A Sea Of Solar Power

[Music] this week more clean green fun in the sun with battery robots solar cars and electric boats [Music] in an unassuming garage in the netherlands there's an electric car near the secret no it's not it's ultralight ultra strong carbon fiber frame although that is important to the story and it's not the aerodynamic design that makes it look like a future car from the 1950s although that is important too no look closer at that shiny finish and you'll see that it's not paint the entire thing is covered in solar panels solar panels on the bonnet solar panels on the roof solar panels instead of a back window yes this is a solar-powered car and they call it light year one the first production model will be going on sale this summer it's five square meters of solar panels come in narrow sections that better curve around the body and also mean that if it's parked partly in the shade the sections that are in the sun still work at full capacity but even though the battery can take you 440 miles on a single charge a day's worth of sunlight will only provide about 45 miles of that the rest still has to come from plugging it in however 45 miles might be enough to get you to work and back you can fast charge it using a normal charger but the solar panel will recharge your commute every day so basically when you put it outside of your office space then it recharge itself and when you get back the cars pool again and basically that happens every day in the summer in the netherlands you wouldn't have to charge for months uh if you do just your commute really i'm from the uk i know what you're talking about yeah yeah and and basically uk and the netherlands are the worst one percent right it will get a lot better when you go to south of europe why did you set up a company here then and not in the sahara because we love the sun because we see those so celeste actually the netherlands is a european leader in solar power getting as much as 17 of his energy from the sun lex is a bit of a world leader too in 2012 he co-founded the team that went on to win the solar challenge cruiser race across the australian outback four times in a row unsurprisingly the design of light year one is somewhat more conventional now solar cells are getting better and better turning sunlight into electricity but lexus company is more focused on making what energy it can harvest go further the result will be the most energy efficient five-seater on the market when it launches with a ruthlessly aerodynamic design weighing about half a tesla mod less and which trades the crazy acceleration of that beast for range and efficiency so the tendency has been for electric cars to to look at high acceleration and large batteries so because of those two cars get very heavy and very heavy cars that accelerate quickly they need very high power so we say it's more important to get to a destination quick than it is to be quick at a traffic light and what's great about amble motors is that they are direct drive so basically there's no gears at all there's there's just four moving parts four motors that's it so it means that no heat is lost in drive shafts or or other gears etc so every bit of energy goes directly to the motors and to the wheels and that makes it more efficient and therefore on the same amount of solar you get in you can drive more now light year one isn't the only solar powered car being developed this one from german outfit sono is due to hit the market in 2023 and look of course it makes sense to get your electricity free of charge from the sun rather than from fossil fuel power stations but solar cars also come with new challenges for a start you're going to need to keep it clean to maximize charging and you know those stone chips you get in your windscreen well now much more of the car is covered in glass although lightyear does say that any chips can be filled with resin in the same way as windscreens it does seem like it's been a long time coming but looking at this it is a bit easier to believe that one day your car might be wearing a sea of solar cells but you know what laura it is slightly depressing that even with a highly efficient body it's those solar panels that need to get more efficient if we're going to run completely on solar in the future yes maybe for now we need to focus on getting more power into batteries quicker then yeah that's a nice idea but it is hard can i show you something that might help well here's a british company hoping it solved the fast charging challenge the nioh bolt cell is the same size and weight as a traditional lithium-ion one but it can power things better whilst it's doing the job and crucially it charges a lot faster the eventual aim three minutes compared to three hours and here in this lab batteries are being tested along with visualizations of their charging speed heating and the current the cells are then grouped together and tested in regular devices it's possible to charge batteries in five minutes we've had robotic vacuum cleaners charge in three minutes it's possible to charge power tools in 10 minutes or less much of the success here lies in the development of a new material which allows lithium ions to transfer quickly at a safe temperature the heating that you get primarily because your anode and your cathode materials are not able to move lithium ions fast enough and then the heating causes a whole series of degradation electrolyte decomposes the cathode decomposes giving off oxygen and causes fires but even having addressed this there are still challenges for the fast charging of the thing that many of us care about the most our smartphones years of miniaturizing their components despite their subsequent growing screen sizes has made this more difficult these limitations come from the components like the wires and the connectors and usually they're limited to about five amps that's what you have in most of the usb sockets so usb-c has got to go to its next generation that can allow for faster charging and the chargers you've got to have charges that wouldn't become too big and bulky to carry around too vehicle charging is on the agenda too when it comes to recharging electric vehicles there are a lot of variables this isn't exactly your standard electric car right now to fully power up something like this would take about three hours now that's partly because the initial bit of that charging happens quite fast and then it slows down later on but these batteries should overcome that problem making it possible to reach full charge in just five to six