Vada Energy blog

I always like battery news, because they are so different every time. We have all the power we need, and besides capturing power from nature we also need to store it somewhere to use it. Chemical batteries are the best option nowadays, but have a downside: they’re heavy, thus having a bad energy density.

Printed solar panels are now a reality due to special dyes. But who ever thought of printed batteries? Research in the field of supercapacitors has brought this innovation into question, and, with the help of the almighty carbon nanotubes, printable supercapacitors have now been realized. They perform just as well as other supercapacitors, but excel [...]

I guess I don’t have to emphasize the importance of batteries in an electric car economy of the future. I also don’t have to tell anyone that many manufacturers pursue making ultracapacitors for their ability to quickly charge, discharge, and store a huge amount of energy - the perfect combination for an on-the-fly highway recharging.

Although it has many opponents even among green technology sustainers, the good-old battery still evolves to help us have those all-electric vehicles beneath us, and make us drive cleaner and faster than ever.

We have been so focused on chemical storage systems lately, that some us forget other old, seemingly more efficient, mechanical batteries. Such a battery is the flywheel. Several successful experiments have been carried out in the last 50 years, and the flywheel’s applications ranged from acting as a UPS for a hospital to putting an [...]

New types of solar cells emerge every month, but this particular kind has caught my attention, not due to its efficiency (approx 1%), but to the idea that conceived it.

Viruses seemed like a frightened enemy that kept standing in our way for the past… million years. Although they have their qualification and role in the ecosystem, we seem to hate viruses and only associate them will our colds, hepatitis, and other illnesses. Not for a moment we could think of them as of a [...]

Lithium-ion batteries are used in all the gadgets that surround us, and in the forthcoming electric cars. New versions of them are on their way, and one month after another brings news about new emerging technologies.

If we pursue the road towards the full electric car, we must find ourselves the energy storage that can bear at least the power of gasoline. As far as today, batteries, supercapacitors and hydrogen have been the ways to follow for powering an electric car. Of the three, the supercapacitors have a great advantage: they [...]

A company called Lilliputian Systems has developed a fuel cell to replace Lithium-Ion Batteries in electronics industry. It will be very interesting to see how science will be able to evolve from this point on as the new fuel cell system that runs on butane cartridges is able to replace heavy laptop and mobile batteries.

Superconductors are the next viable step in energy savings worldwide. They are being used to carry energy in Sweden, USA, Japan, and the list extends pretty fast to other countries.

EquipmentTo make an yttrium-barium-copper-oxide superconductor, you will need:
* Yttrium Oxide
* Barium Carbonate (TOXIC)
* Cupric Oxide
* A Laboratory Furnace or a converted pottery kiln.
* Labware made of alumina.
* An Oxygen Source
* Liquid Nitrogen and a rare-earth magnet for testing and demonstrating the superconductors

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has discovered a new type of iron-based superconductor that shares the same magnetic properties with the older copper-oxide superconductors. The amazing fact is that the new superconductors have all those magnetic properties at higher temperatures.

A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia, coordinated by Physics Assoc. Prof. Andrea Damascelli, has managed to develop a technique that controls the number of electrons from the surface of a high temperature superconductor. This procedure has been considered impossible for the last 20 years.

Imagine your television set working for 0.0001Watt, or your electric car charged by the Sun as you go. Imagine almost never ending batteries powering cool engines, no power lost through heat. These are just dreams for the moment, but could be available in the near future, because scientists from the University of Cambridge have discovered [...]