The sun also flips: 11-year solar cycle wimpy, but peaking

(Phys.org) —In a 3-meter diameter hollow aluminum sphere, Cary Forest, a UW-Madison physics professor, is stirring and heating plasmas to 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit to experimentally mimic the magnetic field-inducing cosmic ...

Cooking up a conductive alternative to copper with aluminum

In the world of electricity, copper is king—for now. That could change with new research from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that is serving up a recipe to increase the conductivity of aluminum, making it ...

Connecting dead ends increases power grid stability

Climate change mitigation strategies such as the German Energiewende require linking vast numbers of new power generation facilities to the grid. As the input from many renewable sources is rather volatile, depending on how ...

Solar and wind energy may stabilise the power grid

(Phys.org)—Renewable energies such as wind, sun and biogas are set to become increasingly important in generating electricity. If increasing numbers of wind turbines and photovoltaic systems feed electrical energy into ...

With changes, the grid can take it

Over the next two decades, the U.S. electric grid will face unprecedented technological challenges stemming from the growth of distributed and intermittent new energy sources such as solar and wind power, as well as an expected ...

New superconductor technology for the transmission grid

The German energy transition makes it necessary to extend the transmission grid. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), together with the grid operator TenneT, now studies the use of superconductor technology as an alternative ...

A new way to imagine grid stability

To ensure that the US electric grid remains stable and resilient, power generators in three main regions (Eastern, Western, and Texas) must be synchronized, all operating at the frequency of 60 hertz. Because generators interact ...

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