against rohingya refugees fleeing a military crackdown in myanmar. doctors in bangladesh say that many of the women and children who have crossed over the border from myanmar have been sexually assaulted and abused by soldiers. separatist leaders in the spanish region of catalonia insist that polls will open in the coming hours for an independence referendum banned by the central government. spanish police are working to block the vote but catalonia's vice—president said ballot boxes would be available at polling stations. the situation in puerto rico is still dire after the devastation caused by two hurricanes. there's also deepening political tension over the us relief effort. in a series of tweets, president trump promised his support but tried to blame local officials, democrats, and the media for the poor situation. let's have a look at the front pages of this morning's papers. the observer says the knives are out for theresa may as the conservative party conference gets under way. it reports a senior cabinet minister has refused

to back her remaining in office. the sunday times continues the theme. one of its headlines claims borisjohnson believes mrs may will be gone in a year. a rather kinder front page from the sunday telegraph which says the pm is set to announce a tuition fees revolution to help students. "that's more like it, mrs may" is the verdict in the sunday express. it reports the pm will launch the change as part of a policy blitz to woo younger voters. the mail on sunday says she's gambling that the tuition fees changes will head off a tory coup but the paper calls it another "huge u—turn". and more on the conservatives in the sunday mirror which claims the prominent pro—life tory mp jacob rees—mogg has admitted to benefiting financially from a firm which produces drugs to end pregnancies. now on bbc news, click. this week...

explosions. big taps. and goats on the loose. the beautiful welsh countryside. home to valleys, lakes, the odd feral goat and... ..electric mountain. hidden inside this mountain is the dinorwig pumped storage power station and it is basically a monster battery. it stores energy by pumping water

from this lake to a lake at the top of the mountain and then letting it flow back downhill, releasing that energy at times of peak demand. when you pop the kettle on during breaks in championship matches of that sport they call football, this bad boy springs into action to supplement our national grid, delivering power to our homes in under 12 seconds. it's an incredible view. it's one of the fastest responding power stations on the planet and we'll have a nosy inside the thing later in the programme. dinorwig offers a semi—renewable energy solution at a time when our national resources are being used up. as solar, wind and tidal power alternatives advance, we're craving a method of using their generated energy 24/7 despite the weather or time of day and this is where batteries come in.

now, this isn't your stereotypical battery. admittedly when i say ‘battery‘ you probably think of the ones in these. these are rechargeable lithium ion batteries. we really can't live without these. lithium ion batteries have truly revolutionised electronics. they power the mobile miracles that we use every day. they have a high density, meaning they can store a lot of electricity relative to their small size, so we can easily carry them around and recharge them hundreds of times. inside cells are layers of sheets stacked together, a positive cathode, negative anode, with a separator in between filled with a liquid electrolyte. when a cell is discharged, the movement of ions from one side to the other facilitates the flow of electrons, which then generates current to power devices. during charging, this process is reversed.

whoever came up with this must have been a real genius. my name isjohn bannister goodenough and when i was at oxford when we developed the cathodes that enabled the lithium ion battery that you use in your cell telephones and laptop computers, i didn't really think about whether the battery we were developing would—be a world—famous invention. and i've been very pleased to see how it's being developed in the hands of the engineers. it has stood the test of time with electric vehicles today relying on thousands of lithium ion cells for their battery pack modules. the dependence of modern society on fossilfuel energy is not sustainable. and so, one of the things we need to do is find storage of electric power generated by alternative

energy sources, and also storage batteries that can power an electric vehicle with a competitive price and performance. certainly sounds like doctor goodenough‘s invention has proved good enough for 37 years, but lithium ion isn't without its problems, and that's led some people to look for alternate battery technologies. and this summer, the uk government pledged £250 million into the research and development of battery tech. at the forefront of this research is warwick manufacturing group at the university of warwick. lithium ion batteries do have potential hazards and if you mistreat some of the higher energy chemistries then yes, you'll see a battery fire and potentially a rupture and so on, so there's tight innate chemistries, called iron phosphate chemistries, which are a safe option for using public transport so on. as a research centre and a cell manufacturer you can play tunes with the chemistry to basically decide whether safety is your prime

goal or your prime criteria or whether performance and energy is. if you look at your periodic table, all the transition metals you see, generally somewhere in the world there is a scientist trying to make a battery out of those. calcium batteries, aluminium batteries, lithium sulphur batteries, sodium ion, there's a range of different sodium ion batteries and so on. there's a whole range of different chemistries being worked on, so although we're working on lithium ion at the moment and we're persevering with lithium ion, there will be more developments in the future as we move onto different types of chemistries. as the uk's leading automotive battery r&d centre, wmg works at the intersection between scientific research and industry with the likes of nissan and jaguar land rover as close collaborators. here's a module we developed, and it represents about a 70—80% improvement on the tesla battery module. that improvement has come about not through changes in the chemistry but changes in the way the module has been constructed.

