He scoured the world for the perfect battery technology (a combination of lightweight and long charging), added a solar panel for those without plug-in electricity recharge options, leveraged local university engineering talent to make it all work, and delivered a truly silent generator that can run a full size refrigerator for over a day if the power goes down.

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LeMieux is already at work on a considerably larger model that would use the same engineering to turn waves on Lake Erie into electricity.

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As a mechanical engineering student at the University of Munich, he teased increasing amounts of electricity from solar cells headed into orbit.

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There are bottlenecks in permitting, engineering, financing and building a new plant and then tying it to the electricity network.

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In addition to clearing our last remaining scientific hurdle, we need to advance a parallel engineering agenda into key reactor technologies that will enable commercial fusion power plants to reliably deliver electricity in a highly competitive market.

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In an earlier report, the Royal Academy of Engineering had mapped out the scale of the task involved in moving to a low-carbon electricity supply - with a mix of energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear and clean coal.

BBC: Promise, but daunting challenges for electric cars