Environement "next generation of renewable energy technologies"

This is the next generation of renewable energy technologies

Hi-tech football pitches, wave power and nuclear fusion are helping to move Britain away from 'dirty' fuels towards sustainable energy

Children playing football in the Morro da Mineira favela in Rio de Janeiro are helping to power their neighbourhood’s street lights by running on an AstroTurf pitch that converts their steps into energy 

Scientists all over the globe are working to develop sustainable new energy sources to reduce our dependence on dwindling fossil fuel supplies.

In the UK, just 5pc of the nation’s energy comes from renewables. The Government has set a target of 15pc by 2020, but progress is slow.

Some sustainable energy sources, such as solar energy, are mature marketplaces, with 60 years of research behind them. Others, such as antimatter, are more experimental.

The science of antimatter is still in its infancy but scientists claim that mixing just half a gram of antimatter with half a gram of matter would create the same energy generated by the Hiroshima bomb.

There are several start-ups developing other ground-breaking technologies for generating electricity, some using methods that seem more Star Trek: The Next Generation than National Grid. We meet three entrepreneurs leading the charge into next-generation renewables.

Turning footsteps into electricity

Youngsters playing on a newly-installed football pitch in one of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious slums are now powering the neighbourhood’s street lights with every step.

Their movements across the AstroTurf are converted from kinetic energy into electricity by 200 hidden energy-capturing tiles built by London-based Pavegen.

The Pavegen tiles took less than a week to install

Founded by Laurence Kemball-Cook in 2009, the company exports its energy-converting tiles to 20 countries across the world. Customers range from infrastructure giants such as Siemens to retail brands Nike and

Uniqlo. “I started this in my bedroom with just a sketch,” Kemball-Cook, 29, tells The Sunday Telegraph. “Now we employ 30 staff in four offices and we’re profitable.”

Pavegen, which converts high footfall areas into pseudo-batteries, and sister company Roadgen, which aims to harvest energy from vehicles on the world’s roads, will help to power the cities of the future, says Kemball-Cook. “We want to take the cost of the technology down to the same price as normal flooring. We’re looking to raise investment this year to help us meet that goal.”

Pavegen, which has been shortlisted for this year’s UK Private Business Awards, has now passed the £1m turnover mark and is on target to double that this financial year. “Next year will be pivotal for the company,” says Kemball-Cook, revealing that the company’s technology is due to be installed outside the White House next spring in its biggest US project to date.

The challenge of storing and converting energy from renewable sources is on the verge of a breakthrough, he said. “Elon Musk [of Tesla fame] has built his Gigafactory, which will manufacture batteries on a huge scale, bringing down the cost massively. And we’re working with technologists in the super and ultra-capacitor space to find solutions to the storage problem.”

Wind and solar alternatives are less efficient than Pavegen’s technology, and depend heavily on weather and geography, Kemball-Cook claims. “Human footfall is currently a wasted resource,” he adds. “We will become part of the fabric of urban infrastructure.”

The new wave of energy

The World Energy Council has estimated that if the planet’s wave power was harnessed, we could generate double the amount of electricity currently produced worldwide. The west coast of Scotland is home to some of the most powerful and consistent waves in the world. Over the past few days, waves have been recorded in the Orkney Islands topping 14ft.

Sam Etherington, a 24-year-old engineer and founder of Aqua Power Technologies, is testing a new device that captures wave power at a site near the UK archipelago.

“We’ve had some rough weather,” he says. “The waves are trying to destroy everything they hit and are coming every 20 seconds. It’s the best environment to test the technology.”

Etherington’s invention sits on the surface of the water and, unlike other wave power systems, works on a multiaxis basis; it can generate power no matter what direction the waves come from.

The multi-axis device generates energy from waves breaking at any direction

Enquiries are flooding in from all over Europe from consortiums keen to install the devices. “It’s very encouraging, given that we’re still developing the technology and don’t even have a price for them yet,” says Etherington, adding that the devices are likely to cost “millions”.

Etherington has funded his start-up through grants from the Regional Growth Development Fund, topped up with £1,000-worth of prize money for winning the Shell LIVEwire competition for bright young entrepreneurs. The devices are made in Cumbria, and Etherington is hoping to have two wave farms deployed in the UK by 2018.

