produced iron pyrite crystal-based solar panels with integrated antennas, deployed in a helix configuration extending more than a square kilometre end to end and yielding an estimated continuous 23MW of energy for lunar surface operations.

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The station, located at a determined point around 61,350 km from the lunar surface, would also be inhabited, serving both as a gateway between Earth and Moon operations with artificial gravity for adaptive health purposes, as well as potentially an attractive tourist destination.

The concept could equally be adapted for the development of Earth facing solar power satellites.

Launching large numbers of gigawatt-scale solar power satellites into orbit from the surface of the Earth could run into the problem of a lack of launch capacity and a lunar-made solar power satellite would require around five times less velocity change to place into geostationary Earth orbit compared to satellites launched from Earth itself.

According to the study the power station could be achieved without requiring any technological breakthroughs, with most of the core technologies for lunar surface mining, beneficiation and fabrication operations already in use or under development on Earth today.

Moreover – and despite the substantial engineering development required – the solar power satellites produced on the Moon would not only be cheaper than any comparable Earth-developed solar power satellite, but the electricity they generated for Earth would also be cost-competitive with any terrestrial power alternative.

Harvesting electricity from air

If new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is anything to go by, almost any material could be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air.

The secret, according to the researchers, lies in being able to pepper the material with nanopores, or small holes, less than 100nm in diameter – less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.

This number corresponds to the ‘mean free path’ of water molecules when suspended in air. An energy harvester made from a thin layer of material filled with nanopores smaller than 100nm would let water molecules pass from the upper to the lower part of the material, but as the pores are so small, the water molecules would easily bump into the pore’s edge as they pass through the thin layer.

This means that the upper part of the layer would be bombarded with many more charge-carrying water molecules than the lower part, creating a charge imbalance, thereby effectually create a battery and one that runs as long as there is any humidity in the air.

“Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water,” says Jun Yao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, and the work’s senior author.

“Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt – but we don’t know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning. What we’ve done is to create a human-built, small-scale cloud that produces electricity for us predictably and continuously so that we can harvest it.”

Since humidity is ever present, a harvester should be able to run 24/7, rain or shine, day or night and whether or not the wind blows.

Moreover, as the thickness is so tiny, many thousands could be stacked to create a device capable of delivering kilowatt-level power.

Solar PV for agriculture

With the need to install renewables in different locations, French solar energy developer TSE has come up with the concept of PV canopies for installation in agricultural settings.

In 2022, the company installed its first agrovoltaics pilot site of 3ha in north central France, comprised of a PV shading system with a capacity of 2.4MWp – equivalent to the power consumption of a community of 1,350 inhabitants – over large-scale crops of soya, wheat, forage rye, winter barley and rapeseed.

The project came into being because of production limitations on the farm after suffering from hot and arid summers for more than a decade.

The agricultural canopy is composed of a large shading structure equipped with solar panels with tracker systems fixed on cables 5m above the fields. A supervision system controls the orientation of the panels, depending on the weather conditions and to completely automate the acquisition of operational data.

With the rotating shades, the system is able to mitigate climatic conditions in the summer season by lowering the temperature under the shade.

The pilot is a 9-year demonstrator and three similar projects are reported under construction along with a further 12 in the development phase.

Energy management in smart homes

With energy management becoming integrated into popular home offerings, such as Samsung’s SmartThings app which can connect to users’ smart meters, the concept of the smart home is fast gathering ground.

However, many remain unaware of its potential, according to Samsung. In a recent survey of British consumers, the tech giant found that almost three-quarters were unaware of being able to place smart buttons around the home to allow one to easily turn on or off any connected appliances and two-thirds were unaware of being able to integrate the management of energy devices or create a safer home environment.

Nevertheless, the survey found that after reading more information about heat pumps, almost one-third said they were likely to consider installing a heat pump in the next 12 months.

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This is broadly in line with the four in ten found in another survey to be considering purchasing energy-efficient solutions, such as solar panels and battery storage.

James Kitto, Vice President for Samsung UK Mobile said there’s never been a more revolutionary time for connected living.

“Smart home technology is more sophisticated and intuitive than ever before, empowering people and improving lives in ways unimaginable even five years ago – from breaking down barriers around accessibility, enabling consumers maintain healthier lifestyles and helping save money, the possibilities are endless.”

Rail-based mobile storage

In addition to fixed storage, interest is growing in the potential of mobile storage, particularly to support the grid in the face of the more extreme weather events that are occurring.

The question is how to deliver it and now a group of scientists in the US at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have suggested that the country’s rail system could serve as a nationwide backup transmission grid over which containerised batteries could be shared among regions to meet demand peaks, relieve transmission congestion and increase resilience in cases of low-frequency high-impact events.

According to the scientists writing in the journal Nature Energy, compared to new transmission lines and stationary battery capacity, deploying ‘rail-based mobile energy storage’ as they term it could save the power sector upwards of $300/kWyear and $85/kWyear, respectively.

They estimate that a single train could carry 1GWh of battery storage, and that batteries could be moved between most ISO regions within a week without disrupting regular freight operations.

They also note that there are no known technical barriers to excluding such mobile storage from grid participation.

However, addressing interconnection challenges and revising regulatory frameworks would be necessary for deployment at scale.

Energy harvesting for remote power

Energy delivery for services in inaccessible and remote locations can be challenging, especially with the need for sustainability and the move away from traditional sources such as diesel power.

In the clean water industry, the baseline solution for powering the IoT revolution has been low capacity, single use, unrecyclable batteries.

But British startup Vysion Technologies believes the answer lies in energy harvesting.

With an award from the national water sector regulator Ofwat, Vysion Technologies is aiming to develop an advanced micro-turbine design that harvests energy from the water flow.

Another company that has been awarded funding from Ofwat is the Fish Friendly Hydropower Company, which is developing a pico power floating hydropower turbine generator made from high-density recyclable polymer

The PicoStream as it is named is intended for easy installation in remote locations.

Depending on progress in this first phase, these companies should be in line for funding to go on to develop and pilot their concepts.

Meanwhile the US startup Aigen has developed a solar powered robotics platform that can weed farmers’ fields and provide real time data on the status of the field and the crops therein.

According to Aigem such is the demand among agriculturalists that 2024 and 2025 preorders for the service sold out in 1 day!

“Farmers tell us again and again that weeds are the number one problem they face. So, that’s where we’re starting: developing a solution for farmers to immediately reduce their costs and get rid of weeds, all while growing healthier crops,” said Kenny Lee, Aigen’s co-founder and CEO.

A new type of energy community in Finland

“A new type of energy community” is what the Finnish energy distributor Caruna calls an initiative that has been launched with the Karelia University of Applied Sciences and electrification specialist North Karelian Sähkö in the southwestern city of Joensuu.

The pilot, which is expected to last two years, involves two student residences located apart with one fitted with solar panels but the energy generated shared between both to form a virtual energy community.

According to Caruna’s Innovation Manager Verneri Kohonen, the Joensuu pilot is aimed to ensure that market operators have the ability and tools to implement a virtual energy community with the existing infrastructure. At the same time, experience will be gained on how a virtual energy community serves customers.

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“We want to encourage the acquisition of renewable energy sources and the growth of renewable production in order to achieve Finland’s climate goals,” he says.

Previously such an approach has not been possible as current legislation only allows energy communities for properties located at the same address and with the same electricity connection.

Such energy communities have been growing since the legislation was introduced in 2021 but the possibility of virtual energy communities with sites located at different addresses would open up their potential even further.

The student housing operator Joensuu Elli has 45 residential properties in Caruna’s electricity network, 14 of which have solar panels, and the ultimate aim in the pilot is to test the forming of all into a single energy community.

Board North America’s first hydrogen train in Quebec

The Quebec rail operator Réseau Charlevoix has launched North America’s first green hydrogen powered train and is currently taking bookings through to the end of September.

The two carriage Coradia iLint train from Alstom runs from Parc de la Chute Montmorency in Quebec City approximately 2 hours along the St Lawrence River to the city of Baie-St-Paul.

The Coradia iLint was introduced as the world’s first hydrogen train by Alstom in 2016 and went into first commercial service in Germany in 2018. Subsequently it has clocked up some 220,000km and orders for 41 trainsets in Europe.

The initiative, which has received support from the government of Quebec, was initiated by Alstom with the aim to better assess with the train in commercial operation the subsequent steps for the development of an ecosystem for hydrogen propulsion technology and its penetration into the North American market.

According to Alstom the Coradia iLint, with a top speed of 140km/h, has the acceleration and braking performance of a standard regional diesel train but without the noise and emissions. In September 2022 the train achieved a recorded distance of 1,175km without refuelling.

Photosynthesis for lunar and Martian life support

Photosynthesis is a well known biological process on Earth, essential for plant growth and carbon removal from the atmosphere, and also is emerging as an option for hydrogen production.

Scientists are hoping to be able to use the same artificial photosynthesis approach in space with a range of possible uses in mind from powering rockets to complementing life support systems on the Moon and Mars.

In a recent paper in the journal Nature Communications, scientists from the University of Warwick and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have evaluated the performance of semiconductor based artificial intelligence systems in lunar and Martian conditions.

