The electric vehicle (EV) market's demand for ultra-fast charging has never been higher, as automotive batteries aim to replicate the convenience of filling up a tank at a gas station in minutes.

According to the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), more than 80% of EV charging takes place at the driver's residence via basic wall outlets (100V/120V) or dryer outlets (220/240V). This makes sense as residential charging is convenient and inexpensive.

Problems arise when the EV is driven far enough away from the residence to warrant a recharge to get back home or continue the journey. This scenario is why fast-charging stations are growing in demand. Fast charging aims to recharge EV batteries within a short period of time, similar to refueling conventional gasoline vehicles. Today's fast charging typically takes about 20 minutes to charge up to 80% capacity.

The growth of fast-charging stations will help address the common driver concern of the limited range of their EV. The increase of fast-charging stations will mean drivers can easily refuel and significantly extend their vehicles' driving range.

But fast charging comes at a price. Until recently, many EV battery systems were not compatible with the fastest charging system. Fortunately, the major EV car manufacturers are investing in high-speed chargers with capacities of 150kW or higher and even faster, ultra-fast recharging technology.

Companies are working to address the issues between fast charging systems and battery capacity and safety. For example, Peter Kelly-Detwiler, Principal at NorthBridge Energy Partners, LLC, has been tracking the developments from SK Innovations.

"Why carry a huge canteen (or battery) on your hike if you know you can fill quickly at a stream every two or three hours on your journey," asked Kelly-Detwiler?  "Of course, the charging infrastructure will need to be there, with liquid-cooled cables, etc., but I do think a portion of the industry will end up at 350-400 kW capability to support the Hummers or SK Innovations supported EVs."

The need for liquid-cooled energy cables hints at another challenge for fast-charging EV stations, namely, their adverse impact on the electrical power system. Common effects include harmonic contamination in the transmission lines and high current, adding to peak-hour consumption concerns. The high power and current ratings of the recharging facilities require supervised operation at specially designed stations.

Types of Rechargers. There are two types of recharging "fuels," namely, alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). A standard cord set is provided with each new vehicle that typically enables 3.6kW of charging via a conventional wall socket. Using this approach, the impact on the electricity grid is limited as the charging rate is so low.

There are three major categories of chargers, based on the maximum amount of power the charger provides to the battery from the grid, according to the EERE):

• Level 1: Provides charging through a 120 V AC plug and does not require additional charging equipment.  This level can deliver 2 to 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Most often used in homes, but sometimes used at workplaces.
• Level 2: Provides charging through a 240 V DC (for residential) or 208 V (for commercial) plug and requires the installation of additional charging equipment. It can deliver 10 to 20 miles of range per hour of charging. Used in homes, workplaces, and public charging.
• DC Fast Charge: Provides charging through 480 V AC input and requires highly specialized, high-powered equipment and special equipment in the vehicle itself.  (Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles typically do not have fast charging capabilities.) It can deliver 60 to 80 miles of range in 20 minutes of charging. This service is used most often in public charging stations, especially along heavy traffic corridors.

Depending upon the type of EV battery, how depleted it is, and its capacity, the charging rate amongst these three categories can be anywhere from less than 30 minutes to 20 hours.

Another type of charging, currently being researched by the Department of Energy (DoE) and provided to specific vehicle models Qualcomm and others, is cord-free wireless battery charging. For example, Qualcomm's Halo tech is currently fitted to the Formula E Safety Car and Medical car. The main advantage of wireless charging is convenience and not necessarily a faster charging rate.

A common concern with EV owners is the effect of faster-charging systems on the vehicle's battery life. The issue is that the chemical processes involved in rapidly charging a battery can lead to greater thermal loads that may degrade the battery faster than regular charges. The result could be reduced battery life and a decrease in driving range.

According to Jim Francfort, project manager in INL's Advanced Transportation Group and quoted from an INL article, "The value of building infrastructure is a difficult thing to measure. To put DC fast-charging stations along interstate corridors could encourage people to take longer trips even if they don't stop to charge."
The fact that fast charging is available gives EV drivers the confidence they might otherwise lack. This new breed of drivers will know that fast charging is available, like gas stations for traditional vehicles, if they need it.

If you're sick of hearing about dark mode on smartphone apps, I hear you. Now that both Android and iOS have the option to turn your interface darker, not a day goes by without this or that app adding support for dark mode. 

But beyond aesthetics, there's a real-world reason to turn on dark mode: increased battery life. According to a recent test, conducted by PhoneBuff, switching to dark mode can extend your iPhone's battery life by 30%. 