minutes driverless taxi pods could spend more time shuttling people rather than sitting charging the company's also been busy working on this prototype mobile charging device the idea is it could be used on building sites or maybe to even charge cars it can move forwards and backwards from side to side and here you've got three detachable batteries they only take three minutes to charge there are also ac sockets here and thanks to 2 000 cells inside it can provide 30 kilowatts of power that's about the same as a tesla power wall there are still other issues to be overcome what happens to the battery at the end of its life and there are some compromises if you don't mind an additional 10 percent lower run time or 20 lower run time but you're able to get all that energy in five minutes this is something that our technology allows once the lab trials are finished it'll be time for industrial testing and validation in the hope that these fast charging batteries could be speeding up our lives in the next few years [Music] hello and welcome to the week in tech it was the week nintendo announced the much-anticipated breath of the wild sequel is delayed until 2023 elon musk says he's thinking of building a new social media platform that's open source and supports crypto currencies and tick tock announced a new in-app creation tool called library with select content from jiffy the source of many gifs and animated online stickers it aims to encourage more creators to access entertainment content and take part in trends the pompeii archaeological site is using a spot robot dog to explore the ancient ruins collect data and assess structural issues authorities are also using laser scanning drones to help create 3d models of the site as part of its move towards net zero the government in britain has ordered research to begin on orbital solar farms proponents of solar power in this form believe they can provide round-the-clock renewable energy that's wirelessly beamed to earth and fed into the grid and finally dyson have announced the launch of their new noise-cancelling headphones that come with a built-in air purifier the company claimed the cans can deliver a continuous stream of clean air without touching the wearer's face you heard it ear first this is greenwich naval college in london with its brand new cycleway play area benches and bike park it's an urban regeneration that didn't need any council approval in fact it was only completed about 10 minutes ago yeah it's a visualization of how things could be the kind of thing that you see skilled urban designers make although this is beta streets a tool that can be used by anyone quite often you know the visualization can be done at the end of hundreds of thousands of pounds for design work and and the decision makers decide that they don't like it um and and therein lies a bit of a problem because a lot of money and time has been spent getting there we've deliberately kept beat streets as a simple easy to use tool for most people and not something that you need to work in street design for two years to be able to do the idea is that anyone even me can take a photo of their local area upload it to beta streets and the software will do a lot of the work for you this tool analyzes the photo to work out the geometry of the image and that makes adding street furniture cycle lanes and trees a doddle is that a sensible place to burn bike hanger well that's a no then [Laughter] this is chaos this is that you do not want someone like me having to go at your street let's put a slide here over the curb there you go so what you can do is you can climb up there and then slide down onto the red bit of the road have you got flumes i haven't got floams in the throat some of them we could add in i can see the shadows of the tree are tracing across the bench there 3d gaming engines like unity and unreal engine take care of the visuals allowing objects and lighting to be easily manipulated and opening up a previously highly skilled profession to many more people they've been around a while but it's more that people's computers can now handle what we're giving it i mean this is fun yeah it's a disaster for me um and for everyone that lives down that street but it's it's fun so i can kind of see how people would actually engage with this yeah it's incredibly easy as well i mean that's the first time you've used it and yeah okay you've made a bit of a mess but it looks it looks semi-believable i mean whether or not you put that whether or not you put those objects there and it looks longest pause in the history of television believable the system was recently used by the charity london cycling campaign to start a conversation about making london streets greener and more cycle friendly not sure i want to have the conversation with the residents of this street i think i will leave it to the professionals and because this tool runs in a browser it's a fairly easy step to make it run on a tablet or even a phone which means you can take the photo you need and then just stand on the street corner and do your sketch right there and then now different cities will require different solutions in their quest to become sustainable so let's go somewhere completely different now i'm going to hand you over to captain livington [Music] out there very very icy [Music] with 3 000 kilometers of coastline and nearly 300 000 islands sweden plays host to a variety of sailing vessels motorboats use fuel that creates greenhouse gasses they can leak petrol and they can cause noise pollution so i'm here to take a look at some electric boats that aim to overcome these problems including one that doesn't cut through the waves but glides above them right i'm following you yes come on under this 25-foot craft is a wing for hydroplaning and sensors that collect hundreds of data points every second you'll have to take the passenger seat first okay then we'll let you drive we need to stabilize it much like a fighter yet then we feel how we're oriented where we are in the world and then about 100 times per second we adjust the fall by twisting it and changing the angle of attack to keep stable this is where it gets exciting let's go wow i can feel the sensation of the boat lifting up it does actually feel like we're flying and without the hull in the water it's using 80 less power than a boat would conventionally need batteries are still no way close to the same energy density as gasoline but as hydroplaning reduces friction electric becomes a more viable energy choice it feels beautiful whilst most electric