They find that tandem-junction photoabsorber cells are the most effective configurations for these environments when examining realistic long-term solar-to-chemical conversion efficiencies, whereas solar driven gas diffusion electrode devices are not able to reach their full potential.

In particular lunar photoelectric cell water splitting possesses a very high capability for hydrogen and oxygen production, although for Mars coupling to solar concentrators would be required due to the lower solar irradiance at its further distance.

Katharina Brinkert, of the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry, believes the technology could provide ample oxygen production and carbon dioxide recycling on both the Moon and Mars.

“Human space exploration faces the same challenges as the green energy transition on Earth: both require sustainable energy sources. With sunlight being so abundantly available in space, we have shown how this source could be used to harvest energy – much like plants back on Earth – for life support systems for long-term space travel.”

While the research has shown that the application of these devices could go beyond Earth and potentially contribute to the realisation of human space exploration, there are obviously many challenges and research to undertake before they become a reality, not least the ability to deploy them in those harsh environments.

For this a potential research environment is the terrestrial polar regions, where such devices have been demonstrated to work.

Energy Web in Polkadot link up

Energy Web, which has led the development of the blockchain in the energy sector, is looking to Polkadot for its next generation technology.

Polkadot is a platform that unites specialised blockchains or ‘parachains’, such as Energy Web’s, opening up the possibility for interoperability across these and providing the basis for an interoperable decentralised web.

While Energy Web has yet to release full details of its plans – and we’ll report in due course – the organisation has indicated the move will allow it to create the framework for its new Energy Web X as the next generation energy sector blockchain technology.

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A key feature is the implementation of so-called ‘worker nodes’ or decentralised groups of computers that perform work off-chain that can be deployed independently but coordinated in cohesive networks.

Jesse Morris, CEO of Energy Web, anticipates that the shift to Energy Web X will enable partner companies, such as Shell, Vodafone and Volkswagen, to accelerate their decarbonisation strategies.

“To achieve the [clean energy] goal, we decided to search for a blockchain platform that offers real enterprise-grade security and seamless upgradeability to ensure a safe and future-proof environment. Polkadot excels on both of these fronts with its shared security model and best-in-class core technology.”

Energy Web is focused currently on two key areas, one to help electric utilities digitise and integrate distributed energy resources to the grid and the second to bring transparency and verifiability to emerging green product supply chains, including 24/7 matched renewable electricity.

By the end of Q1, a total of 42 parachains had joined Polkadot, representing sectors such as decentralised finance, privacy, social media, sustainability, NFTs, gaming and the metaverse.

By leveraging each other’s strengths to unlock new use cases, parachains help projects expand at scale while enjoying the shared security advantages provided by Polkadot.

ChatGPT comes to utility water management

In what is believed to be a first US headquartered water platform provider Klir has launched generative AI capabilities through the latest iteration of its Klir Comply platform.

Using Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI service to provide access to powerful language models, including ChatGPT-4, water professionals are able to receive insights into their utility’s data through an AI-powered chatbot while benefiting from the scalability, reliability, performance and security of Azure, Klir says.

By blending the conversational benefits of ChatGPT with each utility’s water quality management and compliance data – e.g. “Is our water compliant today?” or “Draft me a summary of last week’s water quality” – the AI function simplifies tedious but critical tasks while ensuring internal data stays secure and private at all times, the company asserts.

In what is stated as a nod of Klir’s Irish roots, the chatbot is represented by ‘Boots’, an Irish Water Spaniel “trained to sniff out key data”.

And ‘Boots’ allows users to query millions of data points within the utility’s private internal data with features including integrating administrative tasks with sampling results data, providing predictive water quality analysis, generating quantitative insights into sampling results and identifying correlations between data.

“Klir’s AI function sits as a layer on top of what is already the most comprehensive software for water quality and compliance management on the market,” declares David Lynch, CEO of Klir.

“To be able to ask complex compliance water management questions and immediately receive accurate answers is seismic and will help organisations around the world to slow the global water crisis.”

Along with introducing the ChatGPT function, Klir also has unveiled a new ‘maturity model’ that assesses and prioritises the key operational risks water utilities face.

Metaverse could reduce greenhouse gas emissions

New research from scientists at Cornell University suggest that the growing metaverse sector could reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 10Gt CO2e by 2050 and lower the global surface temperature by up to 0.02^oC before the end of the century.

The findings emerged from AI-based modelling of data from several key sectors, technology, energy, environment and business, to anticipate the growth of metaverse usage and the impact of its most promising applications including remote work, virtual traveling, distance learning, gaming and non-fungible tokens.

The researchers projected metaverse expansion through 2050 along three different trajectories – slow, nominal and fast – and they looked to previous technologies, such as television, the internet and the iPhone, for insight into how quickly that adoption might occur.

They also factored in the amount of energy that increasing usage would consume.

The modelling suggested that within 30 years, the technology would be adopted by more than 90% of the population, which was more rapidly than expected, and with limiting business travel generating the largest environmental benefit.

“Think about the decarbonisation of our transportation sector,” says Fengqi You, professor in Energy Systems Engineering in Cornell Engineering and senior author of the research.

“Electric vehicles work, but you can’t drive a car to London or Tokyo. Do I really have to fly to Singapore for a conference tomorrow? That will be an interesting decision-making point for some stakeholders to consider as we move forward with these technologies with human–machine interface in a 3D virtual world.”

Currently, two of the biggest industry drivers of metaverse development are Meta (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft, both of which contributed to the Cornell study. Meta has been focusing on individual experiences such as gaming, while Microsoft specialises in business solutions, including remote conferencing and distance learning.

Ultimately however, the metaverse can only do so much, You points out.

“There are so many sectors in this economy. You cannot count on the metaverse to do everything. But it could do a little bit if we leverage it in a reasonable way.”

Microchips get ‘common interest’ status in Europe

The microelectronics and communication technologies project has been named an ‘Important project of common European interest’ (IPCEI) by the European Commission, which will mean a boosting of research and development into new efficient chips, processors and sensors for the many applications in which these are used.

The project involves 56 companies across the EU with a proposed 68 projects with an investment expected to exceed €21 billion (US$23 billion).

Specifically, there are four workstreams.

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The first, named ‘Sense’, will focus on developing novel sensors able to collect relevant analogue signals from the environment and translate them into digital data.

The second, ‘Think’, will focus on processors and memory chips for the processing and storage of data.

The third, ‘Act’, will focus on new designs and innovative materials for components.

Then the fourth, ‘Communicate’, will work to deliver novel technologies necessary for communication that has been processed under the ‘Think’ workstream.

The project expects to deliver the first products resulting to the market in 2025.

Rocks for energy storage

Investigations by Tanzanian researchers of soapstone and granite rocks from regions in the centre of their country suggest they may have potential for thermal energy storage in conjunction with concentrated solar power generation and solar drying applications.

But not all rocks, even of the same type, were found to be equal in their properties. The soapstone from the Craton group was found to have the best performance in terms of thermal capacity and conductivities of the samples investigated.

But while the soapstone from the adjacent to the south Usagaran belt was found to have the second-best thermal capacity and conductivities, also it was found to be susceptible to deterioration at elevated temperatures and with its lowest mechanical strength is the easiest to disintegrate.

Conversely, the Usagaran granite was found to have better properties than the Craton granite, but with its low thermal capacity and conductivity needing a high-temperature change to store an equal amount of energy to the soapstone rocks.

Further experimentation is needed on the thermal energy performance of these rocks, the researchers say, but their findings so far point the way to potentially lower cost solar power and solar drying options, particularly in equatorial countries such as Tanzania where energy access is limited.

How fusion research could speed up deep space travel

Field-reversed configuration, a form of fusion in which the hot plasma is confined by a magnetic field reversed to that applied externally, is one of the options under investigation for power generation.

But it is also being adapted as a potential option for rocket engines and now the UK-based Pulsar Fusion has entered into a research partnership with Princeton Satellite Systems in the US to investigate the concept further.

Specifically, the aim is to apply machine learning to study data from Princeton’s field reversed PFRC-2 reactor to improve understanding of the behaviour of super-heated plasma in a rocket engine configuration and to determine its behaviour when emitted as exhaust particles.

Richard Dinan, founder and CEO of Pulsar Fusion, explains that fusion offers 1,000 times the power of the conventional ion thrusters currently used in orbit and could satisfy the need for faster propulsion in the growing space economy.

NASA is making plans already for trips to Mars and direct fusion drive would open up the possibility of speeding up the travel time and to go beyond. For example, with a single DFD drive, a trip to Jupiter would take only one year and to Saturn only two years, compared with decades with conventional engines.

“In short, if humans can achieve fusion for energy, then fusion propulsion in space is inevitable,” says Dinan – and he believes that fusion propulsion will be demonstrated in space decades before fusion can be harnessed for energy on Earth.

Deutsche Telekom joins up with Energy Web

That the mobile telcos are becoming increasingly important players with not only communications but broader solutions in the energy sector has been highlighted once again with the joining up to the Energy Web Foundation by Germany’s Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary Deutsche Telekom MMS.

Energy Web, a developer of blockchain, aka web3, technologies for distributed energy resource applications, relies on its ecosystem of sector and IT players to validate the EW Chain.

