Lifeboat Foundation

Tesla battery cell supplier Panasonic broke ground on a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in De Soto, Kansas, contributing approximately 30 GWh of annual capacity in North America.

The facility is set to focus on rapidly ramping up the manufacture of 2,170 cylindrical cells to match surging domestic demand within the United States. Panasonic is planning to mass produce the battery cells by March 2025, and upon completion of the facility, it will add 30 GWh of capacity of battery supply to EV companies in the United States.

Is solar geoengineering an alternative solution to the climate crisis?

Solar geoengineering is a branch of geoengineering that focuses on reflecting sunlight back into outer space to reduce global warming. There are several solar geoengineering techniques being researched; the most feasible one consists of spraying reflective aerosols in the stratosphere.

Continue reading “Cooling the Earth” »

Elon Musk’s final lap is one year long.

Fans of Tesla’s much-awaited Cybertruck may have to wait for yet another year to see their dream pickup at their doorstep. According to a Reuters.

When Elon Musk first showcased the Cybertruck, it immediately caught the eye of many motorheads. With a $100 fee to book the truck, many jumped in the fray to get one. Years have now rolled by, and Tesla has been pushing back production dates.

Continue reading “Tesla Cybertruck production reportedly delayed further to 2023 end” »

Gas will still be a part of the mix but only to address exigencies.

Energy prices In Europe are at an all-time high. While the situation is not expected to last forever, even after gas prices reach some degree of moderation, the cost of generating power using solar photovoltaics will drop so low that it will be 10 times cheaper, a report from an energy research company said.

Europe has always relied on gas-fired power stations for its energy demands. The geopolitical tension over Ukraine has resulted in Russia dropping its gas exports, which have directly impacted the region’s energy cost.

Continue reading “Solar energy in Europe will be 10 times cheaper than gas by 2030 — here’s how” »

But do they really have the necessary skillset?

The new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, has authorized 50 employees from his other companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, to help him handle matters at the social media company, according to a report by CNBC

In addition to the employees, Musk has friends and advisors who are looking into the affairs at Twitter, such as the head of his family office Jared Birchall, venture capitalist and founding member of the PayPal team David Sacks, and angel investor Jason Calacanis.

Continue reading “More than 50 Tesla employees are helping Elon Musk handle matters at Twitter” »

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are providing researchers with a guide to how to best measure the efficiency of producing hydrogen directly from solar power.

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting, which relies on sunlight to split water into its component elements—oxygen and hydrogen—stands out as potentially one of the most sustainable routes to clean energy. Measurements of how efficient the PEC process is on an identical system can vary wildly from different laboratories, however, from a lack of standardized methods. The newly developed best-practices guide published in Frontiers in Energy Research is intended to provide confidence in comparing results obtained at different sites and by different groups.

The publication provides a road map for the PEC community as researchers continue to refine the technology. These best practices were verified by both laboratories via round-robin testing using the same testing hardware, PEC photoelectrodes, and measurement procedures. Research into photovoltaics has allowed a certification of cell efficiencies, but PEC water-splitting efficiency measurements do not yet have a widely accepted protocol.

How much did Musk pay for Twitter again? With everything the marketing of anything starts with demand. Was there demand for something better than Facebook and Twitter of course. Was there a demand to buy Twitter no. Kanye lost money but he didn’t lose $44 billion, as Musk probably realizes that $5 billion in yearly revenues isn’t guaranteed, especially if people pull a Kanye…so Musk wants to charge.

What is in demand then? Affordable housing is in demand because rents and inflation keep going up. $44 billion buys a lot of land. $25 Billion is $500 million in 50 states. This would have enabled Musk to spend $25 Billion on land alone. That always increase in value.

Continue reading “ICON Unveils ‘House Zero’ and Announces 2022 SXSW Activations” »

How resilient are solar panels in the face of extreme weather events?

Guest contributor Jane Marsh explores the current capability of solar panel technology in the face of increasing extreme climate events.

“If I’m a farmer in Australia, and I want to know what the drought situation is going to look like over the next 20 to 30 years and decide what sorts of crops I might want to grow or how I might want to change irrigation technologies that I use for my farm, I want to be able to ask questions like that to this digital twin and get answers,” Kashinath said.

FourCastNet, an open-source project, is the first product of the broader Earth-2 initiative available to researchers. And while there’s no specific date for when the team will launch Earth-2 publicly, Kashinath said it will similarly be open for use by the research community.

Continue reading “NVIDIA Is Making a Digital Twin of Earth’s Climate. Here’s an Inside Look” »