Power and Electrical Engineering

Electricity moves across miles in seconds to power manufacturing and utilities nationwide. But, for all its speed, the loss of just fractions of seconds of electric power is costing the U.S. economy $100 billion a year.

“The nation’s electric grid is operating so close to capacity that many of today’s electric load demands for fast and dynamic voltage support cannot be provided fast enough,” says Alex Huang, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech.

Moore´s Law – a dictum of the electronics industry that says the number of transistors that fit on a computer chip will double every 18 months – may soon face some fundamental roadblocks. Most researchers think there´ll eventually be a limit to how many transistors they can cram on a chip. But even if Moore´s Law could continue to spawn ever-tinier chips, small electronic devices are plagued by a big problem: energy loss, or dissipation, as signals pass from one transistor to the next. Line up all t

How can we more effectively harness the free and endless energy resources of the Sun, wind and water? One answer is orbiting above us.

Satellites provide us with a wide variety of data that can help with many aspects of the building and management of renewable energy plants. ESA recently held a workshop at its Frascati-based centre in Italy, attended by representatives of the Earth Observation (EO) service industry together with renewable energy companies and utilities to explore how

Australian windpower technology is reaching out to a global market, as science, technology and industry come together in a new wind energy consulting company based in Canberra.

Former CSIRO scientists, Dr Keith Ayotte and Dr Nathan Steggel developed what is seen to be world’s best available wind resource technology, WindScape and Raptor NL.

Windscape is believed to be the leading wind mapping tool and enables power prospectors to find the windiest spots down to property boundaries

Discovery could ignite ‘engine of the future’ — Eliminating millions of dollars on use of precious metals

Researchers at Tufts University have discovered that it’s possible to make hydrogen from fossil fuels using far less platinum or gold than current fuel processing technology has required. Their research shows that 90 percent of precious metals used today may be removed from the catalyst without affecting its ability to produce hydrogen.

This finding could have potential

Scientists have developed a hydrogen-making catalyst that uses cheaper materials and yields fewer contaminants than do current processes, while extracting the element from common renewable plant sources. Further, the new catalyst lies at the heart of a chemical process the authors say is a significant advance in producing alternate fuels from domestic sources.

In the June 27 issue of the journal Science, James Dumesic, John Shabaker and George Huber, of the University of Wisconsin at Madis