54% of Swedenâs power already comes from renewables â 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. âDistrict Heatingâ plants are today using excess heat to warm over 75% of Swedish homes. Residential generation is happening too, creating âprosumersâ who both produce and consume. In Ludivika, 1970s flats have been retrofitted with … [Read more...]
No more âoffsettingâ: Google commits to 24/7 locally sourced carbon-free electricity by 2030
By âoffsettingâ 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 Googleâs actual power still comes from fossil fuels. Googleâs 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 Australiaâs AGL Energy is starting … [Read more...]
The new era of electricity needs modern ways to charge customers
Todayâs technologies â wind, solar, storage - have widely differing cost and operating characteristics to fossil fuels. So the way customers are made to cover those costs â assigning different rates to different customer classes â should change. Jim Lazar and Mark LeBel at RAP explain why and how, referencing their comprehensive manual âElectric Cost Allocation for a New Eraâ. They describe how the full range of technologies now establishing … [Read more...]
Floating Solar: can it help ASEAN reverse coalâs continued rise?
Floating solar farms may be gaining traction in Asia. Capacity is still small: by 2019 the big players Japan and China had a combined floating photovoltaic (FPV) installed capacity of 1.3GW. But the ASEAN countries that had virtually nothing before 2019 now have over 51MW and have planned in another 858MW. A report by Sara Jane Ahmed and Elrika Hamdi at IEEFA explains why FPV is looking better and cheaper at balancing out peaks and troughs than … [Read more...]
Three U.S. utilities to skip the gas âbridgeâ, move straight from coal to renewables
At the end of June, utilities in three U.S. states declared they are closing down coal plants and moving straight to renewables, without building new gas plants as a âbridgeâ fuel. For example, to replace lost coal capacity, Tucson Electric Power in Arizona will add 2,457MW of new wind and solar generation, backed up with 1,400MW of battery storage. Similar commitments are being made by other utilities in Colorado and Florida. New Mexico is … [Read more...]
Batteriesâ next challenges: fast charging, vehicle-to-grid, long duration, second life
Li-ion battery storage costs continue to fall dramatically. But for batteries to fulfil their potential, particularly for grid storage, developers need to focus on fast charging, electric vehicle-to-grid capability, long duration storage and second-life batteries, explains Madeline Tyson at Rocky Mountain Institute. She runs through the different types of Li-ion batteries, their strengths and weaknesses, how they can be harnessed to address these … [Read more...]
UK heating plan still means 120 gas boilers installed for every low-carbon system
Though the UK is a leader in grid electrification it is a poor performer when it comes to the electrification of heating. In May the UK government proposed a clean heat policy to support the switch away from gas heating for 12,500 homes a year for two years. Jan Rosenow and Samuel Thomas at RAP say that looks like business as usual: for every one new low-carbon heating system, more than 120 gas boilers will be installed as normal. In 2019, 1.7m … [Read more...]
2019âs grid storage additions fell for the first time since 2013. Why?
Globally, new installations of grid storage fell year-on-year in 2019 for the first time since 2013. This IEA summary of the landscape is taken from its latest series of Tracking Clean Energy Progress reports. The IEAâs recommendations reflect the fact that grid storage is new and complex, needing changes to existing regulations and market rules that are unviable in the age of transition. The policy goal is to monetise the value of storage in … [Read more...]
Sales down, but cash preserved too: Regulators take note when setting new Utility rates
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
Wayne Hicks at NREL describes research thatâs created a virtual blockchain âprosumerâ 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...]
Grid-scale Solar PV storage can use re-purposed old EV batteries
Once an EV battery has declined to 80% of its original capacity it is considered too weak for continued vehicle use. Recycling the battery â at that point - to make another one is expensive. MITâs David Chandler describes how researchers there have run experiments and models to show that old EV batteries can instead be packed together and used as backup storage for grid-scale solar PV installations. Itâs cheaper than building new Li-ion battery … [Read more...]
Negative electricity prices: lockdown’s demand slump exposes inflexibility of German power
The lockdown has unexpectedly allowed us to model certain aspects of the energy sectorâs possible future. One is the oversupply of variable renewables into the grid. In Germany, a slump in demand plus an exceptionally sunny and windy few months sent wholesale electricity prices negative and to record lows. Fossil generators calculated that paying buyers to take electricity was cheaper than performing a shut-down re-start sequence, so they did … [Read more...]
Clean Energy threatened by lockdown of critical minerals supply
Clean energy technologies depend on the reliable and growing supply of critical minerals and metals, far more so than the old fossil fuel world. An EV uses five times the quantity needed by a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires eight times that of a gas-fired plant of the same capacity. Hence, electric transport and grid storage are now the largest consumers of lithium and cobalt. Examples of rising consumption abound for other … [Read more...]
Latest data shows lifetime emissions of EVs lower than petrol, diesel
Critics of the rapid roll out of electric vehicles correctly say that their factory door emissions (i.e. CO2 emitted during manufacture) are higher than those for standard petrol and diesel cars. Then you have to add the emissions of the local grid (how renewable is it?!) thatâs charging your EV. But the numbers behind those calculations are always changing. Eoin Bannon at Transport and Environment describes the findings of their new tool that … [Read more...]
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