We’ve heard it over and over: range anxiety, the fear that electric vehicle batteries can only survive short trips, is a major roadblock to EV adoption. Newer electric vehicles boast stronger, more efficient batteries, and EV manufacturers make bold claims about the mileage each can travel before recharging. The company’s website states that the Nissan LEAF battery should be able to travel at least 73 miles on a single charge (and up to 100 miles depending on speed). It also claims that the battery should retain 80 percent charging capacity for up to seven years. Yet those entering their second or third summers with the car noticed that their mileage per charge is plummeting, and fast. Online complaints quickly reached Nissan’s ears, but the company merely stated that it was investigating the issue and ‘would make things right.’

Months later, EV owners were tired of waiting to see results from this “investigation” so they decided to orchestrate a test of their own. Just days ago, twelve LEAF owners gathered in a Tempe parking lot that featured several charging stations. Some of the vehicles were practically brand new, while others had odometer readings of up to 29,000 miles. Starting with fully charged batteries, each car drove mapped route until their batteries literally ran out of juice. According to a summary published on InsideEVs, the newest of the cars, those with the lowest mileage, lasted about 80 miles on average. Older cars, however, and those claimed to have suffered battery degradation were doing far less than that with one only getting 59.3 miles out of a full charge.

Confronted with the news, Nissan has pointed to the annual mileage and driving style of  LEAF owners as an explanation. Upon an internal investigation, the company found that most of the LEAFs covered much higher mileage per year than the 12,500 miles Nissan used to estimate the rate of battery capacity loss over time. Under these conditions, Nissan’s Mark Perry told Green Car Reports, “The cars and the battery packs are behaving as we expected.” However, that likely comes as small consolation to EV drivers looking for a reliable vehicle that can truly replace their gas powered cars.

Featured photo credit: Dongliu/Shutterstock

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In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was, in fact, expanding — and not static. Once Einstein knew the universe was expanding, he discarded his cosmological constant theory and later called it “the biggest blunder of his life.”

Fast forward 90 years and the world’s most powerful digital camera has photographed the very thing that Einstein felt was the biggest blunder of his life: dark energy.

Another theory, however, suggests that dark energy is a new force and will eventually fade away just as it arose, but that is somewhat beside the point.

The point is, there is a new, totally badass camera that can photograph the affects of dark energy on space and time — and do so from a mountaintop in Chile.

What is Dark Energy?

According to NASA’s Astrophysics division, more is unknown than is known about dark energy. We know it is there because of how it affects the universe’s expansion, but that’s about it. Most scientists currently believe that roughly 70 percent of the Universe is dark energy, 25 percent is dark matter, and the rest — everything we’ve ever observed from Earth — makes up the remaining 5 percent.

Makes ya feel kind of small, eh?

Why is the Dark Energy Camera Significant?

The official press release states:

Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time.

The Dark Energy Camera is the most powerful survey instrument of its kind, and light from over 100,000 galaxies up to 8 billion light years away is able to be viewed in each snapshot.

In December, after the camera has been fully tested, scientists in the Dark Energy Survey collaboration will use the new camera to carry out the largest galaxy survey ever undertaken. Over the next five years they will basically create a detailed color map of one-eighth of the sky, discovering and measuring 300 million galaxies, 100,000 galaxy clusters and 4,000 supernovae.

Read more about the Dark Energy Camera and check out the video below for a cool timelapse of the camera’s construction below:

Photo: The Blanco telescope in Chile. Credit: T. Abbott and NOAO/AURA/NSF

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Non-organic farmers typically rely on herbicides to control their weed problems. Ingestion of these man-made chemicals has been linked to autism, ADHD, cancer, and other side effects, making them bad for consumers, bad for the farmers using them, and bad for the general health of our food system and our country. But because they have been the only alternative to manually pulling weeds, farmers often don’t see another option.

Blue River’s weed killing robot could change that industry practice and reduce herbicide use in the U.S. by more than 250 million pounds a year. The wheeled robot starts its job by scanning the ground with cameras.  It then uses algorithms, to differentiate between good and bad plants.  Once it finds a bad one (re: a weed), it injects it with enough fertilizer to kill it.  The technology is about 98 or 99 percent accurate.

Right now the robot is only “trained” for lettuce, but with the company’s announcement this week that it has raised $3.1 million from investors, it is looking to commercialize its machines and bring them to the broader market. “We intend to invest the proceeds of this round in growing our engineering team and accelerating our new product roadmap,” said Jorge Heraud, co-founder and CEO of Blue River Technology.

“With global population expected to increase to 9.5 billion by 2050, increasing food production in a sustainable way is going to be one of the great challenges of this century,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. The company hopes to take on this challenge head on, and with its team of engineers now backed by millions of dollars, there’s little reason to think it won’t succeed.

Featured image via Thomas Bethge/Shutterstock

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Announcing today that it is currently generating 250 megawatts of power, Arizona’s Agua Caliente solar project expects to hit 290 megawatts by the time construction is complete in 2014.

