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Storing energy in red bricks

Imagine plugging in to your brick house.

Red bricks—some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials—can be converted into storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but rarely has been found fit for any other use. Now, chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug. 11 in Nature Communications shows a brick directly powering a green LED light.

Tesla could become an energy provider around the world, with an “all-inclusive” package

In Elon we trust the planet earth!


Tesla studies the possibility of becoming an energy supplier in Europe, offering photovoltaic, storage and electric car charging in one package.

Tesla doesn’t just sell cars. Among the various sectors in which it operates, domestic energy is perhaps the one with the widest growth margins. After launching its photovoltaic products, both solar panels, and tiles, and after the famous PowerWall accumulation, Musk’s company is studying the possibility of offering all its assets in a single offer, even becoming an electricity provider in the world.

It would be a very important step, which would allow Tesla to manage all the variables in an integrated way, including the charging of electric cars. The novelty was discovered through a survey that the same company distributed to customers in Germany, with questions that left room for few doubts:

Blackout hits large area of NYC, including Upper West Side and Harlem

A widespread power outage left about 130,000 customers in darkness across a large area of Upper Manhattan early Friday, a Con Edison spokesman said.

Three networks in the utility’s transmission system in Manhattan lost their electricity supply at 5:13 a.m., Con Ed spokesman Philip O’Brien told The Post at 6:30 a.m., adding that the power has been restored.

“And we’re back! Here’s the moment electricity returned to upper Manhattan,” @kendisgibson said in a tweet.

The Army and Navy’s Hypersonic Missile is a Go

Hypersonic weapons are the next frontier of great power competition between the United States, Russia, and China. The Army and Navy want to expedite the development of the missile and hope to field it in 2023.


Their latest missile test was a success.

By Caleb Larson

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The Army recently released footage of their newest hypersonic missile, the Common Hypersonic Glide Body. The missile, jointly developed with the Navy, is intended to provide a measure of deterrence against adversaries, and to preserve America’s battlefield edge, if necessary.

Liquid Air Energy Storage: A Power Grid Battery Using Regular Old Ambient Air

When you think of renewable energy, what comes to mind? We’d venture to guess that wind and solar are probably near the top of the list. And yes, wind and solar are great as long as the winds are favorable and the sun is shining. But what about all those short and bleak winter days? Rainy days? Night time?

Unfavorable conditions mean that storage is an important part of any viable solution that uses renewable energy. Either the energy itself has to be stored, or else the means to produce the energy on demand must be stored.

One possible answer has been right under our noses all along — air. Regular old ambient air can be cooled and compressed into a liquid, stored in tanks, and then reheated to its gaseous state to do work.

Matchbox-sized Motor Yields 500,000 RPM

Circa 2006


Aiming to create a miniature motor capable of 1 million revolutions per minute, electronics researchers at ETH Life in Zurich are half-way to their goal.

The gas turbine-powered device produces force equivalent to 100 watts and is 95 percent fuel efficient, and gets 10 hours of operation out of the tank.

More than 1.4 million power outages in N.J. from Isaias. Restoration could take days, officials say

More than 1.4 million homes and businesses across New Jersey lost power as of Tuesday afternoon as powerful winds and heavy rains from Tropical Storm Isaias battered the Garden State.

That’s more than 25% of the utility customers in the state and half of JCP&L’s 1.1 million customers in the dark, according to outage maps provided by the three major utility companies in New Jersey.

Miniature Telescope Demonstration Focuses on Sharpening View of Distant Objects in Space

A recently deployed DARPA CubeSat seeks to demonstrate technology that could improve imaging of distant objects in space and allow powerful space telescopes to fit into small satellites. DARPA’s Deformable Mirror (DeMi) CubeSat deployed from the International Space Station July 13, beginning the technology demonstration of a miniature space telescope with a small deformable mirror called a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) mirror.

DeMi made first contact about a week following launch, demonstrating the expected power from its solar arrays, as well as correct spacecraft pointing and stable temperatures. The team will focus on payload checkout over the coming days.

Deformable mirrors can adjust the shape of their reflective surfaces to correct for the effects of temperature and mechanical changes on a space telescope, improving image quality. The experiment will measure how well a MEMS deformable mirror performs in space, from the rocket launch through its time in orbit experiencing the thermal and radiation environment.

Researchers advance fuel cell technology

Washington State University researchers have made a key advance in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) that could make the highly energy-efficient and low-polluting technology a more viable alternative to gasoline combustion engines for powering cars.

Led by Ph.D. graduate Qusay Bkour and Professor Su Ha in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, the researchers have developed a unique and inexpensive nanoparticle catalyst that allows the to convert logistic liquid fuels such as gasoline to electricity without stalling out during the electrochemical process. The research, featured in the journal, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, could result in highly efficient gasoline-powered cars that produce low carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

“People are very concerned about energy, the environment, and global warming,” said Bkour. “I’m very excited because we can have a solution to the energy problem that also reduces the emissions that cause global warming.”

NZ to trial world-first commercial long range, wireless power transmission

A New Zealand-based startup has developed a method of safely and wirelessly transmitting electric power across long distances without the use of copper wire, and is working on implementing it with the country’s second-largest power distributor.

The dream of wireless power transmission is far from new; everyone’s favorite electrical genius Nikola Tesla once proved he could power light bulbs from more than two miles away with a 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s – never mind that in doing so he burned out the dynamo at the local powerplant and plunged the entire town of Colorado Springs into blackout.

Tesla’s dream was to place enormous towers all over the world that could transmit power wirelessly to any point on the globe, powering homes, businesses, industries and even giant electric ships on the ocean. Investor J.P. Morgan famously killed the idea with a single question: “where can I put the meter?”