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Energy Post

The best thinkers on energy

We’re making much more progress decarbonising Electricity than Transport. Why?

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In the OECD, since 2000, electricity sector emissions have fallen by 8% while transport emissions have actually increased by 5%. The best performers like the UK recorded drops in both: 40% and 6% respectively. In the U.S. it’s 25% and 0%. Catherine Wolfram at the Haas School of Business asks why transport is still going in the wrong direction, given the power sector’s progress. She posits three theories. Rich nations are outsourcing … [Read more...]

What effect will blending Hydrogen into the Natural Gas network have?

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What are the technical barriers to blending hydrogen into the natural gas network? How well will the pipelines cope? How will the blend affect equipment and appliances? What are the costs and environmental impacts? The answers to these key questions are being sought by a collaboration of laboratories, industry and academia led by NREL, called HyBlend. The long-term impact of hydrogen on materials and equipment is still not understood. The effect … [Read more...]

The benefits of Peer-To-Peer Electricity Trading for communities and grid expansion

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The adoption of peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading will turn individual consumers from passive to active managers of their networks. Such a marketplace can relieve constraints on the growing system and offer an alternative to costly grid reinforcements. Arina Anisie and Francisco Boshell at IRENA run through the benefits, including investment costs, bills, resilience, congestion, mini-grids, energy access, and more. They note that very few … [Read more...]

Rooftop Solar: economies of scale can challenge the centralised grid

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One of our recent articles explained how rooftop solar PV is more expensive that a centralised supply, and that the transmission and distribution cost savings of the rooftop system, on their own, do not make up for this cost difference. Here, Javier López Prol at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, responds to those challenges. First, the economies of scale of distributed rooftop solar are yet to be realised. … [Read more...]

ELCC: how to measure grid stability as renewables are added

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We cannot just swap 24/7 fossil fuel power plants for intermittent renewables. To prevent electricity shortfalls the capacity of a solar or wind plant must exceed that of the fossil fuel plant it replaces. But by how much? That’s the question that the Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC) metric is designed to answer. It’s not a new concept, but is now becoming very important. Mark Specht at the Union of Concerned Scientists explains the … [Read more...]

Why promote Rooftop Solar when the Grid is so much cheaper?

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Is rooftop solar in the U.S. getting more support than it deserves? One main argument from its advocates is that it will cut grid transmission and distribution costs that total hundreds of millions. Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas crunches some numbers to try to uncover the true “avoided costs”. He shows that any savings won’t come even close to making up for the higher cost of rooftop electricity. It’s no match for the grid’s … [Read more...]

Sweden’s new “prosumers”: electricity generation at the city, village and residential level

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54% of Sweden’s power already comes from renewables – the target is 100% by 2040 - and more and more is being generated locally on a small distributed scale, says Harry Kretchmer writing for the World Economic Forum. ‘District Heating’ plants are today using excess heat to warm over 75% of Swedish homes. Residential generation is happening too, creating “prosumers” who both produce and consume. In Ludivika, 1970s flats have been retrofitted with … [Read more...]

No more “offsetting”: Google commits to 24/7 locally sourced carbon-free electricity by 2030

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By “offsetting” fossil electricity consumed at one data centre through buying green power from somewhere else, Google has been 100% renewable since 2017. But offsetting always has its flaws. In this case, 40% of Google’s actual power still comes from fossil fuels. Google’s new plan, to be 100% green 24/7 straight off the local grid, is designed to solve that. It will also send market signals to increase clean capacity locally, not just where you … [Read more...]

Grid scale Battery costs are declining faster than Wind and Solar

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Gas as a transition fuel for grids may be around for a lot less time than we thought. We already know that large batteries, if they are cheap enough, can replace gas plants to provide peaking power to grids reliant on intermittent wind and solar. Bruce Robertson at IEEFA says the numbers are showing battery costs declining even more rapidly than wind and solar. Precisely because of that increased competitiveness Australia’s AGL Energy is starting … [Read more...]

The new era of electricity needs modern ways to charge customers

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Today’s technologies – wind, solar, storage - have widely differing cost and operating characteristics to fossil fuels. So the way customers are made to cover those costs – assigning different rates to different customer classes – should change. Jim Lazar and Mark LeBel at RAP explain why and how, referencing their comprehensive manual “Electric Cost Allocation for a New Era”. They describe how the full range of technologies now establishing … [Read more...]

Sales down, but cash preserved too: Regulators take note when setting new Utility rates

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Utilities are suffering financial impacts because of the current pandemic, and regulators will be asked to address them when they set new electricity rates. The intention will be to help the utilities recover while keeping bills affordable for their customers. But not all the impacts on the utilities are bad news, explains Jim Lazar at RAP looking at the U.S. Though revenues have dropped and some labour costs risen, there is a list of things that … [Read more...]

Virtual blockchain for prosumers replicates a live utility-scale grid

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Wayne Hicks at NREL describes research that’s created a virtual blockchain “prosumer” accounting system that replicates a live utility-scale grid. The goal of a real-world application is to allow countless individual households with their own electricity storage and generation to buy and sell power to each other; a truly revolutionary pathway. Clearly, it will require a system that securely accounts for vast amounts of transactions - a big enough … [Read more...]

Energy Post panel discussion – Cross-Border Capacity [VIDEO]

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Whilst renewable generation continues to grow, cross-border capacity fails to keep up. On May 19, 2020, Energy Post hosted a unique panel qualified to discuss the issue and shed some light on how we got here and what the options might be going forward. The discussion was moderated by Erik Rakhou - alternate member of the ACER board of appeal and consultant at Baringa. Representing the European Commission was Florian Ermacora and for independent, … [Read more...]

DSOs can use digitalisation to empower all grid stakeholders

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Distribution System Operators (DSOs) are in charge of operating, maintaining and developing the distribution network to ensure that electricity is delivered to end-users in a secure, reliable and efficient manner. Harry Taylor, Chris Collins and Erik Rakhou at Baringa Partners spell out what DSOs need to do to take full advantage of digitalisation technologies and processes to make them fit for a rapidly transforming energy system. A growing … [Read more...]

Regulatory challenges to foster cross-border trade in electricity systems with increasing shares of renewables

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The share of renewable generation in Europe’s power system is rising fast, but interconnection is not keeping up. Join us on May 19, 2020 to discuss this and related issues. More wind and solar makes the supply of electricity much more dependent on the weather. Nobody wants to build capacity only to switch it off when there’s too much heading onto the local grid. This could put an extra strain on delivering the Green Deal. One solution is to … [Read more...]