Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are the next new innovation that can change the landscape of the global energy transition in our favour, cheaply and fast, explain Liza Martin and Kevin Brehm at RMI. Essentially, they link and aggregate hundreds of thousands of households and businesses to manage their electrical devices. Their thermostats, EVs, appliances, batteries, and rooftop solar arrays are coordinated to ensure loads, charging and discharging … [Read more...]
Synchronous condensers will stabilize the power grid as the Faroe Islands pivot to 100% green energy
The isolated Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic has an ambitious goal to become the world’s greenest group of islands. That means by 2030, SEV, the islands’ power utility, will be using 100% green electricity from hydropower, solar and wind and potentially tidal streams. As well as being an important climate change initiative, this will bring economic benefits as the Faroes will no longer rely on expensive fossil-fuel imports. However, … [Read more...]
Germany 2021: when fixed feed-in tariffs end, how will renewables fare?
Starting in 2021 many of Germany’s existing “pioneer” wind turbines, solar PV installations and biogas plants – launched with generous price guarantees - will stop receiving fixed feed-in tariffs. That means renewable capacity may be shut down if they can’t find a new business model to run on. The new rules comes at a decisive time for Germany’s energy transition as it tries to increase renewables to meet emissions targets and gradually increase … [Read more...]
Overbuild solar: it’s getting so cheap curtailment won’t matter
Avoiding curtailment made sense when solar generation was extremely expensive: don’t build solar beyond what you can store. However, that means solar must always wait for storage costs to decline and capacity grow. But with solar prices plummeting it can make economic sense to overbuild it, say Richard Perez, University at Albany, and Karl Rabago, Pace University. Oversized solar will deliver more energy in low light and reduce the need for … [Read more...]
Smart Charging: parked EV batteries can save billions in grid balancing
95% of a car’s time is spent parked. It’s why parked and plugged-in EVs could be the battery banks of the future, stabilising grids powered by wind and solar. More than 1bn EVs could be on the road by 2050, their 14 TWh of EV batteries dwarfing the projected 9 TWh of stationary batteries, according to the IRENA report “Innovation Outlook: smart charging for electric vehicles”. Smart charging could therefore save billions of dollars in grid … [Read more...]
The European Battery Alliance is moving up a gear
Europe needs batteries, primarily for clean mobility and grid stabilisation. But EU lithium-ion cell manufacturing is less than 3% of the global share, and mainly for high-end niche markets, not the automotive sector. If Europe doesn’t act fast, catching up with Asia will become impossible, writes Carole Mathieu of the IFRI’s Centre for Energy, reflecting the views of the European Battery Alliance (EBA). It’s a strategic imperative, given the … [Read more...]
Utilities are starting to invest in big batteries instead of building new power plants
There has been a dramatic drop in battery costs in recent years. Jeremiah Johnson and Joseph F. DeCarolis, of North Carolina State University, say if this continues grid-scale batteries could supplant the usual solutions to peak electricity demand: gas power plants and transmission lines. Inevitably, this will depend on the future price of gas, and the changing policy environment. But one thing is for sure: utilities don’t want to invest in peak … [Read more...]
We have a decade to prevent dangerous climate change: these 10 policies can save us
The climate change challenge is not technical nor even economic, but a matter of enacting the right policies, writes Silvio Marcacci, Communications Director at San Francisco-based think tank Energy Innovation. Based on new research, Marcacci outlines the the types of policies that are the most effective. … [Read more...]
The fight over power networks in the EU: will national TSOs become subordinate to regional organisations?
The EU is discussing how far and how fast it can take regional cooperation among Transmission System Operators (TSOs). The European Commission and Parliament want to give entities for regional cooperation more independence and power, while Member States and TSOs want ultimate power to remain at national level. An upcoming conference on 16 October led by ENTSO-E (representing European TSOs) and Coreso (a regional entity) – and supported by Energy … [Read more...]
Huawei’s eLTE-DSA technology ushers in the Age of Wireless Power IoT
PROMOTED CONTENT - Huawei is building the world’s leading wireless power IOT in cooperation with the State Grid of China. Huawei’s eLTE-DSA technology ensures low latency, low power consumption, easy evolution and anti-interference, writes Wei Ke_Tai of the Huawei Enterprise Wireless Marketing Support Department. … [Read more...]
Why we need a blackout
The risk of a cyber-attack that will take down the power system is seriously underestimated, writes financial energy specialist Gerard Reid. To prevent future disaster, we need to build a completely new power system. Reliability is not anymore about the “average minutes of downtime per year”. Courtesy Energy and Carbon blog. … [Read more...]
How the micro-grid solar solution can realize electrification in remote regions
Promoted content - Micro-grids (solar PV and storage) are ideal to achieve rapid electrification in remote areas, but their implementation still faces many obstacles, writes Long Sheng of Huawei. The Chinese company has supported the Ministry of Energy in Cameroon to build a successful micro-grid solution. … [Read more...]
DNV GL’s Energy Transition Outlook shows massive shift of investment from oil and gas into power lines
The global energy transition will lead to a massive expansion of power lines at all voltage levels as well as a steep growth in the number of transformers and substations in the electricity system. This is one of the major new findings of the second edition of the Energy Transition Outlook, the annual flagship publication of global technical consultancy DNV GL. As a result, grid costs will triple, yet this cost explosion is offset by cost … [Read more...]
Interview Ditlev Engel, CEO DNV GL Energy: “We have to rethink the mechanisms of the electricity market”
DNV GL’s new 2018 Energy Transition Outlook projects a massive investment shift from fossil fuels to renewables and grids – and this is based mainly on cost considerations. Yet,  notes Ditlev Engel, CEO of DNV GL Energy, in an interview with Energy Post, this won’t be enough to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. He says policymakers will have to take additional actions. “Doing just a little more won’t be enough.” (See here for main … [Read more...]
Replacing copper with negawatts—how the UK’s RIIO-2 could revolutionise network regulation
Ofgem’s recent framework decision on improving its performance-based regulation scheme, RIIO, indicates that it may be ready to take a much-needed step toward levelling the playing field between supply-side and customer-side resources. However, it is not yet clear what the details will look like. According to Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project, a global group of regulatory experts, Ofgem should put a network regulation scheme in … [Read more...]
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