Category Industry

Office building windows Image: C P Storm, Flickr Modern buildings currently account for about 40 percent of the energy consumed in developed countries, of which two-thirds can be attributed to heating and cooling. However, over the years, a number of innovative window designs have appeared as part of overall attempts by the energy sector and research institutions to cut energy use and reduce costs.

February 22, 2016Which country produces the largest number of engineering graduates per year? The United States? No. Japan? No. These two countries might be the obvious choices but it looks like neither one of them made the top of the list.According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the country that produces the highest number of engineering graduates per year is Russia, followed by the United States and Iran.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about going 100 percent renewable. Is it actually possible? Who is doing it and how?Earlier last year, Finolhu Villas, a Club Med resort situated on Kaafu Atoll in the Maldives, became the world’s first 5-star resort to become completely powered by solar energy.

Solitary wind turbine near Bergen in Germany (Image: Jason, Flickr)Over recent years, the wind industry all over the world has had to endure a spate of protest against the construction of onshore (and offshore) wind farms. At first, the complaints were concerned with visual impact, but more recently wind turbine noise has also been a major source of complaints.

The energy efficiency hierarchy Image: Google Images In 2015, the Association for the Conservation of Energy (ACE) assessed 16 European countries, including the UK, with regard to energy efficiency and fuel poverty. According to the briefing report published as a result of this assessment, entitled The Cold Man of Europe, of the 16 countries examined, the UK was by far the worst across a range of indicators.

The prototype Windfloat floating wind turbine at Agucadora, Portugal Image source: Wikimedia Commons Increasingly, as reported on Interesting Engineering by Trevor English, solar energy companies such as Japan’s Kyocera are constructing new solar energy plants on floating platforms deployed on lakes and reservoirs.

By Robin WhitlockFebruary 24, 2016 Image source: Oregon Department of Transportation, Flickr Oxford University researchers have just found that solar energy costs are falling so rapidly they could even outpace mainstream energy forecasts. Their conclusion is based on a new forecasting model and has now been published in Research Policy.

In February 2015, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced that man-made climate change has now advanced so rapidly that options for planetary-scale intervention, in other words ‘geoengineering’, must be considered. The problem of how to solve man-made climate change has now become so serious that numerous voices around the world are starting to mention geoengineering as a possible solution.

Solar panels on a roof in London& 39;s Islington district Image Source: David Holt, Flickr Last month, Greenpeace released a report showing how far behind London, the supposedly progressive capital of the UK, is with regard to solar PV installation. The report found that the city could potentially deliver a tenfold increase in solar power over the next ten years, ending its record as the worst performing city in the UK for solar power installation.

By Robin WhitlockFebruary 29, 2016 Image: Florian Solar Products Results from a recent preview obtained from a bi-facial ‘BiSoN’ array in Germany have found impressive yield gains compared to standard modules, but what are bi-facial modules and how effective are they really?The German bi-facial array was tested by ISC Konstanz, a research institute based in South West Germany.

February 09, 2016Road construction, mining, tunnels, and product manufacturing may all sound unrelated, but one company does it all. Atlas Copco has been & 34;moving mountains& 34; for 140 years now, with involvement in some of the largest infrastructure projects throughout the world. In 2013 alone, the company made US$12.

Solar panels on a UK roof Image:Elliott Brown, Flickr In an article for TechInsider last year, Rebecca Harrington noted that the world would only need a land surface area about the size of Spain in order to meet global electricity demand in 2030, based on solar panels with a 20 percent efficiency level.

March 10, 2016Have you ever wondered what the difference between gasoline and diesel engines was? Well, the Youtube channel Engineering Explained has created an in-depth video detailing just about every difference between the gasoline and diesel engines. From why gasoline requires spark plugs to how a diesel engine break works, any question you have ever asked about your engine is covered in the video.

March 11, 2016India is currently constructing the Chenab Bridge, which is expected to be the world& 39;s tallest arch bridge by the time it is complete. Chenab bridge is going to be a landmark in India, spanning over the Chaneb River which is located between Bakkal and Kauri in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir.

USS John C Stennis sailing through the Philippine Sea as part of the Great Green Fleet Image Source: US Navy, Flickr The Zephyr 8 is a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS), or at least it will be when the first one rolls out of the Airbus Defense and Space facility at Farnborough, UK, in mid-2017.

The structure of graphene Image:UCL Mathematical and Physical Science, Flickr Earlier this year, in late January, Manchester and Abu Dhabi Universities announced their intention to collaborate on a project to produce foam containing graphene, a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice which is 10 times stronger than steel but 1000 times lighter than a sheet of paper per unit area.

The Korean KAIST online electric vehicle (OLEV) bus Image source:KAIST, via Wired Magazine Alongside innovative battery technology, another potential method for charging electric vehicles (EVs) could be wireless energy transfer strips installed on road surfaces. The potential for new electric vehicles is quite exciting, particularly with regard to mass transit vehicles such as buses and trams, but the technology could one day be used for EVs also.

The GENeco Bio Bus in the UK Image Source:Wikimedia Commons All around the world, the green vehicle revolution is starting to speed up. At first, the main impetus focused on electric vehicles (EVs) and other green cars powered by hydrogen or running as hybrids. However, increasingly, clean vehicle technology is beginning to appear in mass transit vehicles, particularly buses.

Image: How Can I Recycle This? Flickr Biofuels from waste food might make pretty good sense given that UK householders alone currently waste 7 million tons of food per year, a lot of which could be fed into anaerobic digestion (AD) plants and turned into new and renewable energy.However, some companies are capitalizing on this resource.

March 12, 2016Floods can be some of the most devastating natural disasters, killing hundreds of thousands each year. Engineers in Austria however have solved this problem by erecting walls capable of holding back millions of gallons of water that are completely removable! It is quite a feat of engineering to see a relatively thin steel wall hold back 15 feet of water which could spell impending doom for the houses around.