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...]
Nuclear-Wind hybrid plants for grid stability, Power-to-X and more
How would you use a nuclear-wind hybrid plant and maximise its potential? When intermittent wind’s output falls, nuclear can step in to feed the grid. When it’s not doing that it can use its power to run the production of a wide range of commodities: from biofuels, hydrogen, pumped hydro to wastewater purification, desalination, chemical manufacturing and more – including straightforward thermal power for industry. In collaboration with NREL, the … [Read more...]
Which sectors need Hydrogen, which don’t: Transport, Heating, Electricity, Storage, Industry?
Which sectors are most suited to hydrogen, and which are not? For the answer, six academics from the UK and the Netherlands - Tom Baxter, Ernst Worrell, Hu Li, Petra de Jongh, Stephen Carr, and Valeska Ting – use their areas of expertise to neatly summarise hydrogen’s pros and cons in Road and Rail, Aviation, Heating, Electricity and Energy Storage, and Heavy Industry. Their general message seems clear: hydrogen is still very expensive, so it can … [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 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
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...]
How ready is the switchgear industry to abandon SF₆, the worst greenhouse gas?
Are firms in the switchgear industry - power utilities, industrial sites, and related service and infrastructure sectors - happy to switch from using the gas SF6 and use alternatives that are less harmful to the climate? This is the question Marie-Charlotte Guetlein and Carine Sebi at the Grenoble École de Management asked over 400 switchgear customers to find out what’s needed to make the change. SF6 has 23,500 times the impact of CO2 and an … [Read more...]
Why promote Rooftop Solar when the Grid is so much cheaper?
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...]
Floating Solar on existing Hydro reservoirs: potential for 10,600 TWh/year
The idea is simple. Float solar panels on the reservoirs of hydroelectric dams. The new solar can piggy back on the existing grid connections. They complement each other by being strong when the other is weak: solar for the dry season, hydro for the wet. The hydro can provide pumped storage for the excess solar. Finally, the reservoir is readily available space. A team at the U.S.'s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have calculated the … [Read more...]
Tesla’s BEVs vs. Toyota’s hybrids: the battle for the future of low emission cars
Which car firm will dominate the future? Tesla and its BEVs or Toyota with its hybrids? Schalk Cloete looks at the cost reductions coming down the line. He says that the hybrids have many more improvements on the way, whereas in terms of performance and efficiency the BEVs are already reaching their peak. Though further and considerable progress in battery technology is coming, it will benefit both. For city driving both will rely on battery … [Read more...]
MGA blocks can substitute for coal, preserving plants, grid connectivity and jobs
Rather than dismantle coal plants, why not create a clean fuel that can be used in the same plants, utilising the steam turbines, existing connections to the grid, and preserve jobs at the plant. MGA (miscibility gap alloy) is that fuel, say Erich Kisi and Alexander Post at the University of Newcastle, Australia who are behind the development of these blocks of material, 20cm x 20cm x 16cm, made of blended metals. They are heated up – using … [Read more...]
Sweden’s new “prosumers”: electricity generation at the city, village and residential level
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
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
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
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...]
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