CNET: Sunswift Solar Electric Car Reaches Funding Goal to Hit the Streets
Australia's world record-breaking solar electric car is set to become street-legal after a successful Pozible campaign saw the University of New South Wales' Sunswift team raise AU$30,000 to rebuild the vehicle.
Sunswift eVe is the fifth-generation electric car designed and built by the student-led UNSW Solar Racing Team, based out of Sydney. After breaking a world land-speed record in July (for fastest electric vehicle over 500 kilometers traveling on a single charge), the team of undergraduate engineers is now working to get the car out on the streets.
New York Times: Betting on the Need, Scientists Work on Lighter, Cleaner Nuclear Energy
Sixty years after the United States adapted Navy submarine-propulsion technology to build the first civilian nuclear plants, hundreds of scientists and engineers are looking at new kinds of reactors, intended to be safer, cheaper and deployable worldwide.
From reactor designs that use sodium instead of water, to those that substantially reduce the waste that lasts thousands of years, the new reactors would represent a significant break from the past.
“There’s a whole class of reactors that are not evolutionary concepts relative to what you have out there now -- they’re really different,” said Mark T. Peters, associate laboratory director at Argonne National Laboratory, another Energy Department site, this one a few miles southwest of Chicago, that is also deeply involved in new designs.
Deccan Herald: Indian Scientists Finalize 'Super-Safe' Nuke Reactor
A “super-safe” nuclear reactor that does not require any external water or electricity for a month for cooling the red-hot core in case of an accident, may be a reality in the near future.
Indian scientists have finalized the design of the reactor.
“In all probability, the 300 MWe advanced heavy water reactor will come up in Tarapur, near Mumbai. It is designed to have a life of 100 years,” said Sekhar Basu, director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, which designed the reactor.
Energy Manager Today: German Project Looks at the Intelligent Coupling of Solar and CHP
German solar inverter manufacturer, SMA, German HVAC company, Vaillant, and RWTH Aachen University in Germany are conducting a joint research project to find out how best to intelligently couple PV systems with CHP plants and heat pump heating systems.
St. Louis Business Journal: SunEdison to Invest $700 million in Chilean Projects
SunEdison Inc., the Maryland Heights-based solar manufacturer, has been awarded a contract with the National Energy Commission in Chile to supply 570 gigawatt-hours of clean energy per year. SunEdison will have to invest more than $700 million in Chilean projects to meet that demand.
Eventually, SunEdison (NYSE: SUNE) will sell those projects off to TerraForm Power, a subsidiary company that acts as a YieldCo -- a publicly traded company that acts similarly to a master limited partnership and buys assets from a parent company to create a reliable cash flow for investors.