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A Modeling Study Predicts That Solar Farms Could Produce Rainfall

Catwell

A solar farm. (Image Credit: TheOtherKev/pixabay) Is that bad? In the UAE, where water is harder to come by than oil, cloud seeding or desalination plants produce freshwater for everyone living there. Now, a 2024 modeling study says huge solar farms...
- 24 Apr 2026
Deep Fission is Burying Nuclear Reactors One Mile Deep

Catwell

Deep Fission is a startup focusing on the burial of nuclear reactors as a cheaper, simpler alternative to traditional above-ground power plants. (Image Credit: Deep Fission) Nuclear power is becoming more complex and costly, and one startup wants to...
- 8 Apr 2026
Engineers Build a Alt Energy Device That Generates Power at Night

Catwell

Render and data show radiative cooling of the top plate to the night sky and warming of the bottom plate to the ground. This produced a temperature difference that powered the engine. (Image Credit: ScienceAdvances) Engineers at the University ...
- 4 Mar 2026
Japan’s Sidewalks Converts Human Footsteps into Useable Electricity

Catwell

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Wind and sunlight are the most common sources of renewable energy, powering turbines and solar panels worldwide. Japan and other countries are now tapping a subtler source: footsteps on piezoelectric sidewalks to ge...
- 3 Mar 2026
Japan is Working on Three Surprising Hydrogen Projects

Catwell

Rendering of the co-firing hydrogen engine built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries. (Image Credit: Kawasaki) Kawasaki Heavy Industries constructed the first-ever 8MW KG Series co-firing hydrogen engine, which generates electricity. It operates on natural...
- 20 Feb 2026
Japan Extracts Rare Earth Elements from Seabed Mud

Catwell

Japan’s Chikyu deep-sea drilling vessel recently extracted samples of rare earth elements from seabed sediment. (Photo By Gleam - Photo taken by Gleam., CC BY-SA 3.0) Japan is starting to take action on a decade-old plan to move away from Chi...
- 9 Feb 2026
Energy left in "dead" batteries?!

Attila Tőkés

Hi Element14 Community! Traditional alkaline batteries tend to "die" at the most inconvenient times. I used to I have them in devices like wireless mouse and keyboards, and it felt that the batteries were draining fairly quickly, catc...
- 1 Feb 2026
Building a Smart Electronic Load | 2026 Update (#3)

Attila Tőkés

Hi E14 Community! Wanted to give a quick update on my Smart Electronic Load project. Since the last time from one year ago, Building a Smart Electronic Load | DAC and Initial Firmware (#2), the project was progressing relati...
- 18 Jan 2026
Triplet Antennas Unlock Low-Voltage NIR-II LEDs

Catwell

Artist’s rendering of a lanthanide-doped nanoparticle in the shape of a spider and the web (made of 9-ACA). (Image Credit: Zhongzheng Yu/) Engineers at the University of Cambridge have developed a technique that enables the electrical activati...
- 30 Dec 2025
Hot Gadget Alert: My First Tinker With the Multicomp Pro Thermal Camera

foxbat

Unboxing the Multicomp Pro Professional Thermal Imager : A First Look The fine (and clearly very patient) folks of the element14 Community somehow concluded that my particular brand of Halloween-themed tinkering deserved to win this year’s Hall...
- 19 Dec 2025
Designing for Ultra-Low Power: Strategies for Edge and Battery-Powered Devices

Catwell

(Image credit: Pixabay) If you’ve ever designed a product meant to run off a battery and last a long time, you know how brutal reality can be. You start with hope and a 10,000 mAh battery, and six months later, you’re back in meeti...
- 18 Dec 2025
Researchers Develop Energy Harvesting System That Could Power Wearables

Catwell

The IE-TENG system generates electricity through the intrusion and extrusion of liquid in the silicon nanopores. (Image Credit: TU Hamburg, DESY, Künsting) Engineers at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and other European institutions dev...
- 9 Dec 2025
Inventor of the Super Soaker is Working on a Next Gen Energy Generation Device

