December 2014 – Solar Magazine

This device will charge your phone in just 15 minutes

Fastest charging external battery

Using the same methods as electric-vehicle supercharging technology, UK hardware startup Petalite have announced the Petalite Flux, an external battery for your phone that can be charged to 100% (2,600mAh) in just 15 minutes!

Combined with their revolutionary Power Dock technology the Petalite flux can either be charged normally via USB or in just 15 minutes with 10 amps of power when using the Power Dock.

The creators said that external chargers are handy, but remembering to charge them up can be a pain. Indie project, Petalite Flux, seeks to solve that by making a battery that can charge in just 15 minutes.

According to solarthermalmagazine.com, the device weights just 95g, and with a stylish, cylindrical design and utilizing automotive grade components, the Flux is incredibly durable and reliable, whilst also being ergonomic and light enough to fit within your hand, purse or pocket as you continue your daily routine.

New super-efficient and affordable solar panel

Rayton’s new super-efficient solar panel

Rayton Solar, an American solar company, has developed technology that can produce super-efficient solar power that’s cheaper than fossil fuels. Their new solar panel manufacturing technology uses 50 to 100 times less silicon than other technologies, cutting out large amounts of the most costly component of solar panels.

According to inhabitat.com, the company says its patent-pending process uses just four microns worth of silicon, leaving zero waste – while boosting efficiency to 24 percent. That means 25 percent higher than industry standard efficiency.

Their patent-pending solar PV modules can be manufactured in the United States at a cost of 60 percent less than the industry average, which is based on prices from places like China where the majority of solar panels are made.

The first real Google self-driving car

Google reveals their first real self-driving car

Google introduced its own, built-from-the-ground-up, electric self-driving cars earlier this year. This has got to be one of the biggest tech stories of the year. However, at that launch, the self-driving mockup vehicle, as Google noted in a Google+ post recently, “didn’t even have real headlights!” It has surely made a lot of progress since then, as the announcement was that the “first real build” of the cute little electric vehicle has arrived.

According to Clean Technica, briefly summarizing what has gone on since the first announcement on May, the Google+ post states: “Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car—for example, the typical ‘car’ parts like steering and braking, as well as the ‘self-driving’ parts like the computer and sensors. We’ve now put all those systems together in this fully functional vehicle—our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving.”

The Google+ post went on to note that people in Northern California would be able to spot the self-driving car on public streets in 2015. For now, the team behind the self-driving car is “spending the holidays zipping around our test track.”

The web portal that provides insight into renewable energy sources

The web portal is available for viewing on a variety of devices.

Researchers from the University of Arizona and their partners have built a new web portal that will help utility companies better understand the long-term impact of clean energy on the power grid and provide insight on how to integrate these resources in the future in the most cost-efficient and reliable way for consumers.

The tool — a web portal— analyzes, gathers and displays real-time data from eight Southwestern utility companies, painting a broad picture of energy sources and use across the region. The information is crucial, because it will help companies determine what actions to take for backup power planning over the next several years as the percentage of renewable energy usage grows.

According to psys.org, by 2025, Arizona utility companies are required to generate 15 percent of their energy from the sun, wind, biogas, biomass, geothermal and other green resources. But the power generated by some of these renewable resources is variable. For instance, a cloudy day will change the amount of power generated by a solar array, a stormy day could generate more wind power, and solar generation drops completely at night —right about the time when customers turn on their lights, increasing energy demand.

By using this tool to obtain a deeper understanding of these opportunities and challenges, utility companies will be able to provide customers with a more reliable and efficient power grid, even as variable resources become a larger percentage of the overall power generated.

“Integrating solar and wind resources onto the grid while maintaining the total load and resource balance is the challenge for balancing authorities such as TEP,” said Sam Rugel, Tucson Electric Power’s director of systems control and reliability. “This tool will help quantify and communicate that challenge in a more efficient and effective way for us and our customers as we move forward.”

Part of the portal is accessible to the general public, marking the first time in the Southwest that so many utility companies have coordinated their efforts to allow this amount of near real-time data to be publicly available.

“The data are available for anyone to download and analyze, and people from all over the world have accessed the site,” said Will Holmgren, the UA physics post-doctoral researcher who led the development of the website. “We’re using the data to understand the challenges and opportunities inherent in expanding renewable energy usage in the existing power grid in the Southwest.”

The project began in 2012, when the UA Renewable Energy Network, or UAREN, a University-wide initiative designed to support the expanded use of abundant, clean and economical renewable energy, brought together UA researchers and regional utility companies to provide a more complete picture of the challenges that affect energy production and demand.

The companies—Arizona Public Service, Arizona’s Generation & Transmission Cooperatives, El Paso Electric, Imperial Irrigation District, Power New Mexico, Salt River Project, Tucson Electric Power and Western Area Power Administration—are part of the Southwest Variable Energy Resource Initiative, or SVERI, which was formed in 2012 to study the impact of variable energy resources on the grid in the Southwest.

The SVERI Public Access Data Portal displays a variety of graphs designed to provide a better understanding of the mix of renewable and traditional energy generation in the Southwest: how much energy is being generated overall, how much of that energy generation is from renewable or variable resources, such as solar and wind, and what the total load, or energy demand, is for the utility companies. The data are gathered from more than 150 power facilities across the region, including 75 variable energy resources.

The website offers a date range selection and an interactive map of renewable energy power stations across the region, as well as an option to download the data. It also includes a glossary to help visitors understand technical or scientific terminology.