While this means that Agua Caliente now beats out India’s Gujarat Solar Park for the title of the world’s largest solar plant, Gujarat is planning on going beyond its current 214 MW.  Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obispo County, California is on its way to producing an ambitious 550 MW by early 2015.  Like Agua Caliente, First Solar is involved in that project as well.

Construction began in the fall of 2010, and the plant produced its first 30 megawatts in January.  ”The Agua Caliente project exemplifies how utility-grade solar PV power can be rapidly deployed in a phased approach and seamlessly integrated into the electrical grid,” said Jim Tyler, Vice President of Development Engineering in First Solar’s Engineering, Procurement and Construction Group. “We are extremely proud to set a new benchmark for the industry with Agua Caliente, which incorporates the knowledge gained over years of experience designing, building and operating utility-scale solar projects for leading utilities and energy providers.”

Though initially constructed by First Solar, Agua Caliente is now owned by NRG Solar and MidAmerican Solar.  The American taxpayer also has a stake in the plant’s success: it received financing through a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The plant’s success comes at a good time: the Republican-sponsored “No More Solyndras Act” comes up for a vote later this week.  It would make significant cuts in the Department’s Loan Guarantee program, which ironically was not an Obama creation. Rather, the program was established in 2005 under President George W. Bush.

Featured image via Martin D. Vonka/Shutterstock

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According to the Indiegogo fundraising page, more than 2 billion people still cook indoors over wood-burning fires. These inefficient wood fires contribute to deforestation, climate change and the aforementioned premature deaths.

But how can the PlanetStove help?

The creators of this stove, Dylan Maxwell and Olivier Kolmel, say that the PlanetStove can help both people and the environment in the following ways:

1. Reduce indoor cooking smoke to a minimum.
2. Mitigate airborne soot, which is responsible for 5-10 percent of man-made global warming.
3. Reduce deforestation by increasing stove efficiency; villages reported using roughly 1/3 less wood than with traditional stoves.
4. Sequester carbon (in the form of biochar) within the soil.
5. Improve the soil structure and drought resistance.
6. Improve the financial situation and living conditions of rural populations.

How does the PlanetStove work?

It is a TLUD stove, which stands for “Top-Liti Updraft.” Basically, you light kindling on top of a vertical tube full of densely packed wood. That vertical tube is nested inside a larger vertical tube. The fire on the top heats the wood and resulting hydrogen and carbon monoxide rise toward the top where they meet with oxygenated air drawn through the space between the tubes.

The stove essentially gasifies the wood. The resulting charcoal can then be returned to the earth in the form of biochar — which still contains at least 50 percent of the carbon that was in the original wood.

How can you help?

At the time of this writing, the PlanetStove Indiegogo project has received $4,053 worth of the $25,000 it needs to fund the campaign, with 34 days left remaining.

The lowest level of contribution is $25 and will basically subsidize the cost of a PlanetStove for a family in the developing world. You’ll get a photo of the family that received the stove, as well as a follow up with that family after a year of using the stove. Obviously, other contribution levels are available, so hit up the PlanetStove fundraising page and see if it strikes a chord with your passions.

Main image credit: Novotera

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To that end, NASA recently deployed an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie’s current location in the Atlantic Ocean. They hope the observatory mission will help researchers and forecasters learn more about what’s driving the storms, in an effort to help citizens be better prepared for survival.

The Global Hawk took off from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, CA, Thursday and landed at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA, yesterday at 11:37 a.m. EDT after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. It’s all part of something NASA calls the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, and marks the first time the agency will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.

“The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify,” said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

Systems on board the drone measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles, as well as temperature and water vapor, sea surface temperature and cloud properties. The Hawk’s AVAPS dropsonde system even ejects small sensors tied to parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity (remind anyone of a certain robot loved by Helen Hunt?).

In fact, this isn’t the first time an autonomous robot has been deployed to help researchers learn more about hurricanes while keeping a safe distance. Just a few weeks ago, Revmodo reported on Alex, a Wave Glider robot that measures ocean temperatures up to a depth of 7 meters. “Unlike current data, which is limited to the surface temperatures that airplanes and satellites can collect, Alex can dive into the water to gather more stable temperatures that can be more useful in making predictions,” wrote Adele Peters. “The robot also measures wind speed and other weather data, along with wave direction and height.” The data Alex collects is fed into hurricane models that help forecasters predict the storms.

Photo Credits: NASA Wallops 

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On an expedition sponsored by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the vessel will continue drilling off Japan’s Shimokita Peninsula for three more weeks hoping to go as far as 7,220 feet below the seafloor. It set off in July.

But unlike the kind of drilling most of us are familiar with, the Chikyu and her passengers are not looking for oil or other natural resources ripe for exploitation.  The Agency explains that the purpose of the project is to understand carbon cycling, methane and natural gas below the sea floor.  These issues are “not only directly linked to issues of Japan’s energy resources but [are] also an important scientific area for understanding past global warming events, ecosystem changes, and for building a future sustainable low-carbon society.” Named the Deep Coalbed Biosphere expedition, Expedition 337, the work is being conducted within the framework of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international marine research program.