packing the cells tighter together while maintaining safety, improved cooling systems, etc. at the moment, cost and range of new evs and the number of charging points available to us is an issue. manufacturers like nissan even offer up a replacement diesel or petrol replacement for customers needing to drive longer distances as part of their promise scheme. as well as batteries, wmg is looking at how our charging behaviour can affect battery life too surprising results. —— behaviour can affect battery life to surprising results. it's made a smart algorithm that shows degradation of a car battery can be reduced by up to 10% over a year if energy is transferred back to the grid. synonymous with evs is tesla, owner of the world's biggest battery factory. due to hit peak production in 2020, the gigafactory aims to produce enough batteries to power after million new electric —— half a million new electric

cars every year. tesla boss elon musk‘s ambitions go further than revolutionising our cars, though — he wants to rewire our homes too. enter the powerwall. the £6,000 home battery stores energy gathered from solar panels during the day and when the sun goes down sustainably powers your pad. it's very straightforward, really, not that complicated. from tesla to ikea, there seems to be a growing trend in companies creating home batteries to harness solar power. so how exactly does this work? tech enthusiastic terence has had solar panels for several years. more recently connecting them to a home battery, meaning he can use the power he generates and send excess back to the grid. the battery charged up 1.4 kilowatt hours, which it then used throughout the day, so that saved

about 15% on energy bills. he's also using it to power his electric vehicle and thanks to the way that feed—in tariffs currently work in the uk, he's being paid for the power he generates even when he uses it. but of course it's early days for the technology. one of the things we're going to see over time is these batteries will become cheaper, smaller and higher capacity. at the moment this battery is two kilowatt—hours, which is great, but it's not quite enough for everything we want to do with it. terence is actually taking part in a community trial taking place in the rose hill area of oxford. while the usual costs for installation of solar panels and a moixa battery would be £5,000, here the cost of batteries is subsidised and a network has been created meaning power can be economically shared between the 82 homes, a school and a community centre that are taking part. my house generates more power than i can use so why not store it

and sell it back to the grid? why not give it to my neighbours when we've got surplus? in this area, where many are living in fuel poverty, the community element of the project seems to be appreciated too. and here at this school, they're also treating it as a learning experience. here in this year 6 classroom, you can see the solar panels out of the window and here is the battery that's harnessing the power. now, this power is actually being used for the lighting in this room but the whole set—up also teaches the kids how this works. swedish giant ikea are now selling home batteries too, using the same premise of harnessing solar power and that providing electricity consumable by the home owner, claiming the average uk home could up to £560 a year from their electricity bills.

meanwhile, british company powerbolt are working on giving older electric vehicle batteries a second life as home batteries. while after eight to ten years of road use, a battery could start to deteriorate, it seems it could still be used in the home where demands are less strenuous, giving it an extra decade of use. after being taken from the vehicles, they are checked electrically, graded, reformatted and stacked together to create energy storage systems for the home. of course, as battery costs come down and capability increases, the appeal should too. so whether this idea goes mainstream most likely depends on whether the sun shines over those figures. welcome to the week in tech.

maintaining the battery theme, it was a week when panic was caused on the london underground when a mobile battery pack exploded and the station had to be evacuated. and mark zuckerberg rejected claims by president donald trump that facebook is biased and anti—trump. bill gates admitted that he has ditched his microsoft phone for an android handset. the united nations has declared robots could destabilise the world and it's opened a centre in the hague to monitor developments in the visual intelligence. —— in artificial intelligence. the skies are about to get busier as autonomous passenger drones move one step closer to reality. in dubai, a test flight took place of a proposed autonomous flying taxi designed by german outfit volocopter. 18 blades power the drone with passengers selecting the destination via touchscreen. meanwhile, a company called passenger drone released video of its self—flying drone testing in europe. the human can also take the stick and take control

of the 16 electric motors. amazon has announced a host of new hardware this week, including new versions of its digital assistant, the echo. the echo spot features a screen that can make video calls and act as a nursery camera and the echo plus can act as a smart home hub, connecting to an controlling other devices. finally, james dyson, of colourful expensive vacuum fame, has announced plans to launch an electric car. here's hoping it doesn't suck. back at dinorwig, i'm heading deeper underground. the water comes from the lake, which is about 600 metres above us, down this pipe, hits

