Lifeboat Foundation

Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) has been working for more than a decade on a floating wave energy device it calls the Waveline Magnet. With several prototypes tested on-and off-shore, the company claims it delivers “ultra low cost,” with high output.

Solar electricity generation is proliferating globally and becoming a key pillar of the decarbonization era. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer; tidal and wave energy is tantalizingly easy to see; step into the surf in high wave conditions and it’s obvious there’s an enormous amount of power in the ocean, just waiting to be tapped. But it’s also an incredibly harsh and punishing environment, and we’re yet to see tidal or wave energy harnessed on a mass scale.

Continue reading “Wave-riding generators promise the cheapest clean energy ever” »

The US Navy is exploring the novel technology of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) against Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons in the absence of a potent defense against these highly maneuverable missiles.

The top admiral of the US Navy, Michael Gilday stated that directed energy systems are being developed as a potential countermeasure against hypersonic missiles, calling the advancements made by Russia and China in hypersonic weapon technology “a significant concern.”

The development of devices that would use high-energy lasers or high-power microwaves to remove a threat is a major priority for the Navy, according to Adm. Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, who is also the Chief of US Missile Defense Agency.

The CATL tech with impressive claims for energy density, cooling, and range will first go into the Chinese premium EV brand.

Australian lab uses catalyst to generate 700ºC heat from hydrogen that could be used to retrofit power stations.

Kyiv will lose nearly two-thirds of its deposits if the Kremlin is successful in annexing Ukrainian territory.

At least $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine’s essential natural resources, including energy and mineral deposits, are now under Russian control.

“The Kremlin is robbing Ukraine” of its natural resources, the backbone of it’s economy, according to an analysis by SecDev posted by Washington Post on August 10.

Continue reading “In the Ukraine war, a battle for the nation’s mineral and energy wealth” »

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

To those that were part of the dot-com era tech scene, 2022 has a familiar energy. But now it’s all about the metaverse. And, just as they did in 1993 when the World Wide Web was launched into the public domain, many are asking themselves, “what is it, anyway?” What’s real, what’s hype and where are we headed?

The truth is, much like Internet 1.0 and all of its subsequent iterations, the metaverse is being defined as it’s being built. And contrary to what many believe, it’s more than just VR headsets and avatars. The metaverse is a place, an ecosystem, and above all else, an entirely new dimension. But to better understand this, it’s important to know how the metaverse is being developed.

Engineers at MIT have developed a new battery design using common materials – aluminum, sulfur and salt. Not only is the battery low-cost, but it’s resistant to fire and failures, and can be charged very fast, which could make it useful for powering a home or charging electric vehicles.

Lithium-ion batteries have dominated the field for the last few decades, thanks to their reliability and high energy density. However, lithium is becoming scarcer and more expensive, and the cells can be hazardous, exploding or bursting into flames if damaged or improperly used. Cheaper, safer alternatives are needed, especially as the world transitions towards renewable energy and electric vehicles.

So the MIT team set out to design a new type of battery out of readily available, inexpensive materials. After a search and some trial and error, they settled on aluminum for one electrode and sulfur for the other, topped off with an electrolyte of molten chloro-aluminate salt. Not only are all of these ingredients cheap and common, but they’re not flammable, so there’s no risk of fire or explosion.

It doesn’t involve magic but mirrors and lenses.

Energy can be trapped in the form of electric charge and heat, but until now, it has been impossible to absorb it in the form of light using traditional methods. Now a team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) claims to have developed the perfect setup to trap light, according to a press release published by EurekAlert.

Although this isn’t the first time scientists have come up with a way to absorb light energy, it is probably the only “light trap” method using which light energy can be absorbed even by very thin and weak mediums.

Continue reading “A perfect trap for light” »

Increased demand for super tiny electronic sensors coming from healthcare, environmental services and the Internet of Things is prompting a search for equally tiny ways to power these sensors. A review of the state of ultracompact supercapacitors, or “micro-supercapacitors,” concludes there is still a lot of research to be done before these devices can deliver on their promise.

The review appeared in the journal Nano Research Energy.

The explosion of demand in recent years for miniaturized electronic devices, such as health monitors, environmental sensors and wireless communications technologies has in turn driven demand for components for those devices that have ever smaller size and weight, with lower energy consumption, and all of this at cheaper prices.