Electricity

Crews have installed what's billed as the first wireless-charging public roadway in the U.S. for electric vehicles.It's beneath a street just west of downtown Detroit.Copper inductive charging coils allow vehicles equipped with receivers to charge up their batteries while driving, idling or parking above the coils.The segment of 14th Street will be used to test and perfect the technology ahead of making it available to the public within a few years, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation.Demonstrations…

Black holes are terrifying and massive cosmic objects, but what if I told you that tiny black holes exist? Further, scientists believe they can be subatomic in size. Now, some scientists are hopeful they’ll be able to take a primordial black hole and use its energy to create electricity.Just reading that scientists want to use tiny black holes to generate electricity sounds wild; I’m not going to lie. When I first read the headline of other reports on the subject, I was baffled. Not only because of how dangerous…

It looks like bottlenose dolphins may have more tricks up their fins than we knew. New research involving trained zoo dolphins seems to confirm that these mammals can sense electricity, much like other aquatic life. The talent may allow them to better hone in on hidden fish prey and navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field, the authors say.“Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI UnlockedThe biological ability to sense electric fields is known as electroreception. All animals produce a weak electric field, but…

Bitcoin mines aren’t just energy-hungry, it turns out they’re thirsty, too. The water consumption tied to a single Bitcoin transaction, on average, could be enough to fill a small backyard pool, according to a new analysis. Bitcoin mines are essentially big data centers, which have become notorious for how much electricity and water they use. Bitcoin’s water footprint is growing, according to the analysis published today in a commentary in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability. That’s an issue to watch as the price of…

Michigan has become the 12th state to pass landmark legislation that sets a 100% clean electricity deadline for utilities. Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) today signed the Clean Energy Future Plan into law. It requires Michigan utilities to source 15% of electricity from clean energy sources such as wind or solar through 2029. That requirement will then increase to 50% by 2030, 60% by 2035, and 100% by 2040. The new law includes the increase of utility energy efficiency requirements and…

Flicking the switch on any kind of electrical device triggers a marching band of charged particles stepping to the beat of the circuit's voltage.But a new discovery in exotic materials known as strange metals has found electricity doesn't always move in step, and can in fact sometimes bleed in a way that has physicists questioning what we know about the nature of particles.The research was carried out on nanowires made of a precise balance of ytterbium, rhodium, and silicon, (YbRh2Si2).By conducting a series of quantum…

A novel nanodevice developed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team can generate electricity from the salinity differences between seawater and freshwater, showing potential for scalable power generation and applications in various fields.The world’s coastlines harbor a largely untapped energy source: the salinity difference between seawater and freshwater. A new nanodevice can harness this difference to generate power.A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has reported a design…

General Motors Electric cars are slowly, but surely becoming commonplace, and they introduce a whole new generation of specifications that are worth caring about. Range is an obvious one — but there’s another metric that has a major impact on the overall experience of owning an electric car: voltage. You’ll often see the voltage of an electric car’s battery pack touted in advertising. Hyundai, for instance, is proud of the 800 -volt battery in cars like the EV6 — that’s double the voltage of the 400V battery in the…

Picking out a good power supply is a lot more challenging than it might seem at a glance. While there are always plenty of reviews of some of the best processors and top graphics cards, Power supply units (PSUs) tend to be a little overlooked. Still, the power supply should never be an afterthought when you’re building or buying a new PC. There are a few important rules to follow when you’re picking out your PSU, ranging from making sure it fits your build to ensuring that it can handle power spikes and future…

Dick Cunningham and Walter Rozycki want to do what a lot of other Denver-area homeowners have done: put solar panels on their roofs. But the Aurora residents say their homeowner association board pulled the plug on their plans in defiance of state law. An attorney and solar advocate who wrote an amendment to a law on HOAs and solar systems said the board at the Villas at Cherry Creek is flouting the state law designed to protect people’s right to use solar energy to power their homes. The attorney for the HOA said the…