Deutsche Telekom MMS is the IT service and consulting subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom with a range of services for the energy sector and growing interests in the IoT and web3.

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Dirk Röder, Head of Deutsche Telekom’s Blockchain Solutions Centre, says the collaboration shows that blockchain technology can be an important tool in the fight against climate change.

“Deutsche Telekom is not only securing the energy grid, but also accelerating progress towards climate targets while promoting renewable energies,” he asserts.

Jesse Morris, CEO of Energy Web, adds: “Established, trusted digital infrastructure providers like Deutsche Telekom are key players when it comes to helping some of the world’s largest energy companies digitise in order to manage increasingly renewable and complex energy systems.”

Energy Web is by no means the only web3 participation of Deutsche Telekom MMS and just days before the company announced itself as a validator of the Polygon public blockchain. Polygon’s is an Ethereum-based ecosystem offering a range of solutions for developers.

‘Green’ EV batteries from Innolith

Swiss-German battery technology developer Innolith has announced the commercialisation of a new battery technology for electric vehicles and other e-mobility applications that is designed to cut costs and increase vehicle range.

The I-state battery technology is based on a high voltage, high conductivity liquid inorganic electrolyte. This higher voltage than traditional lithium-ion cells enables higher utilisation of cathode capacity through the usage of nearly 100% of the available lithium versus 80% for the Li-ion.

This in turn enables a significant reduction of cathode metals used in the cell and thereby reduces both the costs and weight of the EV battery pack – the latter by about 8%.

The I-state technology is also stated to enable stable cycling of manganese-containing cathodes with reduced content of the expensive nickel and under development are Mn-rich chemistries.

Innolith intends to license the technology through partnerships with automotive, industrial and battery companies and MoUs have been signed with five customers so far for a production requirement of 100MWh per year.

These MOUs are for applications across the off-road, aviation and mining sectors, and include an agreement with Xerotech, a leader in battery pack technology for heavy-duty non-road mobile machinery.

Innolith also has announced working closely with three of the 10 largest car companies and recently signing an MOU with one of the leading EV manufacturers.

6G – all about energy efficiency

While 5G is still emerging in many countries, the industry is already looking forward to a post-2030 6G technology, with new levels of capacity and latency that will support the imaging and awareness technologies that underpin the metaverse.

The Next G Alliance, which was formed to advance North American developments in 6G, has identified two key areas for connectivity.

One is for needs in areas such as massive and energy efficient collection of Internet of Things data, artificial intelligence/machine learning, optimisation for new classes of device, increased interoperability across public and private networks, and seamless experiences linking terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks to extend coverage.

The second is to enable new service offerings, with examples including sensing and centimetre accuracy positioning and tracking services, which could enable applications such as precise autonomous coordination between farm machinery and vehicles or the supervision of dementia patients living in their communities.

Energy applications are envisaged primarily within the environment of smart cities in areas such as energy supply but underlying all applications is the need for energy-efficient devices and sensors.

For example, the introduction of zero-energy IoT devices within the 6G timeframe will increase proliferation and device density and by orders of magnitude compared to the present. This in turn is likely to make cellular IoT an obvious choice for many developers, something not conceivable in previous generations of wireless communications systems, the Alliance has stated.

Li-S batteries vs Li-ion

Australian battery technology company Li-S Energy has announced the development of its first 20-layer battery cells utilising third-generation semi-solid state lithium sulphur battery technology.

Key benefits of the technology the company highlights include a 45% improvement in volumetric energy density reaching 540Wh/l, a higher gravimetric energy density of over 400Wh/kg and enhanced safety with the use of a low flammability electrolyte.

This performance is nearly double the gravimetric energy density and a comparable volumetric energy density compared to current lithium-ion cells, the company states. Thus, in practical terms, this means Li-S battery cells are now the same size as existing Li-ion batteries but half the weight.

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Li-S envisages that its new Gen3 cells, which take advantage of the company’s patented boron nitride nanotubes and Li-nanomesh within the cell construction, will be of particular interest for use in drones and other e-aviation applications – a market in which the company already is established and has estimated will exceed $32 billion per year by 2035.

Iron in the fire – and on the Moon?

In forest fires, it is well known that fire can jump from one tree to the next when the temperature is hot enough for combustion – a phenomenon known as discrete burning that otherwise rarely occurs naturally on Earth.

In order to understand the process in more detail scientists have been investigating the burning of iron dust in the zero gravity environment of space, where the iron particles are able to float and ignite discreetly.

From the use of high-speed imaging capturing the phenomenon, they have produced models showing the ideal conditions to burn the fuel on Earth – and from this, it has been possible to build practical iron-burning furnaces.

The advantage of burning iron is down to chemistry. Essentially, burning fuel is the process of transforming a material by adding oxygen atoms and with iron, the leftover product after combustion is iron oxide, or rust. That can easily be collected and processed to remove the oxygen and return it as iron. Thus, by using electricity from sustainable sources, iron could become a circular, endlessly recyclable fuel.

A demonstration plant using iron as its fuel source is up and running in Budel, near Eindhoven in The Netherlands, by the Dutch startup Metalot, that can produce 1MW of steam in a unit that stands in a warehouse.

Scaled up such an iron power plant could produce much more energy but the technology also could hold potential for use on the Moon, the European Space Agency has suggested. Using solar energy, aluminium and silicon powders can be produced from lunar minerals, and hydrogen and oxygen can be harnessed from lunar ice.

The hydrogen can then be used to convert lunar dust that is high in iron and titanium to produce water and iron powder. The metallic powders and oxygen from the water ice can be used as propellants for rockets or ground transportation and the water by-product could even be used as drinking water.

Greenland rock flour for carbon capture

The application of ground silicate minerals to agricultural soils has been proposed as a method for taking up CO2 by enhancing the weathering rate of these minerals through their exposure to soil acids.

But a new study by Danish researchers suggests that glacial rock flour, a finely grained material formed from rock ground in the glacial erosion process, may be a cheaper and more practical alternative as it is abundantly available and avoids the need for energy intensive grinding.

Like the ground silicate minerals, glacial rock flour has previously been shown to improve agricultural yields in weathered and nutrient-deficient soils. However, the Danish researchers have found that it is also effective for sequestering CO2.

Using glacial rock flour from Greenland, the researchers found that applied with an application to an acidic, sandy soil in Denmark, over a three-year period the estimated CO2 uptake was of a similar order of magnitude to earlier estimates for ground basalt.

The researchers note that their estimate does not take into account emissions due to extraction, transportation and application and these would need to be thoroughly accounted for to ensure the uptake due to weathering outweighs them, although with transportation being progressively decarbonised, those are likely to become less of a factor.

Approximately 1 billion tonnes of glacial rock flour are deposited annually on Greenland. For the researchers, the main issue that still requires further research is the need to ‘ground truth’ their protocol for calculating the CO2 uptake.

Novel water leak detection

By 2030 Britain’s water industry is required to reduce leakage by 1 billion l/day to ensure future water supplies, which in turn requires a step change in innovation in current leak detection tools.

Two new projects are set to tackle this issue with funding from Britain’s water regulator Ofwat’s innovation ‘Water Breakthrough Challenge’ fund.

Severn Trent Water is leading an initiative to use fibre optic cables adjacent to water mains as leak sensors. While the concept, which uses unused optical fibre strands, aka ‘dark fibre’, has already been demonstrated, the next phase is focussed on proving it at scale as well as building industry confidence to bring the technology to market.

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SES Water is investigating a complementarity approach, with what it has named a ‘universal access point for water’. Part of tackling leakage is an accurate understanding of the condition of the water mains and the ability to carry out inspections and repairs without the need for expensive and disruptive excavations. The project is aimed to design such a universal access point with a standardised entry for use for inserting cameras, leak location arrays, repair solutions, autonomous robotic solutions or a host of other devices.

“We’re really excited to be developing the universal access point, which will enable water companies to reduce water leakage and manage their current buried asset base far more effectively,” says Jeremy Heath, Innovation Manager at SES Water.

An EV battery for all seasons

As electric vehicles (EVs) have become more widespread drivers have increasingly observed a drop in performance in the winter, as have other users of electronic devices with lithium-ion batteries such as cameras.

The issue is attributable to the electrolyte starting to freeze in sub-zero temperatures. But this may soon be a thing of the past with the development by a team of scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories of what is effectively an anti-freeze electrolyte with fluorine.

In testing with laboratory cells, the team’s fluorinated electrolyte retained stable energy storage capacity for 400 charge-discharge cycles at -20oC. Even at that sub-zero temperature, the capacity was equivalent to that of a cell with a conventional carbonate-based electrolyte at room temperature.

The team also determined at the atomic scale why their electrolyte composition worked so well, depending on the position of the fluorine atoms within the molecules in the electrolyte transporting lithium ions and the number of those atoms.

The researchers anticipate that the anti-freeze electrolyte shows promise of working not only for batteries in EVs, but also in energy storage for electric grids as well as for consumer electronic devices.

Next-gen optoelectronics in prospect

Optoelectronic devices – that convert light into energy – are widely used in applications from solar PV panels to TV screens and smartphone displays.