“This is absolutely the future,” the young investor said. “The industry has seen some setbacks with two industry incumbents going bust, so we’re underpromising on all fronts. We’re telling people that the devices will pay for themselves within six years with a lifespan of 25, but that’s very conservative.”

Star power

Serial entrepreneur Richard Dinan, former star of reality TV show Made in Chelsea, has started a business that plans to recreate nuclear fusion – the process that powers the stars – right here on Earth.

Richard Dinan, better known for his role in structured reality TV show Made In Chelsea, is now an amateur physicist

Applied Fusion Systems, which is trying to build a tokamak reactor, which traps red-hot plasma in a magnetic field to generate nuclear energy, is working on a prototype demonstrator.

“I saw one company that built one for just £127,000,” he said. “I looked at the design and realised we could build something better.”

Dinan, who left school at 16, has taught himself physics in order to understand the particle theory behind fusion. He claims that AFS is not trying to match the research coming out of international nuclear fusion research and engineering organisation ITER, but that “getting my hands dirty” is necessary to know how to commercialise the technology when it arrives.

“For example, some of these reactors use tritium deuterium [a radioactive isotope of hydrogen],” he says. “That costs $30,000 (£19,000) a gram, so perhaps we will start breeding it.”

The company is still at a very early stage and Dinan is trying to raise funding. “When I tell people I’m building a nuclear reactor, they look at me as though I’m mad,” he says. “People think it’s science fiction or impossible, or at least a billion-pound effort that shouldn’t concern them yet, but I’m going to prove them wrong.”

The Telegraph

Published  by Djamel Benrejdal, Scarborough, North Yorkshire 

  

Electric avenues that can transmit the sun’s energy onto power grids may be coming to a city near you.

Electric avenues that can transmit the sun’s energy onto power grids may be coming to a city near you.
A subsidiary of Bouygues SA has designed rugged solar panels, capable of withstand the weight of an 18-wheeler truck, that they’re now building into road surfaces. After nearly five years of research and laboratory tests, they’re constructing 100 outdoor test sites and plan to commercialize the technology in early 2018.
We wanted to find a second life for a road said Philippe Harelle the chief technology officer at Colas SA’s Wattway unit, owned by the French engineering group Bouygues. Solar farms use land that could otherwise be for agriculture, while the roads are free.

As solar costs plummet, panels are being increasingly integrated into everyday materials. Last month Tesla Motors Inc. surprised investors by unveiling roof shingles that double as solar panels. Other companies are integrating photovoltaics into building facades. Wattway joins groups including Sweden’s Scania and Solar Roadways in the U.S. seeking to integrate panels onto pavement.
To resist the weight of traffic, Wattway layers several types of plastics to create a clear and durable casing. The solar panel underneath is an ordinary model, similar to panels on rooftops. The electrical wiring is embedded in the road and the contraption is topped by an anti-slip surface made from crushed glass.
A kilometer-sized testing site began construction last month in the French village of Tourouvre in Normandy. The 2,800 square meters of solar panels are expected to generate 280 kilowatts at peak, with the installation generating enough to power all the public lighting in a town of 5,000 for a year, according to the company.
For now, the cost of the materials makes only demonstration projects sensible. A square meter of the solar road currently costs 2,000 ($2,126) and 2,500 euros. That includes monitoring, data collection and installation costs. Wattway says it can make the price competitive with traditional solar farms by 2020.

The electricity generated by this stretch of solar road will feed directly into the grid. Another test site is being used to charge electric vehicles. A third will power a small hydrogen production plant. Wattway has also installed its panels to light electronic billboards and is working on links to street lights.
The next two sites will be in Calgary in Canada and in the U.S. state of Georgia. Wattway also plans to build them in Africa, Japan and throughout the European Union.
We need to test for all kinds of different traffic and climate conditions Harelle said. I want to find the limits of it. We think that maybe it will not be able to withstand a snow plow.
The potential fragility joins cost as a potential hurdle.
We’re seeing solar get integrated in a number of things, from windows in buildings to rooftops of cars, made possible by the falling cost of panels Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Pietro Radoia said. On roads, I don’t think that it will really take off unless there’s a shortage of land sometime in the future.’

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Solar-Panel Roads to Be Built on Four Continents Next Year

Bloomberg News

Published  by Djamel Benrejdal, Scarborough, North Yorkshire