In the test, identical tasks were performed on an iPhone XS Max in Twitter, YouTube, Message, and other apps, first with the phone running light mode, and then with dark mode on.  

The result is quite spectacular. When the battery on the iPhone running light mode died, the other iPhone still had 30% battery life, which should give you several extra hours of service.  

Things aren't that simple, though. The test phones were set to 200 nits of brightness; you might see different results with other settings. Furthermore, during the test a single app was used for several hours at a time, which is (hopefully) not how most users use their phones.
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And there's a one big caveat: Only smartphones with OLED screens will see the battery life improvement. That’s because on OLED screens, black pixels are turned off instead of being backlit. So, users who are running an iPhone X, XS, XS Max, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max will get the benefit. However, those with an iPhone XR and iPhone 11 won't get the benefits.

Honda Research Institute has announced a breakthrough battery chemistry developed in collaboration with Caltech and NASA JPL researchers. The technology, which was detailed in a newly published study, has a better eco-footprint while enabling the use of higher energy density materials in comparison to existing battery tech.

Honda says the new technology sidesteps fluoride-based battery technology temperature limitations. The team successfully demonstrated the operation of fluoride-ion based energy cells at room temperature, opening the door for high energy-density batteries that better meet the high capacity needs of modern technology.

Even better, the researchers say that unlike popular lithium-ion batteries, which are known to be volatile, fluoride-ion batteries are safer without the risk of overheating. As well, this battery technology is better for the environment due to the lower environmental impact of its source materials.
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Batteries created with this new chemistry may have up to 10 times the high energy density of lithium-ion batteries, according to the study. Despite the upsides, this type of battery hasn’t replaced lithium-ion due to its temperature limitations – until now, it has required temperatures above 302º F degrees to work correctly.
Researchers with Honda, NASA, and Caltech, overcame this limitation and developed a fluoride-ion cell that can operate at room temperature. The team achieved this using a fluoride-conducting liquid electrolyte that has high ionic conductivity, as well as a wide operating voltage. Such technology may one day be behind batteries that power everything from consumer gadgets to electric vehicles.

Installing solar panels in your home can lower your environmental footprint and your monthly bills, but there are also some disadvantages you should know. Here are seven issues to consider.

1 Solar Panels Don’t Require Maintenance.Despite what solar panel makers may tell you, maintenance of the panels is not a problem once you have them installed. Solar panel manufacturers try to get people to lease solar panels, insisting that then the homeowner won’t have to worry about maintenance. Don’t let this get to you! The only thing you have to do is keep the panels clear of debris, by using a garden hose, out of direct sunlight, a few times a year.

2 SRECs and Tax Credits Aren’t Forever.Solar panel manufacturers will push you to invest in their product for many reasons, including the promise of SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Credit) and tax credits. Every Megawatt-hour of electricity produced by your solar panels results in an SREC. In some states, SRECs are sold to utility companies, who then pay homeowners for each SREC they purchase. While such credits are a great incentive, they’re not a forever promise. For example, the Federal Solar Tax Credit will end for home solar in 2021.

3 The Effectiveness of Your Solar Panels Drops Each Year.It’s not a significant drop, but solar panel manufacturers aren’t going to be quick to disclose that efficiency of panels drops each year slightly. For panels manufactured after 2000, a 20-year-old panel will produce around 92% of its original power. 

4 You Should Be Careful of Your Warranty.It’s essential you do research on the solar panel manufacturers out there and hone in on which one has the best warranty. Most warranties last for 20 to 25 years, but for them to follow through, the manufacturer must still be in business. As always, choose a manufacturer with a solid reputation.

5 The Production of Solar Panels Creates Pollution.Solar is held up as an energy-saving, environmentally-friendly powerhouse. And while that’s undoubtedly true in many cases, the transportation and installation of solar energy systems are linked with the emission of greenhouse gases. Toxic materials and hazardous products have also been associated with the manufacturing process.

6 You Might Not Want Solar If You Have Low Electricity Costs.Solar is enticing for many reasons, most notably for financial and environmental sustainability. But if you don’t have substantial electricity costs, to begin with, you might want to reconsider investing in solar, since, if your electricity costs are low, your solar savings will be as well. Along with the size of your home and your usage, where you live also has an impact on your energy costs. For instance, in Louisiana, the cost of electricity is 27% lower than the national average.
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7 You May Not Be a Good Candidate for Solar Energy. Along with living in a state with low electricity costs, there are other things to consider regarding solar energy. For instance, you might need to cut down trees that shade and beautify your home, and that can be very expensive. You may not even have the right roof to support solar panels structurally. These aren’t topics that solar panel companies are going to put right out there, but you should think of all of these things as you consider your options. Are you a good candidate for solar? Here’s what you need to know.