The excitement behind the discoveries was clear in statements made by scientist, Fumio Inagaki. “This scientific vessel has tremendous potentials to explore very deep realms that humans have never studied before. The deep samples are precious, and I am confident that our challenges will extend our systematic understanding of the nature of life and earth.”

Co-Chief scientist Kai-Uwe Hinrichs from the University of Bremen, Germany echoed those sentiments.  “I am very glad that I am here today and could witness this wonderful and important moment. Everybody on the ship worked really hard to make this happen. And, I am very pleased about the high quality of the core samples, which show only minimal drilling disturbance. This is very important for our research.”

I have to imagine that Inagaki and his colleagues have not seen James Cameron’s The Abyss – if they had they might have thought twice about whether to venture so deep into the unknown, especially without Ed Harris to protect them.

Featured Image via Shutterstock

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Not so.

Wireless tech giant Qualcomm acquired innovative New Zealand startup HaloIPT late last year and has announced that they will soon begin testing the new inductive charging technology in London. The company has kept the original name, dubbing the technology the Qualcomm Halo.

According to Think Progress, “San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. recently announced that it has partnered with the automaker Renault for a field trial of its new wireless electric vehicle charging system later this year in London.”

How does the inductive EV charging work?

Wireless electric vehicle charging (WEVC) technology uses magnetic induction to couple power from a base charging unit (BCU) to a vehicle charging unit (VCU). Power is transferred to the VCU pad via magnetic coupling, and is used to charge the vehicle’s batteries. Communication between the VCU and BCU ensures minimal impact on the grid.

The interesting thing is that the charging capability is equal to plug-in charging, does not interfere with other electronics, and does not require precision parking to work effectively.

But why stop at inductive charging at home?

The goal of the trial is test both the technical and the commercial viability of the wireless electric vehicle charging system. One thing is for sure, HaloIPT (and not Qualcomm) has never set their sights merely on static charging pads.

As a matter of fact, as distantly as two years ago HaloIPT was planning on electrifying part of London’s M25 Roadway for testing of dynamic inductive charging. According to Qualcomm’s Halo mini site, the plans for dynamic charging are still in the works. Establishing the WEVC technology at stationary locations is a huge step in building infrastructure, but implementing dynamic inductive charging into roadways would completely eliminate “range anxiety” commonly associated with electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs).

Hey, between solar-energy generating roadways and dynamic inductive EV charging, maybe we have a clean energy existence in our near future after all.

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Too much clean energy is a hard concept for Americans to fathom, but with over 21,000 wind turbines (as of 2011) Germans are scrambling to use or preserve electricity that won’t fit into the overflowing electricity grid. To solve this problem, E.ON, the world’s largest investor-owned power and gas company, will build a pilot power plant designed to store energy generated by the wind in the gas grid instead.

Known as power to gas technology, this unique energy storage method turns surplus wind energy into hydrogen (and even methane) through a process of electrolyzation. By separating water into its separate components of hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen produced can be stored in the existing natural gas grid for later use. The existing gas network can only handle limited amounts of hydrogen, but further processing ultimately results in the production of synthetic gas, i.e. methane, which can be fed into the grid whenever necessary.

“If Germany expands the use of renewable energy sources in the coming years as planned, the power supply on very windy or sunny days will exceed demand more and more often, and to a growing extent,” said E.ON AG Board member Klaus-Dieter Maubach. ”This will increasingly bring the power grid to the limits of its capacity. E.ON is therefore investing in the development of technologies to store large energy volumes. In this respect, power-to-gas is a promising solution for the future energy supply system.”

There’s just one pesky problem with this seemingly brilliant storage solution: it ignores the whole “clean” part of the clean tech equation. Wind energy is superior not only because it’s domestically produced, but because it creates electricity without the burning of filthy fossil fuels. Is E.ON is taking a clean source of energy and turning it back into something that’s killing the planet? Is this better than letting the energy go to waste? Would the money to build this power-to-gas plant be put to better use simply upgrading the energy grid to handle more wind-generated energy?  Or perhaps the development of batteries for large-scale energy storage? You be the judge.

Photo Credit: Beige Alert/Flickr

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Lapka has created a free app and accompanying “personal environment monitor” attachment for your iPhone to measure nitrate concentration in food. The chemical is used in non-organic fertilizers, so any residue left behind is a sure sign of a fraudulent label.  The device will also come with attachments to detect radiation, electromagnetism, and humidity and should be available for sale to the public by the end of the year. (Finally – an app to officially monitor the impact of humidity on your hair!) The sleek and modern Lapka hardware sports a plastic cover made from recycled materials. At $220, it’s not cheap but the more inquisitive among us may find themselves with a favorite new toy.

Users will be able to take “snapshots” of the readings and share that information like they might with regular photographs. There are  plenty of uses for this new invention for the professional scientific community as well for the curious amateurs. How people might use this information remains to be seen, but it may come in handy when choosing a hospital, restaurant, home, or just a place for your yoga mat.

Image via Lapka

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