These rely on semiconductor materials to operate but expanding the current capabilities of optoelectronics with improved performance and new functionalities lies in finding new non-silicon semiconductors.

Kyusang Lee, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and materials science and engineering at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been investigating such new systems with a ‘mixed-dimensional heterostructure’ approach involving the joining together of 2D and 3D semiconductor materials.

A material system engineered this way has the potential to efficiently detect a wide range of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum, including ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. But before tapping that potential, more understanding is needed on the optical and electronic properties of the heterostructure, specifically how electrical charges and energy move across the 2D-3D junction through a ‘hybrid charge transfer exciton’.

Now with funding from the US Air Force, Lee aims to describe the quantum (atomic level) physics of his proposed heterojunctions. Then mixed-dimensional heterostructures would be fabricated to validate the model predictions.

Eventually, the aim is to enable the learnings to be applied to design a wide array of optoelectronic sensing technologies.

While the technology is clearly of potential interest for military applications, another potential one could be to improve the efficiency of PV panels to operate in non-sunny conditions and possibly even at night.

UK-first large-scale flexibility product enabling more green power

British system operator UK Power Networks has contracted more than 400MW of flexible capacity through what it labels a national first to increase demand or turn down supply during periods of excess power, alongside the regular demand turn down or generation turn up to manage peak demand constraints.

The operator reports that over one thousand bids for more than 1,000MW of flexible capacity were made – up from just 28 in the first flexibility tender in 2018.

Running from Summer of this year to the Winter 2025, UK Power Networks anticipates being enabled to more efficiently connect more renewable energy to the network and avoid the costs of network reinforcement for capacity that may only be needed for a few hours a year.

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Sotiris Georgiopoulos, DSO director at UK Power Networks, comments that this will be the decade when net zero becomes real for many of its customers.

“That means millions of new electric vehicles, heat pumps and other low carbon technologies like domestic solar and batteries. Tapping into customer flexibility means we can connect more renewable energy and low carbon technologies to the network.”

The UK Power Networks DSO has committed to saving customers £410 million (US$511 million) over the next five years by using flexibility to deliver capacity on the network at lower cost than building new infrastructure.

Making AI more energy efficient

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming more and more ubiquitous in analytics and new digital applications such as ChatGPT and the metaverse.

But while bringing efficiencies, such systems may themselves not be so energy efficient and are contributing to the growing carbon footprint of digitalisation, currently estimated at around 4% of global emissions.

A new £250,000 (US$310,000) project led by Britain’s University of Lancaster, InterNET Zero, aims to tackle this issue and other challenges of these technologies by “by transforming academic knowledge into practice”.

The researchers, together with partners including the Energy Systems Catapult, intend to engage with a range of stakeholders, including technologists, policymakers, and citizens, to rethink current autonomous system design and to co-create new visions and pathways for more resource responsible and trustworthy Internet infrastructures.

“AI and machine learning are making more of the key decisions regards the Internet’s energy use and emissions, with less human oversight,” comments principal investigator Dr Michael Stead from Lancaster University’s design research laboratory ImaginationLancaster.

“There is consequently a growing argument that if society is to successfully transition to a digital net zero future, we should start to consider these technologies as key mediators that must be actively negotiated with, in the same way that we work to build trust between one another.”

Space manufacturing moves closer

Space is considered the next frontier for manufacturing items such as semiconductors with the microgravity environment eliminating the need for highly sanitised clean rooms and opening the way for potential new production techniques that could create smaller chips.

So far the major challenge has been considered as how to return the manufactured products to Earth in a cost effective way with the thermal conditions arising during re-entry but the British start-up Space Forge believes its technology overcomes this problem.

Whereas the ablative heat shields used on SpaceX’s capsule require replacement after each mission, Space Forge’s system, which also includes a water vehicle for soft landing and rapid recovery, is designed to be reused.

Space Forge’s heat shield is made out of a high temperature alloy and while able to fold inside a launcher for the lift-off, is able to unfold and become large enough to radiate away the heat generated in the re-entry.

So confident is Forge Star that the company is offering its ForgeStar platform as microgravity as a service.

Other potential products that could benefit from production in microgravity are pharmaceuticals and new metal alloys with the potential for larger and improved crystal formation and more uniform alloy mixing.

Microsoft bets on fusion

Washington state-based fusion developer Helion Energy has signed up its first customer – and the first for any fusion company – namely Microsoft, with power delivery expected to start in 2028 and to support the company’s goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030.

With the race on with numerous companies pursuing multiple different fusion technologies, Helion Energy with its pulsed non-ignition reactor technology believes it can become the first to deliver fusion generated energy on a commercial basis.

Helion Energy has been advancing its fusion technology for more than a decade and with its sixth prototype in mid-2021 became the first private fusion company to reach 100 million degree plasma temperatures – the minimum required for commercial scale fusion generation.

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The company is currently building its seventh prototype, which is expected to demonstrate the ability to produce electricity in 2024. In addition to scaling up the earlier advancements the prototype is aimed to demonstrate the production of helium-3 – one of the fuel elements and otherwise difficult to find on the Earth – through deuterium-deuterium fusion

Helion Energy’s commercial plant is expected to target power generation of 50MW or greater after a 1-year ramp up period.

David Kirtley, CEO at Helion Energy, says the collaboration with Microsoft represents a significant milestone for the company and the fusion industry as a whole.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”

Constellation Energy will serve as the power marketer and will manage transmission for the project.

Read more about the projects on Power Engineering International

National Grid’s London Power Tunnels a record breaker

National Grid is currently undertaking a major £1 billion (US$1.25 billion) initiative to rewire Britain’s capital with the replacement of ageing high voltage cables typically laid close to street level with new cables buried deep underground.

This London Power Tunnels project has now achieved what the company claims as a record with a continuous pour of 736m3 of earth-friendly – cement-free – concrete to infill the base of the 55m deep tunnel drive shaft at National Grid’s Hurst substation in South London.

The cement-free solution was developed by the Australian construction material company Wagners and uses a binder of ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash geopolymer concrete system chemically activated using industrial waste products instead of cement.

This concrete reduces carbon by around 64% saving an estimated 111kg of CO2 per cubic metre poured in comparison to concrete which would have traditionally been used – thus the pour saved an estimated 82t of CO2, the equivalent emissions of driving a petrol car around the world 18 times.

“We are always looking for new ways to innovate,” says National Grid Project Director, Onur Aydemir, commenting that the company will be evaluating the technology ahead of future possible rollout across its network in England and Wales as part of the ambition to achieve net zero construction across all projects by 2025/26.

Batteries from tree pulp

The British storage start-up Allotrope Energy has developed a new lithium-ion hybrid battery technology that can reach full charge in the time it takes to fuel a combustion engine.

Unlike traditional lithium-ion batteries which typically contain rare materials such as cobalt or nickel, Allotrope Energy’s battery technology uses carbon extracted from the pulp of trees.

Now, in what is Brazilian hardwood pulp producer Suzano’s first venture investment, the company has secured $6.7 million to further develop its technology, with the lithium-carbon batteries manufactured using carbon extracted from Suzano’s eucalyptus forests.

In addition, Suzano will make available its teams in Brazil and Canada to support the innovation and commercialisation of the technology, as well as the development of global supply chains and markets for batteries.

Suzano considers that Allotrope Energy’s technology has the potential to set new standards in ultra-fast charging applications and to transform the battery segment by unlocking new application opportunities.

Opportunities for their use are in different segments such as mobility, robotics and next-generation hybrid applications.

“We are excited that our first investment is in a company that can leverage a co-product from our own pulp production process as a key raw material in order to accelerate the global transition to zero emission mobility,” says Paula Puzzi, manager of Suzano Ventures.

Tesla to produce Megapack storage in Shanghai

Automotive manufacturer Tesla has announced its intention to build a second battery factory in Shanghai – this one a ‘megafactory’ for the production of its Megapacks, which are designed for utility-scale storage projects. The planned output is around 10,000 units per year.

Currently, the Megapack batteries are produced at Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada, alongside the Powerwall batteries for residential storage and the units for the EVs, although the production is in the process of being moved to a new dedicated megafactory in northern California with a 40GWh annual output.

The Shanghai megafactory is thus Tesla’s second of its type and it will join one of the company’s five and growing in number of gigafactories located around the world as it aims to supply an ever greater share of the storage market.

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Tesla has estimated the need for about 240TWh of energy storage for a sustainable world. In 2022, the company installed 2.5GW of storage, an over 150% increase from the previous year, for a total deployment of 6.5GWh in 2022.

“Demand for our storage products remains in excess of our ability to supply,” states the Q4 FY 2022 investor update.

SunSpector – an intelligent weather station for renewable generation

US renewable energy management specialist Aderis Energy has launched its SunSpector as “an intelligent weather station with advanced data logging, analysis and energy simulation capabilities”.

Alongside a selection of weather sensors, it may be customed for a range of configurations. For example, one is the use of intelligent edge computing for integrated data logging and analytics capabilities.

Another is support for a close-loop servo-controlled plane of array (POA) tracking capability to provide energy loss calculation capabilities when solar tracking rows are inoperable.