this valve and stops. this is the biggest tap you will ever see, and there are actually six of them all in a row down there. when they need the power, this yellow arm swings up, the valve opens and we get to maximum flow of water through to the turbines through there in about six seconds. when all six are open, that's 92,000 gallons per second. or, as it says here, 1.5 million cups of tea. not sure if that's a earl grey or english breakfast. do we have flow? we have flow. there it is, turbine number two spinning at about 500rpm and when all six of these turbines are all spinning, this place produces enough electricity to power the whole

of wales for 5.5 hours. now, dinorwig runs at about 75% efficiency because it pumps its water uphill at night using cheap electricity it buys from the national grid and charges a premium for the energy it generates during the day. if we were to move completely away from fossil fuel power stations, would that mean that this sort of power station wouldn't be able to run? in reality, if we need to pump that water up the hill we need to buy that electricity from the market somewhere, whether that is a thermal power station, a set of windmills, gas power station, whatever it might be. why are there not more of these around? i suppose the greatest challenge is finding a suitable place in the uk to build them. you've seen yourself that you've got to have them in a specific area, it's got to have two lakes, the lakes are ideally close together, good vertical separation. they're not the kind of things you can easily build on the back of a wagon and wheel them in somewhere. those lakes need to exist or you need to create them,

so it comes with cost. so i think it's a limited amount of options in terms of locations for such places. does it get lonely down here? sometimes. whilst this is powering our homes, kat hawkins has got some top tips to help power our phones. for a lot of us, we feel we can't live without our smartphones. and so when the battery dies and we don't have access to power, it can be a massive inconvenience. now, there are things you can do to save your battery: dim your brightness, turn of wi—fi, gps, and any background apps you don't need to use. but there are a number apps out there which claim to save your battery. do they actually work? greenify, batter doctor and du battery saver are three of the most popular battery—saving android apps. they've got millions of five—star reviews on google play, suggesting people think they work, so we thought they made

a good testing ground. they claim to do a number of from dimming your brightness, to hibernating or optimising your apps, or reducing your data being used. so to start off, this team took a brand—spanking new samsung galaxy j3, and hot—wired it. the voltage, the current, and the power. so if we turn the phone on, from idle, we can see that the current to the phone, the power to the phone increases — so if we do which is power hungry, like take a photo with the flash on, you see the power spikes massively. then they tested the phone baseline, with no battery saver app installed, and using a small number of apps over a ten—minute period. then they did the same thing with the battery savers installed, as well as the in—built battery power saver, which comes installed on the phone. so we can see that the power savers do seem to work. they make a small difference for battery doctor and du battery saver — about two or three hours, by the looks of things. and then greenify actually makes of about four hours. when you think this one is doing better?

we think that is because it is the way the apps work. so du battery saver and battery doctor, they offer you an option to optimise the performance of your apps, so we suspect they are reducing frequency at which applications access mobile data, making them run less in the background, whereas greenify seems to put you into a hibernation mode when you put your phone into idle. but interestingly, the most efficient seems to be the android power saver, the one that comes on the phone when you get it from the factory. but this is currently a limited test of ten minutes, and all conducted on the wi—fi. what needs to happen now is a bigger test of hours at a time, using apps that stream videos, play games, or use gps. the team he has not yet determined whether the apps do everything they say they do, but do think you can do many of the features yourself, if you're organise enough. but most want to use their phones hassle—free, so the apps help with the underlying management. but there are other things that you should do if you want your battery to have a long life.

if you plug your phone and when you go to bed, and it's charged after a couple of hours, that time at 100% charge, overnight, will significantly accelerate the degradation of the battery. even better for your phone battery's life, max says, is to keep your phone charged between 20 and 80% at all times. so remember, that's 20—80. thank you kat. but wouldn't it be nice to get to that 80% much faster? cue a very different battery technology, that can be charged really quickly. see, these things can deliver a lot of power very quickly. and so they would be much more useful for something that has to do a lot all at once. something like this. instead of of the electrochemical charging in normal batteries, this charges by electrostatic means. it is called a super capacitor. no chemical reaction means you can charge very quickly.

