News
Switzerland just ran its 11, 000th train over the world's first solar power plant locked between the rails of a live railway, wheels passing inches above 48 panels that haven't moved in fourteen months " and the country that demolished its own solar road is first in line to copy it
3+ hour, 16+ min ago (1124+ words) Solar panels have been screwed onto roofs, floated on reservoirs and, in California, strung over irrigation canals. The one place they keep dying is anywhere vehicles actually touch them. France found that out with Wattway, the "5 million solar road in…...
While critics warn floating solar farms smother the water beneath them, the Dutch hung 20 seashell-filled cages under 73, 000 panels to find out " and counted 400 fish and close to 2, 000 invertebrates in a quarry lake that started out nearly lifeless
4+ hour, 46+ min ago (1120+ words) Floating solar farms sound like a tidy fix for a country that has run out of dry land to build on. Stick the panels on a lake, generate power, and save the fields for tulips and cows. The obvious worry…...
The 2027 Kia Telluride looks so much like a Range Rover from behind you'd be forgiven for mixing them up, right down to the deep green paint, except this one costs less than half as much, and after a week with the hybrid I was looking up lease deals
16+ hour, 46+ min ago (361+ words) The launch of the 2027 Kia Telluride was a touch bittersweet. On the one hand the vehicle received a major overhaul which boosted efficiency, reworked the powertrain options, and gave the vehicle a bold new look. On the other, it was…...
A Houston company ran an all-electric drone 7, 500 feet down off Louisiana with no cable at all, no wire for power, no wire for commands, deep enough to reach 90% of the world's offshore oil fields, steered by sound because seawater eats every other signal
21+ hour, 17+ min ago (877+ words) For as long as robots have worked the floor of the ocean, they have done it on a leash. A remotely operated vehicle hangs off a thick umbilical cable that pipes down power and commands, and up on the surface…...
A 1, 200-ton German machine named Mary just started grinding under the Potomac in Washington, boring a 5. 5-mile tunnel to stop the 650 million gallons of stormwater and raw sewage that hit the river every time the capital's Victorian sewers overflow
22+ hour, 46+ min ago (592+ words) When it rains hard enough in Washington, the sewers under the capital do exactly what a 19th-century design built them to do. They fill past capacity, and the overflow runs straight into the Potomac. In an average year that works…...
America just switched on a 5-gigawatt plant in Georgia that strips old solar panels down to the silver, copper and glass by the million, with a glass factory going up right beside it to feed the recovered material straight back into new US-made panels
1+ day, 1+ hour ago (908+ words) Bolting solar panels onto a roof or a field used to be the interesting part of the clean-energy story. It isn't anymore. Modules that cost a small fortune fifteen years ago now sell for pocket change, they go up by…...
Britain just welded a full nuclear reactor vessel shut in under 24 hours, four nuclear-grade seams through 200 millimeters of steel on a 3-meter can, a job that normally takes a year, by firing an electron beam clean through the steel in a single shot
1+ day, 3+ hour ago (1380+ words) Welding is slow, careful work, and the thicker the steel, the slower it gets. Anyone who has watched someone lay down a serious weld knows it is mostly waiting: pass after pass, then inspection, then more waiting. Now picture a…...
A California company built a seabed mining drone that hovers above the ocean floor instead of crawling it, picking up battery metals one nodule at a time with 16 arms, and leaving nearly a third behind on purpose, the ones with living things attached
1+ day, 4+ hour ago (1356+ words) The usual picture of deep-sea mining is a giant tractor crawling along the ocean floor, sucking rocks up by the ton and pumping them four kilometers to a ship on the surface. That picture is accurate. It's how the company…...
You check the crash-test stars before you buy, but the thing about a car most likely to shorten your life isn't the crash, it's the exhaust, and a health report finds nearly half of American kids now live where the air is unhealthy to breathe
1+ day, 16+ hour ago (827+ words) You check the crash-test stars before you buy. You worry about the other driver, the blind spot, the ice on the on-ramp. The thing about that car most likely to shorten your life isn't the crash. It's the air coming…...
Volkswagen grazes 50 sheep under 33, 600 solar panels in Tennessee instead of mowing, guards them with a rescued donkey that charges coyotes, and ruled out the cheaper goats for one reason
2+ day, 1+ hour ago (901+ words) Keeping the grass down on a solar farm sounds like the most boring job in clean energy, right up until you remember what's sitting in that grass. Miles of cabling, banks of inverters, and a few million dollars of hardware,…...