…well, not exactly. But, it could happen soon thanks to a nanogenerator created by Dr. Zhong Lin Wang and his team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Ga. Watch my short video to see how. Video: Shannon Alderman: Producer/Editor. Robynne Boyd: Writer/Editor

For wind power, 2011 was a great year. California added more new wind energy to the grid than any other state, according to a report published Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Energy. A number of other states received high honors as well. These include Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado, which churned out at [...]

A new public-private partnership was announced today between CalCEF and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The goal of this new partnership – dubbed CalCharge – is to create a regional ecosystem to spur innovation in energy storage (battery) technologies. This group will bring together private technology companies, academic institutions, and government [...]

Large-scale energy storage technologies are often hailed as a key to enabling increased use of intermittent renewable energy resources – like solar and wind – to supply the nation’s electricity demand. If one can balance out the generation dips (for example, when the wind dies down on a summer afternoon) using an energy storage technology, [...]

Hickory Ridge landfill outside of Atlanta, GA, is full. Like most landfills that reach capacity, it was capped to contain its noxious mix of debris that will slowly degrade over the decades and centuries to come. But unlike most, Hickory Ridge glistens on a sunny day due its over 7,000 thin-film photovoltaic solar panels plastered [...]

Earlier this month, I attended at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Energy Sustainability Conference in Washington, DC.  During the conference, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Paul Denholm, a senior analyst at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. Dr. Denholm is a member of the Energy Forecasting [...]

When the sun dips below the horizon for the night, most solar panels become interesting roofing tiles, instead of valuable generation resources. During the day, a single cloud can quickly send residential solar power generators back to a fossil fuel-based grid for their electricity. This intermittency in fuel resource availability, combined with the current lack [...]