Catwell

Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker, is working on the JTEC device. (Image Credit: Johnson Energy Storage) We’re familiar with the legendary Super Soaker, a fun water gun invented by Lonnie Johnson that earned him a $1 billion profit ...
- 5 Dec 2025
The Latest Insight into Low-Power Design for Always-On Edge AI Devices

Catwell

(Image credit: Freepik) AI is no longer limited to cloud data centers or high-performance machines; it’s being pushed to the edge in the form of mobile devices, smart cameras, industrial sensors, wearables, and other consumer platforms. These ...
- 21 Nov 2025
The Rise of GaN and SiC: What Power Designers Need to Know

Catwell

(Image credit: Pixabay) For years, silicon has been the default foundation of power electronics, but like any technology, that’s changing fast. Wide-bandgap semiconductors such as Gallium Nitride (GaN) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) are transformin...
- 18 Nov 2025
Harvesting Ambient Energy: Real World Use Cases in 2025

Catwell

Solar Harvesting for Remote IoT Networks Solar power. (Image Credit: Wikimediaimages/pixabay) Remote IoT nodes still rely on solar power as a source of energy. At the Myriota deployment in June 2025, isolated farms and island resorts had ultra-low-p...
- 30 Oct 2025
Teacher Transmits Sound using a Laser and Solar Panel Connected to a Speaker

Catwell

Chemistry teacher Phillip Cook noticed that when he fired a laser at a solar panel, it emitted sound. Cook found that he could wirelessly transmit sound, with the solar panel acting as a receiver. (Image credit Phillip Cook via YouTube) Chemistry te...
- 29 Oct 2025
Receiver Technology Wirelessly Delivers Power Using Lasers

Catwell

The laser enters the PRAD receiver through the center, reflects off a parabolic mirror, and hits photovoltaic cells that convert it into power. (Image Credit: DARPA) A team in the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range used lasers to wirelessly t...
- 22 Oct 2025
Don't leave Lithium Ion batteries charging overnight...

shabaz

This was a surprise! Going away for a bit, and charged up my camera batteries, only to see this; you can see the left battery has a curved surface, it's not flat like the one on the right. I measured the thickness at 20.4 mm, compared to 18.5 mm ...
- 14 Oct 2025
How Do Supercapacitors or Batteries Fare in IoT Devices?

Catwell

IoT devices like a smart watch are powered by a battery or a supercapacitor. (Image Credit: fancycrave1/pixabay) IoT devices typically use batteries as their primary source of power. But the type they use often depends on the application, environmen...
- 30 Sep 2025
The Latest Insight into Low-Power Design for Always-On Edge AI Devices

Catwell

(Image credit: Freepik) AI is no longer limited to cloud data centers or high-performance machines; it’s being pushed to the edge in the form of mobile devices, smart cameras, industrial sensors, wearables, and other consumer platforms. These ...
- 23 Sep 2025
Ice Can Generate Electricity

Catwell

Flexoelectricity occurring in ice. (Image Credit: Nature Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-02995-6) Researchers at the Institute of Nanoscience of Barcelona, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Stony Brook University have shown that ice can pr...
- 11 Sep 2025
Solid-State Batteries, and How They Shape the Future

Catwell

(Image Credit: ScienceDirect) Battery technology is advancing, and a new type, solid-state batteries (SSBs), is expected to emerge in the upcoming years. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, published a review highlighting the po...
- 20 Aug 2025
Retired EV Batteries Could be Reused as Grid Storage to Cut Emissions

Catwell

(Image credit: Pexels) As electric vehicles (EVs) continue to rise in popularity, California is on track to retire millions of EV batteries over the next few decades. So, what happens to all those batteries once they can't power a car? A n...
- 7 Aug 2025
Vortex Bladeless Unveils Bladeless Wind Turbines

Catwell

The bladeless wind turbines rely on vortex-induced vibration rather than spinning blades to generate electricity. (Image Credit: Vortex Bladeless) Vortex Bladeless has introduced an innovative renewable energy solution: bladeless wind turbines. Inst...
- 29 Jul 2025