energy

We've all heard stories about exploding cell phone and laptop batteries. A person is just walking down the street with his phone in his pocket and next thing he know his pants are ablaze.

The specific culprit batteries that cause such fiery incidents are lithium-ion batteries, which are known to have issues with heat. So, why can't there be chargeable batteries that are immune to overheating? There may be.

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been working on new technology that looks to replace lithium-ion batteries. The lab has designed and tested a … Read more

In what could be viewed as a shot in the arm for U.S.-made electric cars, Tesla Motors has repaid a government loan nine years early.

"Today, Tesla Automotive repaid the entire remaining balance on a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy nine years earlier than originally required," the U.S. Department of Energy said in a statement Wednesday.

That clean-energy loan was made in 2010.

And the U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, seemed to address critics of clean energy loans while trumpeting the success of Tesla.

"When you're talking about cutting-edge … Read more

Allure Energy sued Nest Labs yesterday, claiming that the company's much-celebrated Nest Learning Thermostat infringed on its patent.

Filing the suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the Austin, Texas-based Allure alleged that its patent for the invention of an "Auto-adaptable energy management apparatus" trumped Nest's right to develop, market, and sell a smart thermostat.

Allure said it first began designing its product, which is known as EverSense, in 2009, and filed it patent application in 2010. The company said in a release that it also got a patent for &… Read more

Lockheed Martin's ADAM laser weapon wants to step up its game.

In a series of tests in March and April, the prototype directed-energy system destroyed eight small-caliber rocket targets in flight at a range of approximately 1.5 kilometers (0.9 mile), Lockheed said Wednesday. The defense contractor described the targets as "free-flying Qassam-like rockets," making reference to the simple but deadly projectiles developed by the military arm of the Palestinian group Hamas.

You can see a video of one of those test-firings below.

The 2013 tests follow a series of trials in 2012 when the ADAM (… Read more

Nest, makers of the Learning Thermostat, said Tuesday that it has bought MyEnergy, a move geared towards helping customers and utilities alike get a better handle on power usage.

In a release, Nest said that MyEnergy has built a nationwide user base with an online service that provides users with a single place for studying their power usage and bills. The tool is meant to allow people to track their usage and costs and to compare that usage both over time and to neighbors. The company's utility partners use the service to offer their customers, especially those who aren'… Read more

With all of the 10 hottest years on record having come since 1998, it's hard to deny that things are getting hotter. And as the temperature rises, so too does society's power usage.

With that in mind, Nest, the maker of the Learning Thermostat, has just issued its latest software update aimed at increasing people's comfort, while at the same time reducing their energy bills.

Last week, the company unveiled Nest Energy Services, a set of initiatives available to customers of certain utility companies that has a similar goal. But the new software update works for anyone … Read more

It sounds like a monster from a Victorian penny dreadful: a revolting, stinking mass of gelatinous glop lurks under the streets of London, threatening the citizenry. What's to be done?

Burn it with fire! Well, use it as an alternative energy source.

Fat and oil that accumulate in the city's drains and sewers -- forming large clogging masses called "fatbergs" -- are to be harvested and used to generate electricity at the largest plant of its kind in the world. … Read more

Rumors have been confirmed that the new massive data center to be built in Altoona, Iowa, will be owned by none other than Facebook.

The social network announced Tuesday that the 194-acre site will be the home of its fourth wholly-owned and operated data center worldwide.

"For most people, Facebook is something pretty simple. It's a service you visit every day to connect with the people and things you care about," Facebook's vice president of infrastructure engineering Jay Parikh wrote in a blog post. "But behind the scenes, Facebook is a global service of immense … Read more

After succeeding at the once inconceivable task of making thermostats sexy, Nest is now out to change peoples' relationships with their utility companies, and make the energy industry more efficient in the process.

Today, Nest, the company founded by Tony Fadell -- the "godfather" of the iPod and fellow former top Apple employee Matt Rogers -- rolled out its next big effort.

While many had speculated that the company's follow-up to its Learning Thermostat would be another smart home appliance, the company instead unveiled Nest Energy Services, a broad initiative aimed at attacking the problems of general … Read more