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Event summary: “45% RES by 2030: EU’s latest investment challenge to DSOs”

July 5, 2022 by Sara Stefanini

Sara Stefanini provides a written summary of our panel discussion held on Thursday June 30th 2022. It’s a full summary of the 90 minute discussion (including audience questions), but it begins conveniently with a summary of the highlights. Investment in and the modernisation of the electricity distribution grid is one the biggest challenges the EU has to overcome in the next decade. It’s a €400bn investment challenge by 2050 says Eurelectric, an … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids Tagged With: Automation, buildings, Digitalisation, DSO, EU, EVs, flexibility, grids, industry, innovation, investment, markets, modernisation, smartgrids, SmartMeters, solar, transport, TSO, wind

Event Summary: “CHINA: Carbon Neutral by 2060 – Innovation”

June 7, 2022 by Sara Stefanini

Here are the highlights of our 2-day 4-session workshop “CHINA: Carbon Neutral by 2060 - Innovation”, compiled by Sara Stefanini. It’s a quick and efficient way for readers to see the main points made by our expert panellists. Held at the end of May, it was the fourth of our EU-China workshops since the first was held in November 2020, produced for the EU China Energy Cooperation Platform (ECECP). As always, leading speakers from the EU, major … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Innovations Tagged With: AirLiquide, batteries, CCS, CCUS, CDR, China, Danfoss, EU, event, EVs, Flow, grids, hydrogen, innovation, Novozymes, renewables, Scania, SchneiderElectric, Shell, smartgrids, solar, storage, TotalEnergies, wind

Distributed Energy Resources and Smart Grids: an opportunity or a distraction?

November 23, 2021 by Doyob Kim and Alyssa Fischer

Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are poorly understood by the utilities, explain Doyob Kim and Alyssa Fischer at the IEA. Part of the problem is that new innovations and solutions are coming fast, and policy-makers aren’t creating the incentives and frameworks to make them an imperative. But, done right, the successful integration of DERs into the grid will accelerate electrification, address grid stability, and reduce spending on expensive … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids, Smartgrids Tagged With: batteries, DERs, Digitalisation, electrification, EVs, grids, infrastructure, rooftop, smartgrids, solar, stability, VPPs

Improving grid response to support climate targets and increased renewables [Energy Post event video]

March 10, 2021 by Arasan Aruliah

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...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids Tagged With: AI, demand, Digitalisation, ENTSOE, EU, grids, Intermittency, renewables, response, smartgrids

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

September 25, 2020 by Harry Kretchmer

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...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids, Smartgrids Tagged With: DistrictHeating, electricity, eon, grids, HeatPumps, prosumers, renewables, rooftopsolar, smartgrids, storage, Sweden

Virtual blockchain for prosumers replicates a live utility-scale grid

May 29, 2020 by Wayne Hicks

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...]

Filed Under: Blockchain, Energy, Grids Tagged With: blockchain, efficiency, electricity, EVs, grids, prosumers, rooftopsolar, smartgrids, storage

Negative electricity prices: lockdown’s demand slump exposes inflexibility of German power

May 18, 2020 by Sören Amelang

The lockdown has unexpectedly allowed us to model certain aspects of the energy sector’s 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...]

Filed Under: Energy, Renewables Tagged With: coal, cycling, electricity, Germany, grids, power, smartgrids, solar, storage, Transmission, wind

Beyond pilots: scaling up energy innovation in cities

April 14, 2020 by Bax Company

Our current electricity grid was built hundreds of years ago, when power generation was centralised and our energy needs were far simpler. Electricity was distributed from large stable power plants to the consumers through a unidirectional flow that was easily predictable and did not require complex control. But over the last decades, cities have been going through a substantial change, seeing an exponential increase of their energy needs which … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Community, EU Policy, Innovations, Platform, Smartgrids Tagged With: climate change, ERDF, low-carbon, smart grids, smartcities, smartgrids

