VIRGINIA, USA - Across the American landscape about 3,000 more wind turbines have popped up every year since 2005
According to the company, Across the American landscape about 3,000 more wind turbines have popped up every year since 2005, and more than 2.7 million homes in the U.S. now sport solar panels. The power grid also is transforming, but the system is still better suited to centralized coal-fired plants, not widely dispersed sources of renewable energy. A four-person Virginia Tech team wants to change that.
In September 2022, the National Science Foundation announced that they awarded the group a $1.5 million grant to help design the components of this greener grid, a four-year project.
Yuhao Zhang, head of the project and an assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says the team will build new switches that can control the flow of electricity from a wide variety of different energy sources.“We’re going to explore the use of a new semiconductor material, which has superior … electrical properties over silicon,” he says. The switches will be triggered by light signals rather than electricity, making them quicker and more reliable.
Zhang says the Tech team plans to create proof-of-concept prototypes of the switches that could be installed into the grid. He also says the project will help identify what challenges industry leaders will face in transforming power grids with the new technology, as well as how long such a shift would take.
Source: Virginia Business