boats eat up more energy the faster they go this consumes the same at five knots that it does at 20. on a full charge it can hydroplane for two hours covering 50 nautical miles at a sensible 20 knot cruising speed and we can have a conversation like this it's not like a slamming in the waves which is very sociable and it also feels very smooth like an electric car you want to try it i'd love to okay let's do it this is easy and when i raced to tesla a little while ago and beat the race car driver that was way easier than i was expecting so let's do this seat belts on everybody i took to this like a duck to water well after a few big plant splashes okay that feels faster than you went okay and now pull it down okay i'm heading for the big waves whoa that was amazing i barely felt those a very different experience to our producers folks [Music] it's a leader amongst its electric peers but i do wonder if prices starting from around 300 thousand dollars might stall adoption especially when similar sized motor boats can still travel several times further and go around 10 knots faster of course there's going to be petrol power boats for quite some time but i mean once you try this kind of experience it's quite easy to imagine everyone driving like this and when you're here looking at this beautiful water and the beautiful scenery it feels good to know that you're not damaging the environment whilst you're out on land bigger crafts are underway with a 40-foot public shuttle set to launch with the city of stockholm next year this is our first electric hydrofoiling ferry this one will be able to carry 30 passengers and it's exactly the same technology just scaled up yeah exactly it's the same concept but next for me is another swedish company called x-shaw that's making electric boats better connected hey hello nice boat thank you thank you she's a beauty i believe you have something to give me before we get on board i have so you will be able to start the boat with this one garmin's gps and vitals tracking smartwatch comes with added nautical functions management board on unlocked and then if you fall in then it stops now this won't be as energy efficient as hydroplaning but it's still powerful in four seconds we will be up well above 30 knots so everyone needs to hold on is everyone ready yes gave her everything you got just full throttle yep on floor again it's similar to candela in cost and top speed but can cruise slowly for double the time as it sails the vessel collects 150 data points each second everything shared back to hq to optimize performance but with private info being beamed straight from my wrist i was curious about security technically you can hack pentagon right so you can probably hack our boat if you're that good but we have the same kind of security layer as any car company just like connected cars share data to improve urban spaces smart boats could help local authorities improve life at sea so this is our r d lab some of this information like water quality and water temperature you can't do anything about it so how much use is that data for the cities it's lots of use because they can see if the temperatures sudden rises where to go swim where to avoid if you have coral reef areas i mean this is something that our customers would want to monitor actually with remote control tools built in floating sea labs could one day operate themselves are you working towards these becoming autonomous yes we are when in a few years time that was great fun but it's not just about that ninety percent of the world trade is shipped and that accounts for three percent of all co2 emissions going electric could be one solution but another is using sailboats and one company has been trying to bring that idea into the future [Music] with world trade growing it's important that we do something to reduce co2 emissions by up to 40 percent by 2030. here we are using a rigid wind this is where you get the different ones that's where you have the most power you could see it as an airplane wing that you put up on on the on the ship measuring the flow that is actually clear is really difficult this vessel here is seven meter long mainly made out of a glass fiber the full-scale ship will be around 200 meter long roughly around 80 meters in height and the ambition is that this will sail end of 2025 or early 2026 what makes wind really really interesting it's of course free of charge you know that there will be wind also in the future up there you will have very little disturbance it's been a lot of learnings we have roughly around 150 sensors measuring up to 200 data points every 10 seconds pressure wind wind speed and also the direction of the of the ship when you change the angle of attack i mean that will be a big difference how can you optimize the the hull how can you optimize routing how can you optimize the wing sales and so on combining that then we get up to the 90 percent co2 reduction there are of course unexpected things going on one example when the wings are flipping over then it also start to move backwards so these are things that we have learned and then we look into how can we work on that and make sure that you avoid this going forward when it comes to the full systems over the atlantic ocean you will have very good solid wind more or less all the time if you get closer to the equator you will have less wind where you need to put in some other kind of energy it could be a wind assist where you take it just to reduce the co2 emissions from the main engine you also need a backup system in case you have no wind [Music] taking new steps will be a challenge the shipping industry has been going on for the last 100 years basically what we can show is that if this is a profitable way of going forward it's also a very environmentally friendly way that would make it super interesting for for all ship owners in the world that was nicholas dahl finishing off this sustainable journey by road and water on what turns out to be click's 22nd birthday would you believe now we're making a few changes behind the scenes here on the programme so while we get things sorted we're going to treat you to a few of our favorite episodes from the last few months do enjoy those we'll still be on social media on youtube facebook instagram and twitter at bbc click thanks for watching and we'll be back soon [Music] you

Channel: BBC Click

Views: 73,392

Keywords: BBC, BBC Click, BBC News, Click, Technology, Tech, click;

Id: KjU_1pkFh_g

Length: 24min 29sec (1469 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022