New technologies for storing and transporting energy are the key to a sustainable energy system. A student, a scientist and an entrepreneur present their ideas: get inspired!
A serious issue with common sustainable energy resources like solar panels is their weather-dependency: on sunny days they generate too much energy, on rainy days it’s not enough. In the current system, supply and demand do not meet. New technologies for storing and transporting energy are therefore required. In short 10-minute talks, entrepreneur Robin Bergh, TU/e-student Luc Brinkman and a researcher Gerard van Rooij present new inventions and insights for sustainable energy storage and conversion. Get inspired!
This series of SETalks is organized in cooperation with the congress committee of student platform Team Energy that organizes the Energy Now congress on 17 May at Evoluon. The third edition of Energy Now will be all about Storage & Conversion. Energy Now brings students, professionals, companies and research groups together to start the energy discussion. SETalks will also be part of the congress program.
Metal Fuels
The majority of our industries is running on depleting and polluting resources. Therefore, alternatives for fossil fuels are greatly needed. Team Solid from TU/e provides one of the solutions. Team Solid is working on a new concept called “metal fuels”, in which metals are used to sustainably store energy.
Speaker: Luc Brinkman, student Applied Physics at TU/e and part of Team Solid
Smart Solar Charging
Flexibility is missing in current sustainable energy resources. There are too few ways to bring sustainable energy from one spot to another. However, electric vehicles already transport electricity. Why not use this fact as an opportunity to support the flexibility of the energy system? In Lombok, Utrecht, entrepreneur Robin Berg started an initiative to make use of solar energy and electric vehicles: Smart Solar Charging.
Speaker: Robin Berg, CEO of LomboXnet
Solar fuels
The ease of natural gas and gasoline, but no extraction of fossil fuels and a net carbon emission of zero. This is the ambitious goal of Differ’s solar fuel research department. The solar fuel team is working on transforming greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a new, clean fuel. Plasma physicist and project leader Gerard van Rooij has found the way to partly ionize carbon dioxide and create plasma: loaded gas which can be used as a sustainable fuel. Only the challenge of optimal return remains.
Speaker: Gerard van Rooij, researcher at Differ (theme Solar Fuels) and lecturer Applied Physics at TU/e.