A third is the deployment of the SunSpector as part of a whole monitoring control solution or as an advanced resource surveying tool to confirm weather modelling estimates for financial surety.

“With SunSpector, our customers can optimise their renewable energy systems and increase their return on investment,” promises Colton Ward, Head of Business Development at Aderis Energy.

Taxidermied birds as drones

Next-generation drones? Scientists at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology are reported to be taking birds that have been preserved through taxidermy and converting them into drones.

Mostafa Hassanalian, Mechanical Engineering professor, is quoted as saying the only thing they needed to do to make the birds ‘alive’ was to design an attrition mechanism to put in their body.

“So we do reverse engineering. We’ll calculate what has been the weight of the bird while it was alive, what has been its flapping frequency, what flapping angle they have flapped and just create something similar.”

The aim is for the drones to blend in with a flock of living birds to study, following experiments which found for fixed-wing aircraft that applying certain colours can change the flight efficiency, similarly if the colour patterns on birds’ wings affect their potential flight efficiency.

While ultimately a goal is to bring learnings to improve the energy efficiency of the future aviation industry and is far removed from the power sector, one potential relevant application could be to develop flying raptor drones to stop birds landing or nesting on power transmission infrastructure.

AR visualisation tool for home chargers

Thinking of installing an electric vehicle (EV) charging unit and wondering where it might fit and what it would look like? If you are in the UK and thinking of a unit from EV charging company Andersen EV, it is now possible to visualise their charging unit with an augmented reality tool on a mobile phone.

Andersen EV, claiming to become the only premium EV home charging company to provide such a tool, says it’s the first in a series of user-centric enhancements for its A2 unit in 2023.

With the A2 unit’s exterior panel available in a choice of 96 colours and multiple finishes – including four durable natural wood options – the tool should enable prospective owners to select the colour and finish to best suit their taste and to help the unit blend seamlessly with their home, whether modern or period.

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Using the camera on a mobile device, the tool first ‘scans’ the area to ascertain the correct scale and then mounts the unit in the centre of the screen for the user to manipulate as they wish.

“Our products are built for longevity and incorporate future-proof technology, and our AR feature aids an important decision about this permanent fixture to one’s home,” says David Martell, CEO of Andersen EV.

Nano inks could make buildings more energy efficient

With buildings being significant energy users, either for heating in winter or air conditioning in summer, more and more effort is being put into materials that can make building surfaces, particularly large office buildings, more energy efficient.

New research at the University of Melbourne has focused on the use of inks that use nanoparticles – nano inks – that can adjust the amount of radiation that can pass through them, based on the surrounding environment, and could be used to develop coatings for buildings that enable passive heating and cooling.

The concept requires the use of a so-called phase change material, such as vanadium oxide (VO2), that changes its phase in response to heat or electricity or another external trigger.

The printable material that has been developed as a proof-of-concept is said to be versatile and adaptable, able to be laminated, sprayed or added to paints and building materials.

As such it should be possible to apply the inks on a large scale cheaply, meaning that it could be easily retrofitted to existing structures and building materials

It could also be incorporated into clothing to regulate body temperature in extreme environments, prevent heat build-up in laptop electronics or protect car windscreens.

The next step involves taking the research, which has been patented by the University of Melbourne, to production, which should be affordable and simple.

With manufacturing interest, it’s likely to take five to 10 years to reach market, the researchers say.

GE appliances top ranked for IoT market

GE Appliances has been recognised for the fifth year in succession as ‘Smart Appliance Company of the Year’ by market intelligence organisation IoT Breakthrough.

In 2022, GE Appliances was a founding member of the Home Connectivity Alliance, whose mission is to provide consumers with a safe, secure and interoperable connected home ecosystem.

The company also has continued to introduce new products and solutions in the smart kitchen and laundry space. Among these is the first washer with built-in Alexa (the GE Profile Top Load 900 series with Alexa) with which wash cycles can be optimised for different materials, while AI cooking has been advanced with a CookCam test group cooking frozen pizzas with AI machine learning in their wall ovens in 2022.

GE Appliances also reports adding new cycles and features, as well as over two dozen software enhancements across its portfolio including integrations with Unsplash, NASA and Twitter in 2022.

Expressing appreciation for the recognition, Shawn Stover, executive director of SmartHome Solutions for GE Appliances, promised the company would continue to make significant investments and further expansion of its smart home ecosystem while also aggressively growing the smart appliance initiative “to make every appliance smart – big and small”.

Solar powered clock

French clockmaker Bodet Time has partnered with Germany-based PV company Asca to develop a solar-powered analogue wall clock.

The clock, which is designed for installation in public and private facilities, is the result of the eco-design approach carried out by the group to reduce the environmental impact of its activities, according to a statement.

With the Asca solar solution, energy autonomy under artificial or natural lighting conditions is assured for at least 10 years, the company says.

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The Profil 930L is light in weight with its parts made from recycled and recyclable thermoplastics, while the PV solution also is completely recoverable, without any rare or toxic components.

Power is from two Asca solar cells, which are designed to be particularly effective in low-light environments. As such, the clock is operational from 100 lux, corresponding to the European standard for the minimum illumination level for indoor circulation areas.

The clock also has radio synchronisation, eliminating the need for any wiring.

“We considered all the possibilities in order to reduce the environmental impact of this clock, be it during the different steps of the manufacturing, during use, until its short-circuit recycling,” says Anthony Boigné, Product Manager at Bodet Time.

“Each component has been selected for its low carbon footprint while maintaining a high level of performance. The completion of this approach is the first step and we want to keep using the energy harvesting process for our future products…”

How biology is helping hydrogen production

The ancient biological enzyme, nickel-iron hydrogenase, may play a key role in producing hydrogen for a renewables-based energy economy, according to University of Illinois chemists.

Careful study of the enzyme has led the chemists to design a synthetic molecule that mimics the hydrogen gas-producing chemical reaction performed by the enzyme.

Currently, industrial hydrogen is usually produced by separating hydrogen gas molecules from oxygen atoms in water using platinum as the catalyst. However, the expense and rarity of platinum make it unattractive for the anticipated increasing demand for hydrogen.

The key to the nickel-iron hydrogenase enzyme is the nickel and while chemists have made synthetic nickel compounds that produce hydrogen for over a decade, the challenge has been to maximise the efficiency.

Mimicking the nickel-iron hydrogenase enzyme, the chemists designed an organic molecule that was able to replicate its functioning with one of the keys a carbon-hydrogen bond near the nickel centre that is broken and re-formed during catalysis process.

With this and future work, further insights are expected on the chemistry and thus the production of hydrogen.

Destinus – 4 hours from Europe to Australia

Staying with hydrogen, the Switzerland-based hydrogen-powered aviation startup Destinus has been awarded funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science for further research and development of its hypersonic flight concept.

The funding, which will involve Spanish universities and companies, is to support research into liquid hydrogen-powered propulsion and to construct a test facility for air-breathing hydrogen engines.

Destinus, which also has facilities in Germany, France and Spain, towards the end of last year completed flight tests of its second prototype ‘Eiger’, fitted with a bank of sensors, guidance navigation satellite system receivers, an inertial measurement unit, air data system and angle vanes along with other instruments and cameras for data recording.

With this, the company is now streamlining work on the design of the next prototype, which is planned to serve as a testbed for supersonic flight and hydrogen propulsion by the end of this year.

The eventual goal is hypersonic travel at velocities more than five times the speed of sound, i.e. more than 6,000km/h, reaching an altitude above 30,000m, which would enable travel from one side of the world to the other in a time of 3-4 hours.

Grid control with fusion research software

The UK Atomic Energy Authority’s fusion plasma control software, ‘MARTe’, could help grid operators manage the increasing integration of renewable energy generators and bolster grid resilience, the Authority has found in a study with the Oxford-based energy solution startup Sygensis.

MARTe was first developed in 1995 at UKAEA and has been continuously improved since then to provide plasma control and protection systems for the Joint European Torus programme. It was made open-source in 2010 and has been adopted internationally for fusion research programmes, including ITER, the larger and more advanced version of JET.

Nizar Ben Ayed, Fusion Innovation Technologist at UKAEA, says there is a rapidly emerging need for improved control systems that provide system level control in addition to grid level harmonisation across generators and loads.

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One of MARTe’s functions is to help control an entire plasma system comprising heating, fuelling, shaping and management of superconducting magnets.

As a result of the initial study with Sygensys, MARTe’s user interface will be developed to help improve communication between operators and multiple devices, which will also benefit the fusion community. The software will also be assessed for potential applications in other adjacent sectors such as the automotive and space industries.

Telefónica demos industrial digital twin

As an example of how mobile operators are continuing to expand and exploit the opportunities offered by the evolving networks, at the Mobile World Congress 2023 Spanish telco giant Telefónica demonstrated a 5G connected digital twin designed to optimise the production of industrial parts.

The demo under the name ‘Making Smart Industry happen’ also draws on technologies including edge computing, data analytics and machine learning to create the digital twin.

The digital twin features a robotic arm from the German factory automation manufacturer Kuka that simulates the construction of an industrial part and is synchronised with the digital representation of the robotic arm and the part.

Digital twins contribute to the efficiency and sustainability of the manufacturing process by mitigating risks, optimising resources and saving energy and raw materials and are key to the creation of more competitive, efficient and sustainable business models, says Telefónica.

