Discoveries
Notes on new technologies.
Notes on technologies and inventions in energy, water, storage and land, written for use on a brief rather than as a news feed. Some items have a video, credited to the maker, playing from YouTube. If you have a paper or a video we should see, send it.
Policy/2026
Growth for all, and ecology as management
Development and ecology have been set against each other for a long time. Small is not always better, and holding other people back is not sustainability. Growth for everyone, planned so it does not wreck the place, is the job.
Civil/2026
Cost-effective building, specified clearly
Cheap is not the same as cost-effective. The saving is in the method: the wall, the slab and the skill on site, written in the BOQ, not hoped for after the tender.
Hydro/2026
Small hydro, rebuilt as a working station
Older stations still earn if the civil, mechanical, and electrical sides are named. New runners, environmental flows, and protection that keep a plant on the grid.
Wind/2026
Diffuser-augmented wind at low speed
Wind in the Western Ghats is patchy and orographic. A shroud can raise yield at low speed. The mast campaign still decides if a site is worth the steel.
Agriculture/2024
Agrivoltaics, crop and array on one land
Raised modules, shade-tolerant crops, and a land-use argument a collector can read. Cashew and laterite are not a European vegetable bed. The crop has to be the one that is actually there.
YouTube · Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Hydrogen/2025
Green hydrogen by electrolysis
Electricity splits water. The hydrogen is only as clean as the kWh. Offtake, water, and the hours the electrolyser actually runs decide if a project is a plant or a press note.
YouTube · OMV
Storage/2026
Sodium-ion stationary storage
Sodium is common. The cells are heavier than lithium, which matters less in a shed than in a car. The chemistry works. The open question is calendar life in a hot, humid room.
Storage/2025
Gravity energy storage
Lift a mass with surplus solar or wind; lower it when the grid needs the kWh. A mechanical battery. Useful where height exists and duration matters more than energy density.
YouTube · DW Planet A
Solar/2025
Floating photovoltaic arrays
A reservoir or a river edge can carry an array without taking arable land. Cooling helps yield. Anchoring, CRZ, and monsoon fetch are the rest of the brief.
YouTube · National Laboratory of the Rockies
Solar/2026
Perovskite-silicon tandems
Silicon is close to its practical ceiling. Stacking a perovskite cell on silicon takes more of the spectrum. For a Kerala plant the issue is not the laboratory record. It is humidity, heat, and whether the stack lasts twenty-five years.
YouTube · Hanwha Group
From the field
Point us to a paper or a video.
A site note, a paper, or a short video on a technology that should sit in this list. We read what we can use on a brief.
Practice