Multi-energy “island” Microgrids can increase grid resilience

March 11, 2020 by Xi Zhang

As the number of different technologies producing power and providing storage increases, the grid is getting complicated. The best way to make it resilient against outages is therefore changing. The traditional way is to shut down the failing plant, leaving the rest of the grid to cope as best as it can with the change in voltage and frequency. Xi Zhang at the Energy Futures Lab, Imperial College, describes the research looking at multi-energy … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids Tagged With: batteries, buildings, curtailment, electricity, EVs, grids, HVAC, Microgrids, smartgrids, storage

CCUS, nuclear, industrial heat, hydrogen, smart grids: “large unit” innovation needs more support

January 9, 2020 by Simon Bennett

How do we accelerate innovation across all technologies? Simon Bennett at the IEA breaks down the task into “small unit” and “large unit” challenges. The first is easier and moves faster. Thanks to their small size and unit cost, heat pumps, EVs and solar panels benefit from mass production, mass deployment (100,000 to 100m units/year globally) and large customer markets with fierce competition. They can also easily leverage other fast-evolving … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids, Hydrogen, Nuclear, Policies Tagged With: CCUS, EVs, HeatPumps, hydrogen, IndustrialHeat, investment, Nuclear, policy, smartgrids, solar

Non-Wires Alternatives for grid expansion: what the U.S. can teach Europe

October 8, 2019 by Karoline Steinbacher and Tim Stanton

Grid expansion usually means more power stations and wires. Far from simple, and very expensive. Non-Wires Alternatives (NWA) solve the problem differently by reducing net demand. Modern methods of energy efficiency, demand response, storage, and distributed generation are coordinated and used instead, under the banner of Distributed Energy Resources (DER). Crucially, it can cast utility firms in the role of market makers, not just generators and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Grids, Networks, Smartgrids Tagged With: California, Distributed_Energy_Resources, efficiency, electricity, Energy_Cloud, grids, Netherlands. Germany, New_York, Non-Wires_Alternatives, smartgrids, storage, UK

Grid balancing: Electric Cars are a lot like water heaters, so relax

September 16, 2019 by Jim Lazar

Electric water heaters consume as much power as electric cars, drawing on the grid in much the same way: everyone’s doing it at roughly the same time of day. The U.S. already has 60m such heaters and manages to balance the grid with no problem. So adding tens of millions of electric cars should be very manageable even without direct control of when the cars charge, says Jim Lazar at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP). It only takes two to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy, Transport and energy Tagged With: charging, ChevyBolt, EV, gridbalancing, grids, markets, NissanLeaf, pricing, smartgrids, Tesla3, transport

Developing world urbanisation: a great opportunity for smartgrids, buildings efficiency

July 8, 2019 by Robert Ichord

Rapid urbanisation in the developing world means millions of new buildings are going up. Now is the time to make sure they are energy efficient from the start, avoiding the major “rich world” headache of retrofitting. Given most of the developing world exists in hotter climates, cooling – unchecked - could account for as much as 40% of final electricity demand in some countries by 2050. To keep a cap on that, efficient buildings and air … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Buildings, Energy, Grids, HVAC Tagged With: buildings, China, Con Edison, cooling, electricity, emissions, grids, HVAC, India, smartgrids, Southern California Edison

Is Blockchain a disruptor? Or the solution to an already-disrupted energy sector

May 16, 2019 by Peter Bronski

The global energy sector is already facing multiple, concurrent disruptions that are fundamentally transforming electricity markets around the world: digitalisation, decarbonisation, decentralisation, and electric mobility. It’s creating residential prosumers, with their solar panels, electric vehicles, smart thermostats (the list is growing) and a predicted global installed distributed energy resources (DERs) capacity of 530 GW by 2026, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blockchain, Energy Tagged With: blockchain, decarbonisation, decentralisation, DERs, Digitalisation, electricity, EVs, prosumers, smartgrids