BMW launches iX5 hydrogen vehicle

After four years of development, BMW’s iX5 hydrogen model is hitting the roads and over the course of the next year the pilot fleet will be used by various target groups for trial and demonstration purposes worldwide.

BMW has developed and is producing its own hydrogen fuel cell system, using individual fuel cells from Toyota and special components that complement their combustion engine analogues, such as the intercooler, air filter, control units and sensor technology.

With a high performance lithium-ion battery developed specifically for the vehicle, the powertrain brings a maximum output of 295kW/401hp to the road, BMW reports.

The gaseous hydrogen required to supply the fuel cell is stored in two 700-bar tanks made from carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic. Together, they hold 6kg of hydrogen, which should give the iX5 a range of 504km. Refuelling the hydrogen tanks takes just three to four minutes.

“Hydrogen is the missing piece in the jigsaw when it comes to emission-free mobility. One technology on its own will not be enough to enable climate-neutral mobility worldwide,” says Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG.

Self-assembling nanoparticles to harvest solar energy

Solar-thermal technology such as concentrated solar power or on a smaller scale solar water heating is a promising option for growing renewables penetration but it is challenged by suppressing the energy dissipation while maintaining a high absorption.

But now researchers from Harbin University, Zhejiang University, Changchun Institute of Optics, and the National University of Singapore believe they can overcome this challenge with an absorber comprised of iron oxide nanoparticles that self-assemble to form an organised quasi-periodic material structure based on their interactions with nearby particles without any external instructions.

This structure, which is scalable, was found to provide a significant solar absorption >94% and ideal passive suppression of thermal emissivity <0.2. Tested under natural sunlight, the harvester reached a sustaining open circuit voltage of >20mV/cm2 without a heat sink.

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With further work, the researchers believe the technology should pioneer next generation, high performance, economical, and practical solar co-harvesting systems.

3D printed solid state batteries

As the need for batteries increases, new technologies and new methods of production are required to meet the energy and demand requirements.

One of these is 3D printing which allows the production of complex shapes and geometries and now Silicon Valley 3D printing startup Sakuú – formerly KeraCel – has announced what it calls the “first-of-its-kind recorded manufacturing achievement” of the successful and consistent 3D printing of fully functional performant batteries in custom shapes and sizes at its pilot facility.

Sakuu is using its own manufacturing method comprised of a proprietary multi-material, multi-layer approach in a parallel and dry process, which is declared able to deliver a low cost high speed manufacturing capability coupled with flexibility in shape and form, while also delivering batteries in core categories that matter most to clients and customers alike.

“We believe we have the only known solution for manufacturing solid state batteries at scale with our novel Kavian platform,” says Sakuu founder and CEO Robert Bagheri.

“Printing custom patterned batteries using a dry process that starts with raw material and concludes with a fully functional high performance battery is a breakthrough that has the potential to transform how batteries of the future are manufactured for all industries.”

Sakuu plans to sell its Kavian platform to other battery manufacturers as well as leading automotive, e-mobility and aerospace manufacturers who want to mass produce batteries.

The company also intends to license its lithium-metal and solid state chemistries, with the prospect of production in gigafactories worldwide.

Nuclear fission engines for space travel

While nuclear fission continues to attract a mixed reaction for power generation, interest is growing in its potential to power rockets, in particular for deep space missions for example to Mars and beyond with the possibility of reducing the journey time from the months it would take currently down to weeks and the years down to months.

However, the current proposed designs for fission fragment rocket engines are prohibitively massive, have significant thermal constraints or require implementing complex designs, all of which limit their near-term viability.

California based Positron Dynamics’ proposal, which has been awarded stage 1 funding from NASA, is to store the fuel as a gel.

The company is proposing to develop a small prototype low density nuclear reactor core and convert the nuclear energy stored in a fissile material into a high velocity rocket exhaust and electrical power. Key improvements over previous concepts are to embed the fissile fuel particles in an ultra-low density aerogel matrix to achieve a critical mass assembly, while breakthroughs in high field, high temperature superconducting magnets will be utilised to constrain fission fragment trajectories to minimise the reactor mass.

With this Positron Dynamics believes it is possible for a rocket to travel to the solar gravitational lens at a distance of between approximately 80-150 billion km from the sun, i.e. up to a thousand times the distance of the Earth from the Sun and varying according to the direction of observation, within 15 years. There the on board telescope would be able to image a planet around another star system with enough resolution to detect surface features and any signs of habitability.

Smart solar EV charger

Electric vehicle (EV) charging technology provider Enteligent has reported unveiling what it calls “the world’s first DC-to-DC solar hybrid bi-directional EV charger”.

Powered directly from the sun, the solar EV charger can supply 25kW of fast DC charging, while also supporting vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) options with their potential to provide significant energy savings.

Currently, EV owners plug their cars into home chargers which are powered by an AC flow of energy. But EV batteries operate on DC requiring the power to be converted – a process that can be inefficient and result in significant energy loss and a longer charging time.

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By eliminating the conversion, Enteligent claims its chargers can result in up to 25% energy savings as well as a dramatically shortened time to charge. Its solar power also makes it convenient and affordable to charge during the day.

“This technology will benefit consumers by enabling them to shift from night-time charging, which is dependent on the fossil fuel powered grid, to clean, solar-based, daytime charging,” promises Sean Burke, founder, and CEO of Enteligent.

Squid skin inspires ‘liquid windows’

Declared to be inspired by the dynamic colour-changing skin of organisms such as squid, researchers of the University of Toronto have developed a multilayered fluidic system which can modify the wavelength, intensity and dispersion of light transmitted through windows and thereby optimise the heating, cooling or lighting requirements within.

Whereas current smart building technologies are primarily focused on controlling the amount of sunlight that enters, the new system also controls other wavelengths of light such as infra-red, which provides heat, which one might want to include in the winter but exclude in the summer.

The system in prototype form consists of flat sheets of plastic that are permeated with an array of millimetre-thick channels through which fluids can be pumped. Customised pigments, particles or other molecules can be mixed into the fluids to control what kind of light gets through – such as visible versus near-infrared wavelengths – and in which direction this light is then distributed.

“It’s simple and low cost, but it also enables incredible combinatorial control. We can design liquid state dynamic building facades that do basically anything you’d like to do in terms of their optical properties,” says Raphael Kay, a recent master’s graduate and lead author of the work.

Computer modelling of a hypothetical building covered in this type of dynamic façade revealed that with just one layer focused on modulating the transmission of near-infrared light about 25% could be saved annually on heating, cooling and lighting energy. With two layers, with the addition of visible, the saving doubles to about 50%.

The researchers believe that with the addition of AI, buildings could be able to adjust the array on a dynamic basis to optimise for daily and seasonal variations.

Next-gen lithium-ion batteries

California-based Ionblox (formerly Zenlabs) has just received a $32 million Series B funding boost to scale its silicon anode-based lithium-ion cells for electric aviation and fast charging for electric road vehicles.

Ionblox’s technology uses a pre-lithiated silicon anode, which, in comparison with traditional lithium-ion cells, is asserted to achieve up to 50% higher energy density, 5x more power and an extreme fast charge time of 10 minutes.

Ionblox is currently producing its large format pouch cells of up to 50Ah on its pilot production lines.

“The Ionblox technology enables one of the highest performance cells for eVTOL aircraft existing today. Test results to date are showing the technology will deliver not only superior energy and power density for the Lilium Jet at launch but also very good aging performance,” says Yves Yemsi, chief operating officer of German air mobility company Lilium, which has been an ongoing investor in Ionblox.

Lilium’s Jet is set to be the first electric vertical take-off and landing craft, of which final assembly is due to start during 2023.

Electric ‘wallpaper’ to heat homes

A wafer-thin film that can be placed in ceilings, under floors or in panels for heating – that is what is being pursued by at least two British companies NexGen Heating and ‘living reinvented’ iHelios.

The films based on nanotechnology provide infrared heating to deliver an even distribution in the room with a reduced risk of air circulating allergens and are claimed to reduce the energy consumption of the property to almost 100% if also coupled with a solar PV and battery storage system.

The products are suitable for all property types, with iHelios stating that full heat temperature is typically reached in 5 minutes and just 20 minutes of running time every hour is required to maintain a constant temperature.

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In the three years in the market iHelios reports having done more than one thousand installations while NexGen reports installations as far afield as France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

“It’s not often that you come across a truly game changing piece of tech (think a ‘horse and cart to car’ style development),” NexGen quotes Octopus Energy in reference to its technology on its website.

Hydrogen from seawater

Hydrogen production requires water and that is currently costly as the water needs to be pure, which can involve deionisation or desalinisation, and could even impact fresh water resources with large scale production.

But that may be about to change with new research on the most abundant water resource on the globe, seawater, demonstrating that direct electrolysis is possible without the need for the addition of any alkalis or acids.

The research led by Professors Shizhang Qiao and Yao Zheng from the University of Adelaide’s School of Chemical Engineering reported splitting natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100% to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis with the key a chromium oxide coated cobalt oxide catalyst.