One of the biggest problems plaguing the widespread adoption of solar power is rainy weather.

Solar panels are designed to convert sunlight into electricity. But when it's cloudy or rainy, they're rendered useless. There are batteries, like the Tesla Powerwall, designed to store electricity for those cloudy days. But the technology isn't quite effective or cheap enough to make using solar power worth it in regions that don't receive a lot of sunlight.

A group of researchers from Soochow University in China has come up with a promising solution to that problem: they've developed solar panels that can generate power from raindrops.

Their research, published last month in the journal ACS Nano, details how technology known as a triboelectric nanogenerator, or TENG, could get added to a solar panel to capture energy from the motion of raindrops that hit it.

Nanogenerators, in simple terms, are devices that convert mechanical energy, or movement, into usable electricity. The TENG would do that on a very small scale for raindrops.

The researchers behind the new study developed a hybrid solar panel that incorporated the TENG technology yet was still lightweight and cheap enough to mount on roofs. To accomplish this, they experimented with different transparent plastics, or polymers, that form a layer between the TENG layer and the solar cells on a panel. The layers were connected, but could function independently — making it possible for the solar panel to generate electricity in a range of weather conditions.

If the researchers can figure out how to bring down the cost of production of such a product, the technology could potentially revolutionize how solar panels are used. It would make solar power an efficient clean-energy solution even in less sunny areas that aren't currently considered ideal for solar-energy collection.
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Solar power, despite its weather-related challenges, is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing energy sources worldwide. In the next five years, the share of electricity generated by renewables worldwide is set to grow faster than any other source.

Charging your mobile device wirelessly is undoubtedly less of a hassle than plugging it in, but still requires the device be in physical contact with its charging station actually to work. That’s about to change now that the Federal Communications Commission has approved the first wireless charger that works from up to three feet away.

San Jose-based startup, Energous, recently announced that it has received the first such FCC certification for power-at-a-distance wireless charging with its WattUp mid-field transmitter. The transmitter converts electricity into radio frequencies, then beams the energy to nearby devices outfitted with a corresponding receiver. This differs from the resonant induction method that the Pi wireless charging system relies upon and offers a greater range than the Belkin and Mophie chargers that require physical contact with the device.

The WattUp can charge multiple devices simultaneously and should work on any number of devices, from phones and tablets to keyboards and earbuds, so long as they're outfitted with the right receiver. What's more, the WattUp ecosystem is manufacturer-agnostic – like Wi-Fi – meaning that you'll still be able to charge your Samsung phone even if the transmitter is made by Sony or Apple.
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While Energous does not have any retail-ready devices available just yet, the company does plan to show off the new technology at CES 2018, which runs January 9th-12th in Las Vegas.

The process of creating, tracking, verifying, and reporting on the cryptocurrency transactions using Bitcoin is called “mining.” The network of computers mining Bitcoins uses more electricity in a year than the whole of Ireland, according to statistics released as the price of a Bitcoin broke $17,400 for the first time last Monday.
According to Digiconomist the estimated power use of the bitcoin network, which is responsible for verifying transactions made with the cryptocurrency, is 30.14 Terawatt-hours (TWh) a year, which exceeds that of 19 European countries. At an ongoing power drain of 3.4GigaWatts, it means the network consumes five times more electricity than is produced by the largest wind farm in Europe, the London Array in the outer Thames Estuary, at 630MegaWatts.

At those levels of electricity consumption, each bitcoin transaction uses almost 300KWh of electricity – enough to boil around 36,000 kettles full of water. Although power consumption of other payment networks is harder to isolate, one of Visa’s two US data centers reportedly runs on about 2% of the power required by the Bitcoin network. Between them, those two data centers conduct around 200 million transactions a day; the bitcoin network handles fewer than 350,000.

The astronomical power draw is a facet of how the bitcoin network protects itself against fraud. With no centralized authority confirming transactions, Bitcoin is instead backed by “miners,” who put specialized computers to work churning through extremely power-intensive computing problems. Solving those issues both rewards the miner, handing them almost a quarter of a million dollars in Bitcoin, and verifies all transactions made in the last 10 minutes.

As the price of Bitcoin goes up, so does the value of the reward, meaning that more miners put more computers to the task of running the network. But since the price of bitcoin doesn’t necessarily rise in step with the number of transactions, that disconnect can mean the currency uses a significant amount of power per transaction in periods of high prices.
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In the last three months, the cryptocurrency continued to grow in its third significant boom in its history. Previous periods of sustained growth, in 2013 and 2014, each ended with substantial busts, leading commentators to label them, in hindsight, as speculative bubbles.

