Laura Sandys at Energy Systems Catapult says policy makers today are too focussed on rewarding clean energy generation, in other words supplying as much energy as possible. With that comes a focus on reducing the cost of the energy generated. But how about reducing demand? Demand optimisation should be equally rewarded: efficiency, non-generation demand management (even at the household level: think EVs and heat pumps), and any assets that … [Read more...]
Financial incentives for Grid Modernisation: the problem with guaranteed returns on investment
Grid modernisation is going to be very expensive. What’s the best way to pay for it? The financial incentives governments put in place now will determine what investments get made, how cost-effectively it’s done, and who ultimately pays. Meredith Fowlie at UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas explains that a common method is for a government to give some sort of guaranteed return on investment for the new asset. But it’s far from ideal. … [Read more...]
Germany: will the end of feed-in tariffs mean the end of citizens-as-energy-producers
Germany’s feed-in tariffs ran for 20 years. The guaranteed electricity price and connection to the grid incentivised ordinary citizens and communities to invest in smaller scale solar, biomass and wind generation for their homes and local areas. But that guaranteed price is now too expensive, and so the tariffs are ending and lowest-bid auctions are taking over. It’s the bigger players who are winning those auctions, and some of the existing … [Read more...]
How Clean Energy Standards have driven clean electrification in the U.S.
John Rogers at the Union of Concerned Scientists presents evidence from the U.S. of the effectiveness of using standards to drive clean electrification. In principle it’s simple: set a legal requirement for the percentage of clean electricity. How it’s done depends on the efforts of all the actors affected. 30 states are using different versions of Clean Energy Standards (CES) – the first began in 1983 and more than half of them began before 2004 … [Read more...]
Public opposition and grid integration costs: the two limiting factors for Wind?
Are we heading for an over-reliance on wind? With wind generation costs continuing to drop dramatically, Schalk Cloete takes a data-driven look at the obstacles wind will face as its contribution to the global energy mix (a little over 2% today) keeps rising. In the main, it is grid integration and public opposition to very visible turbines – and they are related. Putting turbines out of sight and offshore will increase transmission costs. And … [Read more...]
California: Designing electricity rates that are fair and encourage EV and Heat Pump take-up
Electricity prices in California are not fair and not good for incentivising electrification, says James Sallee at the Energy Institute at Haas, because of the way people are being billed. There is no doubt that electrification (grid upgrades, etc.) and climate mitigation (including controlling California’s wildfires caused by power cable failures) must add to the cost of transition. But Californians can now find themselves paying up to twice the … [Read more...]
Improving grid response to support climate targets and increased renewables [Energy Post event video]
We present our video of the online discussion from February 24, 2021 on smartgrid response. Digital, automated, data-driven smart response systems can play a key role in grid security and stability going forward. This makes asset monitoring and controllability - underpinned by the Smart Grid Indicator which is now part of the EU Electricity Directive (Article 59) - a vital link in the chain. Taking part were Vera Silva, COT, General Electric and … [Read more...]
New Berkeley Lab Report Documents Trends in System Impacts, Reliability and Market Value of Solar in the United States
By Andrew Mills and Joachim Seel, Berkeley Lab As solar generation increases, it is expected to progressively impact the bulk power system—changing prices for energy and other grid services. Solar generation is driven by sunshine and thus often highly correlated over the course of a day within a region. Without the deployment of storage or an increase in price-responsive load, growth in solar capacity is … [Read more...]
A marketplace for energy data will enable Europe’s grid expansion
The growth of the decentralisation of energy generation and storage combined with the digitalisation of the metrics of supply and demand is pointing towards a marketplace for energy data, explain Veronika Spurná and Helena Uhde at the EU-China Energy Cooperation Platform. Such a marketplace will monetise the data itself, in recognition of its vital role in enabling the intelligent distribution of energy and investment. There will also be a place … [Read more...]
Policy-makers still undervalue Energy Efficiency as a grid resource
Supply-side solutions to grid stability are few in number, and expensive. More baseload generation, electricity networks, capacity markets that pay power plants all year round to be available for dispatch during a few peak hours. Demand-side solutions are usually smaller, and multitudinous: building fabric improvements, equipment upgrades, customer behaviour interventions, and more. So, for grid stability, the principle of “Efficiency First” - … [Read more...]
We’re making much more progress decarbonising Electricity than Transport. Why?
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?
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
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
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 LĂłpez 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
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...]
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