With the performance similar to that a typical electrolyser with platinum/iridium catalysts operating in high purity water, the technique offers potential for green hydrogen production in regions with long coastlines and abundant sunlight.

Before it can be commercialised further work is required to manage the complexities of using seawater, such as corrosion, and the research team are now planning to scale up their system with a larger electrolyser.

Ozone layer under threat?

The discovery of the so-called ‘ozone hole’ over Antarctica was one of the early indicators of humankind’s impact on the climate and in turn led to the ban of ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were commonly used in aerosols and refrigeration.

Over the intervening almost 40 years, the ozone layer has started to ‘heal’. But – and staying ‘down under’ – University of Christchurch researchers suggest that process may come under threat from the rapidly growing space industry and the increasing number of rocket launches.

While the full impact of emissions from rockets are not known and the impact to date is estimated to be small, the researchers suggest a need for more measurements and for some policy intervention into an area that is not currently regulated.

“Rockets have exciting potential to enable industrial-level access to near-Earth space, and exploration throughout the solar system. Creating sustainable global rocket launches is going to take coordination across aerospace companies, scientists, and governments: it is achievable, but we need to start now,” says Dr Michele Bannister of the University’s School of Physical & Chemical Science.

Novel carbon-oxygen battery for long duration energy storage

Noon Energy is developing a novel carbon-based battery that is intended as a low cost alternative to other battery options for long duration energy storage and without the need for critical metals such as lithium or cobalt.

Details of the technology are limited and Noon Energy founder and CEO Chris Graves simply explains that the carbon-oxygen battery stores energy by splitting CO2, similar to how nature stores energy by photosynthesis.

“Storage in the same air-abundant molecules that nature itself uses, rather than rare metals, is key to our fundamental advantages in cost, sustainability and energy density,” he says.

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Noon Energy has just achieved a Series A $28 million funding, led by Clean Energy Ventures and Aramco Ventures, to grow its team and undertake demonstrations towards commercialising the technology within the next two years.

In the meantime and with a 50x scaleup of the core technology achieved over the last year, core components of the technology are operating as a proof of concept aboard NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover in its MOXIE device, which Graves helped to develop as part of the NASA team to extract oxygen from Mars’ CO2 atmosphere.

Compared with Li-ion batteries, Graves anticipates that the CO battery will have a cost of about one tenth and a footprint three times smaller.

Harvesting energy in space

Two challenges faced when designing spacecraft are protecting the craft from solar radiation and generating energy for onboard use.

Now the University of Surrey have developed a solution that they believe can solve both challenges simultaneously and in essence, is a multi-layered nanocoating ‘skin’ that covers the satellite.

The multifunctional nanobarrier structure as it’s called consists of a buffer layer made of poly(p-xylylene) and a diamond-like-carbon superlattice layer to give it mechanical and environmental stability and able to protect a craft from both atomic oxygen and UV radiation.

Its dielectric nature means it can also be coated on sensitive payloads and structures, such as antennas, without interfering significantly with performance.

And also is possible to modify how much atomic oxygen and UV a craft can absorb and harvest while it is in low-earth orbit.

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey, says that while solutions already on the market offer protection, they are bulky and can be restrictive when it comes to thermal control.

“Our new nano barrier is able to not only provide radiation and thermal protection but also harvest energy for use at a later date,” he says.

A thermometer to measure energy changes

All PC users know that the harder their device is working the hotter it can become, and similarly with larger and more sophisticated devices such as quantum computers.

Central to developing more stable quantum computers is detecting and controlling heat dissipation, which was what researchers at Aalto University in Sweden along with colleagues at the universities of Grenoble Alpes and Konstanz set out to do.

Since as far back as 2018, Jukka Pekola, director of the quantum community InstituteQ has been developing a new kind of thermometer for measuring tiny energy changes. This was applied to detect the heat dissipation of a phase slip in a Josephson junction, a key quantum occurrence in a superconducting circuit, measuring the instantaneous heat production caused by the slip.

The experiment represents the first time that these quantum thermodynamical ideas were realised in practice. With better detection and control of heat dissipation, the discovery also has the potential to lead to more stable and higher fidelity quantum computers.

Pekola says that the work at Aalto focuses on getting to the heart of heat in quantum devices.

“We provided the idea about how to measure small energies with this thermometer of ours. Experimental results like these represent great strides forward in our understanding of thermodynamics in the quantum world.”

Energy teleportation demonstrated

The concept of teleportation – the transfer of objects from one place to another without traversing the intervening space – has been the topic of science fiction since as far back as the 1870s.

Since then quantum teleportation of information has emerged as a well-understood phenomenon of the quantum world – and now using quantum computing Kazuki Ikeda, a post-doctoral researcher in the Physics and Astronomy Department at New York’s Stony Brook University has reported the first demonstration of the teleportation of energy, the difference being that energy is a physical quantity whereas information is not.

The concept underlying quantum energy teleportation is that energy can be extracted from naturally occurring fluctuations of entangled particles, i.e. particles that are connected across a distance, and Ikeda reports the demonstration to be consistent with “the exact solution of the theory”.

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Ikeda’s demonstration took place within IBM quantum computers but he anticipates that it will soon be possible to teleport energy across longer distances over a quantum internet, which is expected to be in practical use around the 2030s, and eventually worldwide.

In addition to the implications for the development of information and communication technology and quantum physics, allowing physical quantities to be traded concretely on the quantum network means that a new economic market will be born, he says.

These advances notwithstanding, the teleportation of us humans, is still many years away, if ever, and remains for dreamers of time travel.

Charging up with carbon nanotubes

Vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes have mechanical, electrical and transport properties that make them suitable for various applications from membrane separation to thermal management and fibre spinning.

They also could be utilised in energy storage but so far their widespread integration into next-generation technologies is thwarted by a lack of compatible, economic, mass-production capabilities.

However, that looks set to change. Currently, the nanotubes are typically made on substrates such as silicon or quartz wafers that are rigid, expensive and electrically insulating.

Now new work by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists with Inconel metal substrates has allowed them to integrate the nanotubes into flexible devices, eliminating a transfer step from Si to other substrates and minimising the electrical or thermal transport resistances at the nanotube-substrate interface. This is critical for electronic and energy storage applications.

Inconel is a family of nickel-chromium-based superalloys that are oxidation-corrosion-resistant materials well-suited for use in extreme environments subjected to pressure and heat.

“Transitioning growth of high quality carbon nanotubes from traditional Si substrates to metal foils opens the door to more economical, large-scale, semicontinuous and roll-to-roll manufacturing of multifunctional CNT composites, nanoporous membranes and electrochemical devices,” said LLNL scientist Francesco Fornasiero.

The synthesis of high quality single-walled carbon nanotubes on metal foils would be especially valuable for energy storage devices, such as lithium-ion batteries. While graphitic materials are common as anodes, their capacity falls short of rapidly evolving energy-storage needs.

Net-zero glass bottles coming to your drinks cabinet

Encirc Glass, a glass manufacturer partner in the northwestern England HyNet industrial decarbonisation initiative, and alcoholic beverage company Diageo have launched a plan to create the world’s first net zero glass bottles at scale by 2030.

Encirc is planning to build a new furnace powered by an energy mix of green electricity and low-carbon hydrogen to produce up to 200 million bottles for Diageo’s Smirnoff, Captain Morgan, Gordon’s and Tanqueray brands annually by 2030.

The green electricity and hydrogen are expected to reduce carbon emissions by 90%, with the remaining 10% to be removed with carbon capture technology.

Initial production is planned to start in 2027.

Glass Futures, a local R&D facility, will support the initiative by trialling sustainable fuels on furnaces and developing the future furnace technology required to support Encirc and the wider glass industry in its goals.

Adrian Curry, Managing Director of Encirc describes the initiative as a major step in the goal of producing net zero glass by 2030.

“Glass is an incredible material being infinitely recyclable and chemically inert. It has been around since 3500 BC and has never been produced in this way. This is about protecting glass as a material by addressing the carbon challenge.”

The ‘Friendly’ platform for smart meters and IoT devices

Israeli IoT and device management company Friendly Technologies has set its eye on managing tens of millions of IoT-enabled utility smart meters for electricity, water, gas and heating.

The company reports entering the realm of smart utilities with multiple new IoT projects spanning the globe, alongside its recent platform upgrade to enable the introduction of “new projects and verticals with ease”.

Friendly Technologies counts over 250 active customers worldwide, primarily in the telecom vertical but also including smart home providers and device manufacturers.

Its platform is designed to enable organisations to manage devices, collect and analyse data, implement automated workflows, integrations, multi-tenancies, access control, create unique dashboards and more in one user interface.

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Microgrid for powering EV bus fleet

The first clean energy microgrid in the Washington DC region, at the Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot in Montgomery County, Maryland, has been energised and is now in operation for the EV bus fleet.

The initiative by The Mobility House, in collaboration with partners including Schneider Electric, comprises an integrated 6.5MW microgrid using onsite solar canopies, natural gas generators, battery storage and microgrid controls and electric bus charging infrastructure to support 70 electric buses – a solution that can run ‘islanded’ independent of the local utility.

The Mobility House’s smart charging and energy management system, ChargePilot, coordinates charging with the microgrid by optimising the buses’ charging schedules based on route blocks and energy demands to ensure vehicle readiness.

