Engineering projects need goals, and James Worden ’89 set an especially engaging and enduring one for himself as a high school student in the early 1980s while pursuing his passion for homebuilt go-karts.
The MIT Alumni Association seeks to engage and inspire the MIT global community to make a better world. It provides a lifelong community for MIT graduates, a launching pad for students, and growing connection among MIT friends.
Circa 2020
The short-term prospects for wind and solar power look rocky amid the economic upheaval of the coronavirus. But long term, renewables could emerge stronger than ever, especially if governments integrate support for clean energy into Covid-19 economic-recovery programs.
To maintain peak efficiency, solar cells must be regularly cleaned of dust and other accumulated dirt. However, many panels are installed in high or hard-to-reach locations, which makes cleaning them difficult, time-consuming, and also simply dangerous. One solution is to use aerial drones to spray soapy water on dirty solar panels. However, these drones often run out of battery quite quickly. In addition, they also do not make direct contact with the panels, so they may not completely wash away dirt.
To solve these problems, a Belgian startup, ART Robotics, has developed HELIOS, an automated cleaning service for solar panels. It’s a fully autonomous system that can access difficult-to-reach places and eliminates dangerous and costly work.
The system consists of autonomous cleaning robots that can move autonomously over the panels. These are placed on the solar installation using a drone platform. The drone uses its computer vision to spot the photovoltaic array and flies the bot to the exact location. The HELIOS Cleaning Bot is a lightweight robot that can autonomously clean solar panels. An innovative traction system allows the robot to move on inclined surfaces and even cross over to adjacent panels, thoroughly cleaning them using a brush and vacuum combination.
Dutch firm MVRDV has launched the first look at its upcoming “Sun Rock” project in Taiwan, an environmentally conscious and design-minded power supply building. Anticipating Taiwan’s planned transition to green energy, the features of the Sun Rock building, from its shape to its façade, are focused on generating solar energy as efficiently as possible.
Located at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, near Taichung, the building’s primary purpose is to store and maintain suitable energy equipment. The building is almost totally covered with solar panels, capable of generating roughly 1 million kWh of green energy every year.
The site for Taipower’s new facility receives a significant amount of solar exposure throughout the year, and so the rounded shape of Sun Rock is designed to maximize how much of that sunlight can be harnessed for energy. The building slopes gently downwards on the southern side, creating a large surface area that directly faces the sun during the middle of the day. At the northern end, on the other hand, the dome shape is intended to maximize the area of the building exposed to the sun in the mornings and evenings.
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine continue to take lives and destroy infrastructure as the country invades. This infrastructure damage has disrupted internet access in Ukraine, leading a government official to publicly request Starlink satellite internet access for the country from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk obliged, activating Starlink service in Ukraine and sending additional hardware. But with continued attacks on infrastructure, how will Ukraine stay connected?
Fedorov brings up an important point: Even though Starlink operates without the need for traditional internet infrastructure, the Earth-bound hardware still needs power. And, as Russian attacks bombard the country, Ukraine’s internet access will continue to be threatened.
Fedorov’s statement publicly reached out for help acquiring generators to keep Starlink online for Ukrainians. But Musk responded with an alternative suggestion.
“Solar panels + battery pack better than generator, as no heat signature or smoke & doesn’t run out of fuel,” Musk wrote in response on Twitter.
Elon Musk has some ideas.
Using a unique hydrogel, scientists in Saudi Arabia created a solar-driven system that successfully grows spinach by using water drawn from the air while producing electricity. The proof-of-concept design, described March 1 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, offers a sustainable, low-cost strategy to improve food and water security for people living in dry-climate regions.
“A fraction of the world’s population still doesn’t have access to clean water or green power, and many of them live in rural areas with arid or semi-arid climate,” says senior author Peng Wang, a professor of environmental science and engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). “Our design makes water out of air using clean energy that would’ve been wasted and is suitable for decentralized, small-scale farms in remote places like deserts and oceanic islands.”
The system, called WEC2P, is composed of a solar photovoltaic panel placed atop a layer of hydrogel, which is mounted on top of a large metal box to condense and collect water. Wang and his team developed the hydrogel in their prior research, and the material can effectively absorb water vapor from ambient air and release the water content when heated.
He said that three main requirements should be fulfilled to improve the cooling effect. The radiative coolers should not replace the existing PV glass covers, so the natural RC ability of glass can be harnessed to add to the overall cooling gain. There should also be an efficient and quick heat transfer mechanism between the PV module, which is also the heat source, and the RC heat sink. In addition, the RC module should directly face the sky to radiate maximum waste heat into outer space.
The proposed system consists of a PV module and a separate RC module, integrated with a flat plate heat pipe in between. A separate RC module is used along with the existing glass cover on the solar cells and the heat pipe is integrated between the PV and RC modules, providing quick heat transfer. The RC module is then placed on the condensing section of the heat pipe facing the sky.