U.S. buildings electrification hindered by “new” renovation policies that are already out of date

March 26, 2019 by Jessica Shipley and Donna Brutkoski

U.S. buildings renovation policies are not keeping up with technological progress and therefore risk slowing down electrification and the uptake of cleaner fuels, say Jessica Shipley and Donna Brutkoski of the think tank Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP). For example, there are policies and incentives that favour the installation of more energy efficient appliances, but ignore whether the appliance is greener. Put simply, policies need to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Buildings, Energy Tagged With: appliances, buildings, electrification, HVAC, policies, regulation, smartgrids, Technology

Most read this week

  • ‘Green Deal Industrial Plan’ explainer: 40%+ of the top low-carbon technologies must be made in the EU by 2030 by Daisy Dunne | posted on March 24, 2023
  • What is the future of Woody Biomass in the EU energy mix? by Simon Göss | posted on March 21, 2023
  • Blending Hydrogen into the gas network: the challenges of pipeline fractures, faster flow rate + more by NREL | posted on March 10, 2023
  • 10 Carbon Capture methods compared: costs, scalability, permanence, cleanness by Ella Adlen | posted on November 11, 2019
  • Hydrogen’s innovation pipeline: signals strong ahead of World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam, May 9-11, 2023 by Ian Shine | posted on March 21, 2023
  • Should U.S. DOE risk funding methane-based Hydrogen production when CCS is still not proven? by Suzanne Mattei | posted on March 27, 2023
  • Understanding the new EU ETS (Part 2): Buildings, Road Transport, Fuels. And how the revenues will be spent by Simon Göss | posted on February 6, 2023
  • Silicon Valley Bank failed. Don’t blame the Climate Tech it backed by Rushad Nanavatty | posted on March 23, 2023
  • Buildings “Energy Performance Certificates”: piloting new tools to ramp up renovations by Patricia Contreras Tejada | posted on March 20, 2023
  • What’s best for Hydrogen transport: ammonia, liquid hydrogen, LOHC or pipelines? by Herib Blanco | posted on May 5, 2022
  • The 10 big problems with simply replacing fossil cars with electric by Schalk Cloete | posted on December 6, 2021
  • Gravity Batteries: any nation can do it at scale using rocks by Simon Read | posted on July 27, 2022
  • Micro-nuclear reactors: up to 20MW, portable, safer by Christina Nunez | posted on April 22, 2021
  • EU Energy Outlook to 2060: how will power prices and revenues develop for wind, solar, gas, hydrogen + more by Alex Schmitt | posted on December 6, 2022
  • Hydrogen production in 2050: how much water will 74EJ need? by Herib Blanco | posted on July 22, 2021
  • Extract CO2 from our air, use it to create synthetic fuels by James Conca | posted on October 11, 2019
  • U.S. IRA: what can Europe do to stop its firms relocating to America? by Charles Wessner | posted on March 17, 2023
  • New U.S. study: damage per ton of CO2 costs $185, not the official $51 by Maximilian Auffhammer | posted on October 7, 2022
  • EU ETS and CBAM: what the big update to emissions trading rules means for Europe’s key sectors by Simon Göss | posted on January 16, 2023
  • Critical Minerals: will there be enough to meet the 2050 net-zero emissions target? by Lilly Yejin Lee | posted on March 14, 2023

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      Recent Posts

      What is the future of Woody Biomass in the EU energy mix?

      Geothermal’s full potential: 24/7 power everywhere, storage, environmental mineral extraction

      The problem with CO2e: we need separate emissions data for each climate pollutant (methane, soot, etc.)

      Should U.S. DOE risk funding methane-based Hydrogen production when CCS is still not proven?

      ‘Green Deal Industrial Plan’ explainer: 40%+ of the top low-carbon technologies must be made in the EU by 2030

      Silicon Valley Bank failed. Don’t blame the Climate Tech it backed

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