this drill battery, for example, goes from zero to full in 12 seconds. you can zap and go — which sounds a pretty good name for a company, if you ask me. we use carbon nano materials, which are extremely fine particles at the nano level, and a large surface area is greeted inside one of these pouches, that attracts energy very quickly. the more surface, the more energy you can attract. the downside of super capacitors is that they can't store as much as lithium ion, so you wouldn't want one in your phone. they are best suited for things that need quick charging and big short bursts of power, like tools and toys, such as the scooter. now, the lead acid batteries in a normal electric scooter, like those ones, will give you about half an hour's ride time, but they'll take six hours to charge. this battery gives you six minutes of charge, but only takes six minutes to charge. and the next generation will give you 12 minutes of ride time, but still only take six minutes to charge. but with that sort of ride—time,

it's unlikely that your electric car will run on this technology alone. we are aiming to the automotive sector, possibly as a hybrid combination with lithium. so we do the fast charge bit, and the lithium does the long—distance pet. it'll take the charge at the road—side, and we will transfer from zap and go cells to lithium, the power that we are harvesting quickly, during the journey. to that end, zapgo is leading to charge airport pods like those at heathrow. however, my six minutes the right time are up, so for the moment, i have two lives out and go and zip off by car. back in texas, the father of the lithium ion battery, dr goodenough, shows no signs of slowing down. he's working on a new type of battery, with a surprising chemical make—up — an all—glass solid—state battery. a lady by the name of helena braga brought to me a glass

which was a remarkable material. i think we've come up with a cell which will really do the trick. together with his colleague, dr braga, goodenough claims the new, non—flammable battery will last longer and recharge quicker. it's a very competitive field. and i — i'm am a competitor. so i'm hoping that the new glass that we've done will enable us to go from liquid electrolyte to a solid electrolyte. it will make things safe as well as cheap. lengthening the life—span of batteries is obviously one of the main aims of researchers worldwide, which could be why a team at bristol university say they've developed a new type that could last thousands of years. they've created a man—made diamond that, when pressed

inside a radioactive field, generates a small amount of current. whilst the radiation it gives off is less than a banana, there are no moving parts it involved, and no maintenance required — just direct electricity generation. as well as making use of nuclear waste, their invention could theoretically power devices in places that people can't go. but whilst this could be years away, something hoping to charge onto shelves sooner is the prieto battery. the battery has a different architecture to the standard lithium ion battery. it has a 3—d spongelike material which is covered with a cathode slurry. it's non—toxic, explosion—proof, and promises to store more power. my ultimate dream was to make a really outstanding battery that would ideally allow device designers to be be more ambitious, but also solve problems in terms of renewable energy, being able to store intermittent types of energy, like solar and wind. there are other concepts out there,

too, such as microbialfuel cells, that use anything from saliva to urine materials to drive electricity production. but at the end of the day, the batteries we're so passionate about using still rely on finite raw materials taken from mother nature, and not enough are considered valuable enough to be recycled. which is why it wmg is working to extend its car batteries, but also work out a system to give you a happy retirement, too. until then, i guess the best we can do is try and make sure the fuel that we use does not have a lasting impact on our environment. well, that's it from the dinorwig power station in wales. what a pleasure it has been to visit such an unusual place. don't forget we live on facebook and twitter. feel free to get in touch any time — that is if you have enough battery. see you.

wind and sunshine and rain. we will see heavier rain. strengthened winds. already cold in scotland. a chilly start for the great scottish run in glasgow. expect rain. it will be quite heavy. we will find rain going from east to west. extending into scotland. the wettest weather in scotland. the best sunshine in the afternoon.

it will be windy. quite a muggy feel in england and wales. a lot of cloud. 18, possible 19, degrees. rain at times. the nfl is on bbc two. the rain clears away during the evening. warm and tropical rain swept through. then colder. a north—westerly wind. no impact from ex—hurricane maria. in the rush—hour, there will be some issues. strong winds. 60km/h in scotland. that will combine with quite a few showers, some heavy to begin with. it could be dry in the south—east of england. temperatures are lower.

given the strength of the wind, north—westerly, it will feel chilly. this rain from ex—hurricane maria should not amount to much. grazing the southernmost part of england. gone by tuesday. a north—westerly follow. not as windy on tuesday. not as many showers. quite chilly. 13-14. high pressure trying to move in around the middle part of the week. not much of an impact. squashed by low pressure bringing wind and rain to the north—west. this is bbc news. i'm tom donkin. our top stories: queues start to form outside polling stations ahead of the catalonian independence referendum banned by the spanish government. but the spanish government says

the vote can't go ahead and deploys thousand of police officers to stop it. horrific stories emerge of sexual violence and brutality against rohingya women and children who've fled the military crackdown in myanmar. dozens of french football fans are injured after a security barrier collapsed during a game in the northern city of amiens. hello