Mobility House US MD Gregor Hintler describes the management of EV charging within a microgrid as a technological achievement.

“The Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot is a momentous achievement not only for resilient public transportation but also in demonstrating the power of integrated technologies to provide sustainable community resources.”

Solar harvesting for IoT sensors

Powering sensors for Internet of Things applications and geolocation use cases such as asset tracking in supply chains in particular can prove challenging but Swedish solar company Exeger and the semiconductor supplier Semtech report having come up with a solution.

In a demonstration, Exeger’s Powerfoyle solar harvesting cell technology was combined with Semtech’s LoRa Edge platform to reveal a significant extension of battery life in such sensors.

The Powerfoyle material is flexible and durable, enabling it to be integrated seamlessly into any electronics device.

Semtech’s LoRa Edge scans GNSS satellites as well as Wi-Fi SSIDs and partitions the processing between IoT devices and the LoRa Cloud to determine the location. The cloud-based solver significantly reduces the power consumption and thereby increases the battery life.

“Coupling the benefits of Powerfoyle with the ultra-low power capabilities of Semtech’s LoRa® devices will provide IoT applications with an extended or even unlimited battery life,” said Dr Oscar Hemberg, chief product integration officer at Exeger.

More Technology trending news

New solar cell breaks efficiency records

Perovskite is emerging as the material for the next generation of solar cells and new research at Northwestern University in Illinois is continuing to drive the technology forward.

In the work published in the journal Nature, the researchers demonstrate the production of a tandem solar cell using two different layers of perovskites, each tuned to a different part of the solar spectrum, providing both an extremely high efficiency of 27.4% and a record-setting voltage of 2.19 electron volts.

The prototype solar cell measures 1cm2 in area and the top perovskite layer absorbs well in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum as well as some visible light, while the bottom layer is tuned more toward the infrared.

“Between the two, we cover more of the spectrum than would be possible with silicon,” says postdoctoral researcher Chongwen Li.

But the bigger breakthrough the researchers report is the coating of the surface of the perovskite layer where light is absorbed and transformed into excited electrons with a substance known as 1,3-propanediammonium, which evens out the electric field across the surface and leads to the big improvement in the overall efficiency.

Next, the team hopes to scale their production for commercial use, further enhancing the tandem cell’s efficiency and improving its stability.

AI for the birds

All electricity infrastructure is a potential haven or hazard for birds and while numerous studies have been done on the impacts of for example transmission lines and wind turbines, little has been undertaken on the increasingly widespread solar facilities.

Scientists at the US DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory are now redressing this gap with a three-year project to deploy advanced cameras and artificial intelligence to monitor the bird activity at these facilities.

Already video collected at such sites is being used to train computer algorithms to recognise birds in the scenes and to classify specific types of avian activities, including flying between and above panels, perching on panels, landing on the ground and colliding with panels.

“We don’t have a full picture of how birds use these sites, because the minute you put someone on the ground, the birds fly off or they do something in reaction to the human surveyor,” says Misti Sporer, environmental development director for Duke Energy, which operates more than 65 solar plants in the US.

For example, often the cause of bird fatalities is not apparent but the collection of a large amount of near-real-time data on collisions including the season, time of day and speed and trajectory of the bird could help to understand the cause and magnitude of these.

Also of interest: High voltage birdspotting: Elia uses drones for collision prevention

First lithium iron phosphate battery cell prototype in Europe

Serbian lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pioneer ElevenEs has reported the production of a prototype of what it calls “the largest battery cell in Europe” following a two-year development programme and expects to start customer deliveries in the first quarter of 2023.

LiFP technology is expected to take up a significant proportion of the battery market, in particular for electric vehicles (EVs), due to its safety, cost and sustainability benefits over Li-ion batteries. In EVs LFP batteries have been found to provide twice the longevity of other technologies and several manufacturers including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes and Ford have already introduced them.

“After creating and testing more than 500 laboratory sample cells, we have developed the final cell chemistry and design,” says Nemanja Mikać, CEO of ElevenEs, commenting that three cell sizes will be offered.

ElevenEs also is expanding its production capabilities, with the first step to gigafactory scale targeting 8GWh for 200,000 EVs per year by the end of 2025.

Currently, most of the LFP cell production has been in China.

Lithium mine for EVs

Meanwhile, Canadian miner Snow Lake Lithium is developing a renewables powered all-electric lithium mine to supply the resource to the North American EV industry.

Snow Lake Lithium’s 22,250ha site is expected to produce 160,000t of 6% lithium spodumene a year over a 10-year period – enough to power around 5 million EVs, or about 500,000 EVs per year. But the company is confident that its estimated resource could increase as currently only approximately 1% of the site has been explored.

To enable a seamless integration of the supply chain, Snow Lake Lithium plans to establish a joint venture lithium hydroxide processing plants in CentrePort, Winnipeg in southern Manitoba.

An MOU has been inked with LG Energy Solutions to explore this opportunity, which would include the 10-year supply of lithium to LG following the start of commercial production, which is targeted for 2025.

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Moon to Mars

NASA has released its Moon to Mars strategy to develop a blueprint for sustained human presence and exploration in the solar system.

The strategy contains no less than 63 final objectives in the areas of science, transportation and habitation, infrastructure on the two bodies and operations.

With electricity key for any form of habitation, little wonder that the top infrastructure objectives are to develop an incremental lunar power generation and distribution system that is evolvable to support continuous robotic/human operation and is capable of scaling to global power utilization and industrial power levels and to develop Mars surface power sufficient for an initial human exploration campaign.

The former of these is already well under way and in due course any implementation will require suitably trained energy personnel. For those lucky enough to go on to Mars, they can start preparing with the newly release Marstimer – a watch based on Omega’s Speedmaster that was developed with the European Space Agency and displays the time on both the Earth and Mars.

“Space-tough and Mars-mission ready” is the tagline for the watch, which was developed for ESA engineers and scientists to help operate the planned Rosalind Franklin Mars rover.

Combining old and new for off-grid power

A project pairing advanced lead batteries with green hydrogen could transform the supply of clean, reliable energy storage for remote communities which are not connected to the grid.

The LoCEL-H2 (Low-cost, Circular, plug & play, off-grid Energy for remote Locations including Hydrogen) project led by the Consortium for Battery Innovation with support from the Horizon Europe programme is developing the battolyser, a lead battery electrolyser, as a solution for hydrogen powered cooking as a replacement for firewood stoves.

As many as 2.5 billion people worldwide are believed to rely on firewood for cooking, mainly in low income countries in Africa and Asia.

Dr Carl Telford, Research and Innovation Manager at the Consortium, said the battolyser collaboration will include social-science and business experts “to ensure we can make a positive difference to those communities using the technology.”

Going deep with fusion tech

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on an initiative to repurpose gyrotron technology, a tool used in fusion, to tap geothermal energy.

In partnership with the geothermal energy company Quaise Energy, the fusion experts are aiming to advance the technology to enable drilling to greater depths and higher temperatures than are practical with traditional drilling techniques, as much as 20km below the surface of the earth.

The gyrotron is a device that converts energy from an electron beam into a millimetre wave – the millimetre analogue of the microwaves that power home microwave ovens – and is used in fusion to heat the plasmas.

Drilling would effectively result in energy from the device.

With the development of the technology, the potential for geothermal energy would be opened up across the US. Currently, geothermal energy isn’t widely used and is mainly restricted to the west where the heat is accessible at shallow depths.

Quantum encryption for Europe’s cybersecurity

At the heart of a secure cybersecurity solution is the security of the encryption key system and its distribution with the next-generation solutions for large scale use likely to be found in the quantum behaviour of matter at the atomic level.

Although used commercially on a limited scale, quantum key distribution is still primarily experimental and now with the support of the European Commission the technology is to be tested from space.

In a partnership between the European Space Agency and a consortium of companies, the Eagle-1 satellite will be developed to demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution technology within the EU and thereby enhance the region’s autonomy in the increasingly digital world.

The principles of quantum physics are such that any attempt to interfere or ‘eavesdrop’ with a quantum channel are immediately detected.

Eagle-1 is due to launch in 2024 and will undertake a three-year in orbit validation and providing data for the development of a European quantum communication infrastructure to protect the region from cyber threats.

Dubai – urban tech district planned

The Dubai Urban Tech District has been unveiled by UAE urban developer URB as the largest of its type and one of four ‘smart city’ projects the company is currently working on, the others being the Alnama Smart City in Riyadh, XZero City in Kuwait and Nexgen sustainable city in Cairo.

Dubai’s urban tech district to be located on the Creekside of the Al Jaddaf area is intended to provide a living laboratory for innovation and entrepreneurship in urban tech solutions in areas such as energy, water, waste management and food, i.e. technologies that address the challenges of urban living as more and more people come to live in such environments.

The district is planned to be 140,000m2 in extent and include facilities for conferences, training, research, seminars and business incubation as well as various amenities.

“The Urban Tech District will be a new global tech hub for urban innovation,” promises Baharash Bagherian CEO of URB, saying that Dubai is best positioned to lead the urban tech transformation than any other city in the world.