Explore the Energy section of The Pulse for in-depth coverage of clean power, storage solutions and emerging technologies.
The Bureau of Reclamation has decided to temporarily increase flows below Lewiston Dam. This decision was made because river conditions can increase disease risk for migrating…
A new kind of solar panel changes colors as it starts heating up, and not much is lost in terms of efficiency in the process. The…
A brackish lake in South Holland, cut off from the sea by a dam, flat as a table. Something is floating on it that does not…
A working deck the size of a city block, out in the southern North Sea. A steel tube 275 feet long hangs off a crane, turning…
Above Iowa is an “invisible highway” along which billions of bats and birds travel southward every fall. It is an expansive nocturnal migratory corridor in the…
A lobster boat leaving Point Judith in the dark, twice a month, with a doctoral student aboard. The traps come up around a pair of wind…
When Chinook salmon begin returning to the Snake River each fall, thousands of fish gather below Hells Canyon Dam to complete the final stage of their…
Solar glass meets aesthetics in new technology that turns a normal photovoltaic panel into part power producer, part optical illusion. Engineers found a way to print colored,…
Armenia has added a new layer to one of its oldest traditions. On the slopes of Mount Aragats near Aghdzk, rows of solar panels sit above…
The cell looks like a small dark mirror, cracked at the edges and coated in a film it spent years baking under the sun. Inside it…
A blade this size is one object. Not a stack of parts bolted together, but a single shell of glass cloth and hardened resin, cured once…
In Wyoming, researchers are conducting a field study on how wind turbines affect nearby native pollinators. They tracked insects in the wild high-plains grasslands visiting flowers…
An oversize permit is not really permission to move something large. It is permission to move something large along one specific line drawn on a map.…
Switzerland recently opened a fruit tree orchard that combines fruit production with solar panels. This unique combination is being tested at an experimental farm near Conthey…
In Washington State, a small vertical-axis tidal turbine was monitored for months to evaluate fine-scale interactions with wildlife. An automated underwater tracking array delivered 109 days…
Wyoming serves as a prototype for a novel form of wind generation that differs substantially from the traditional tall-tower, long-blade turbine design. The new concept is…
Two blocks of one vineyard, the same soil, the same water, the same hands pruning them. One of them spends its summer under a steel canopy of narrow…
The blade came apart in a sealed steel reactor that holds about two gallons. A 30 foot turbine blade, built with the same molds, layups and…
The glass was almost clear, but it was generating electricity. Researchers in Western Australia glazed the roof and walls of a small greenhouse with working solar…
Canada’s Bay of Fundy lies in Nova Scotia’s Minas Passage. The region is notorious for producing the world’s highest tides. More than 100 billion tons of…
On a Saturday evening in July, something gave way 15 miles southwest of Nantucket. A 351 foot offshore wind turbine blade cracked, and a large section…
When wind turbines are installed in deep offshore waters, they have the potential to become support structures for artificial coral reefs. This has not been tested…
The blade has been sitting in a landfill outside Casper, Wyoming, for the better part of a decade. It arrived well over 100 feet long, sawn…
Old asphalt is not dry. That is the first thing to get wrong about it. A road binder starts out as a suspension, with hard sticky…
The southern North Sea floor is not a landscape. It is a surface. Sand, gravel and shell, graded flat and kept that way, because a century…
Along a small stretch of Norway’s coastline, salmon farms use electricity to run everyday operations. For years, that often meant relying on diesel generators to provide…
A solar module is a sandwich, and that is the whole difficulty. Glass on the front, cells in the middle, a plastic backsheet behind, the lot…
At the European Marine Energy Centre’s Fall of Warness test site in Orkney, Scotland, researchers completed 45 drifting acoustic surveys around Orbital Marine Power’s O2 tidal…
Strength and size are not the same property, and the gap between them is where this result lives. A muscle is a chemical machine, and the…
Rows of dark panels on rolling ground in southern Virginia, and between them, sheep. They are working animals here rather than scenery, and they are eating…
A cranberry bog in early November, flooded shallow and red, with the vines under the water. Lying across it is something long and white that does…
In July 2025, SkySails Power, a German energy developer, launched a first-of-its-kind airborne wind power system in Lukang, Taiwan. It is a pilot project that may…
A flat panel slides off the back of a truck in Cedartown, Georgia, and onto a belt. It spent years in a field, turning sunlight into…
Kite power generation is growing, and now Norwegian developer Kitemill AS is eyeing a site at an airport. The company has submitted a license application for…
A solar panel is a heavy sheet of glass with silicon behind it. That is not a criticism. Glass is why panels last 25 years outdoors.…
Dolphin detection was one of the main goals of a bright yellow research buoy named Marinus, which spent over 2 years observing the coastal waters of…
A river barge low in the water, moving upstream at walking pace. Three white objects lie along its deck, each one longer than the vessel is…
A flying wind turbine being developed in Germany can respond to wildlife in ways traditional turbines cannot. Developed by Kitekraft, the device flies high above the…
A workshop floor, a gantry rail overhead, and a long pale shape lying under it that looks like furniture. It is spruce, glued up in layers,…
The Faroe Islands government has a goal of running entirely on renewable power by 2030. The country has a vast resource to draw on in tidal…
The only mammals that are endemic to the island of Mauritius are bats. Any renewable energy projects must take the animals into account to balance clean…
The road up ends at a rim of loose red rock, and the ground beyond it simply stops. Inside the bowl there is a black liner,…
Stand at the foot of one of these and look up. At speed the outer part of the rotor is not really a blade. It is…
Since tidal turbine technology was developed to generate clean electricity, conservationists have been concerned about wildlife collisions. The blades spin super fast underwater, and it is…
A turbine that is turning is protecting itself. Every blade passes through the load instead of standing in it, and the machine keeps hunting for the…
Tegel Airport in Berlin, Germany, has seen a steady stream of aircraft taking off for years, heading up into the sky over the German capital. But…
Researchers analyzing continuous environmental monitoring data from an active marine energy project in Scotland recently reviewed 14,998 subsea camera files. Located in Bluemull Sound in the…
The creek is maybe fifteen feet wide and it was enough to cut the park in half. Now something pale and tapered lies across it, thick…
For many decades, utilities, engineers, tribes and scientists have worked together to restore salmon to the upper reaches of Washington State’s Baker River. The Baker River…
A blade cannot be a room. It is a curved hollow beam that tapers along its whole length, so any floor you put inside it is…
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