Wireless charging can be a great convenience, cutting out the need to carry cords and plugs around in case your phone's battery dies. Today, though, it requires a phone be stationary and in contact with a charging pad.

Wireless charging at a distance could make life easier not just for people with smartphones, and for drones and electric vehicles, but also for patients with electronic medical implants.

Researchers at Stanford have now developed a highly efficient technique that enables wireless power transfer at a few feet and in motion.

The work builds on "magnetic resonance coupling" in which electricity passes through an oscillating magnetic field created by a pair of transmitting and receiving coils. The best result can be achieved if each coil is at a fixed distance and positioned at an optimal angle.

However, as the Stanford researchers detail in a new paper, their new "robust" wireless power transfer system enables a steady charge at variable distances of up to few feet and, impressively, doesn't require manual tuning as the distance and angles between the two change.

The technique was developed by Stanford electrical engineer researchers Sid Assawaworrarit, Xiaofang Yu and Shanhui Fan.

While it has the potential to bring significant improvements to electric vehicles, there are several limitations. The researchers have only demonstrated it working at a charge sufficient to keep a tiny LED lit, and the demonstration system is not a practical size yet.

The demo video shows a barbell-like contraption with two large disc-shaped cardboard boxes with a transmitter and receiver inside each. The LED attached to the receiver stays lit as the receiver slides further away from the transmitter and starts to fade after 75cm/29.5 inches. The power transfer stops fully at about a meter away.

To bypass tuning obstacles, the researchers switched the transmitter's radio-frequency source for a voltage amplifier and feedback resistor, according to Stanford.
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"Adding the amplifier allows power to be very efficiently transferred across most of the three-foot range and despite the changing orientation of the receiving coil," explained Assawaworrarit.

Fabrics that can generate electricity from physical movement have been in the works for a few years. Now researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have taken the next step, developing a fabric that can simultaneously harvest energy from both sunshine and motion.

Combining two types of electricity generation into one textile paves the way for producing garments that could provide a source of energy to power devices such as smartphones or global positioning systems.

“This hybrid power textile presents a novel solution to charging devices in the field from something as simple as the wind blowing on a sunny day,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering.

To make the fabric, Wang’s team used a commercial textile machine to weave together solar cells constructed from lightweight polymer fibers with fiber-based triboelectric nanogenerators.

Triboelectric nanogenerators use a combination of the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction to generate small amounts of electrical power from mechanical motion such as rotation, sliding or vibration.
Wang envisions that the new fabric, which is 320 micrometers thick woven together with strands of wool, could be integrated into tents, curtains or wearable garments.

“The fabric is highly flexible, breathable, lightweight and adaptable to a range of uses,” Wang said.

Fiber-based triboelectric nanogenerators capture the energy created when certain materials become electrically charged after they come into moving contact with a different material. For the sunlight-harvesting part of the fabric, Wang’s team used photoanodes made in a wire-shaped fashion that could be woven together with other fibers.
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While early tests indicate the fabric can withstand repeated and rigorous use, researchers will be looking into its long-term durability. Next steps also include further optimizing the fabric for industrial applications, including developing proper encapsulation to protect the electrical components from rain and moisture.

One of the issues that are often discussed when talking about smart homes is the ability to monitor energy consumption down each appliance and light fixture. Three weeks ago, in our issue 3-5, we covered a story about Sense, a gadget that is supposed to diagnose your electrical usage – by appliance.

Now, researchers at MIT, led by Professor of Electrical Engineering Steven Leeb, have created a system they say can tell you the power being used by every device in your home with pinpoint accuracy. And they also say it's inexpensive and simple to install.

The system is made up of a postage-stamp-sized sensor that is placed on the incoming power line to a person's home and software that analyzes the spikes and patterns in voltage to identify and monitor the energy use of each device. MIT News says that the software can "tell the difference between every different kind of light, motor, and other device in the home and show exactly which ones go on and off, at what times."

One of the key advantages to this system is that it retains the privacy of a user's home energy information. The information stays within a user's home and isn't shared with anyone else.

The system has taken Leeb and his graduate students ten years to research and develop, tackling problems and finding solutions bit by bit. First, coming up with a device that was simple to install and then how to interpret the data from the sensors to find each device's signature to monitor it.
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When the system becomes a commercial product, Leeb says it will cost only about $25 to $30 per home and the non-contact sensor can be installed by the homeowner with a zip tie.