Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

theboylard

Saw this referenced on some page last week, just dug it out:

Solid State Battery, 3 x energy density of li-ion batteries, with quicker charging and longer overall life.

Oh yeah, he was the co-inventor of Lithium-Ion batteries and he's 94!!

gefnew

Hi all
how smart meters help with your energy bills.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39169313
or not as is the case of sse.
regards
gefnew

Martyn1981

Storage is still small, but momentum is building nicely.

U.S. energy storage MWhs double in 2016

But even with these challenges, GTM Research says that energy storage is catching on, including with utilities. “We are seeing a growing number of distribution utilities look into storage in their planning activities,” GTM Research’s Manghani told pv magazine.

And overall, the future looks bright over the longer term. GTM Research forecasts that the energy storage market will grow more than 20-fold to 7.3 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2022, and despite falling prices for the value of the market to still rise more than 10-fold to over $3.3 billion.

Martyn1981

Shock News! Even the French don't like nuclear power, I wasn't expecting that.

And 60% of UK, France, Germany and Norway think that the impacts of AGW have already arrived. Not expecting that either.

And 70% to 87% of people supported subsidies for renewables. Hat trick (well actually I suspected that one, but couldn't expect it).

Climate change impacts are already hitting us, say Europeans

The citizens of four major European countries think the impacts of climate change such as severe floods and storms are already affecting them, according to a major new polling study.

The research dispels the idea that global warming is widely seen as a future problem, and also shows strong support for action to tackle global warming, including subsidies for clean energy and big financial penalties for nations that refuse to be part of the international climate deal signed in Paris in 2015 – as US president Donald Trump has threatened. There was also strong support for giving financial aid to developing nations to cope with the impacts of climate change.

Renewable energy was viewed very positively in all nations, but fracking had little support, with just 20% of people seeing it positively in the UK, 15% in Germany and 9% in France. Nuclear power was also unpopular: only 23% of those in France, where it supplies the vast majority of electricity, have a favourable opinion.

Overwhelming majorities of people in the UK, Germany, France and Norway said climate change was at least partly caused by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. But only a third thought the vast majority of scientists agreed with this, despite about 97% of climate scientists doing so.

“It is encouraging to see that most people in this very large study recognise that climate change is happening, and that support for the need to tackle it remains high amongst the people we surveyed,” said Prof Nick Pidgeon at Cardiff University, who led the international project.

Subsidising renewable energy with public money was popular, with 70% support in the UK and Germany, 75% in France, and 87% in Norway. Increasing taxes on fossil fuels was supported in oil- and gas-rich Norway, but opposed two to one in France and Germany. In the UK, people were evenly split over tax hikes for fossil fuels.

Martyn1981

Green light for Welsh storage

The UK government has given the green light to Snowdonia Pumped Hydro’s 99.9MW Glyn Rhonwy scheme near Llanberis in North Wales.
The company said construction could start as early as 2018 supporting hundreds of jobs and creating up to 30 full-time positions once the facility is operational.

Martyn1981

Elon Musk v's Australian Government - Get your tickets here!

Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state’s energy woes within 100 days – or he’ll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free.

On Thursday, Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, told the AFR the company could install the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage that would be required to prevent the power shortages that have been causing price spikes and blackouts in the state.

Thanks to stepped-up production out of Tesla’s new Gigafactory in Nevada, he said it could be achieved within 100 days.

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Elon Musk v's Australian Government - Get your tickets here!

Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free

Do Tesla have more batteries than buyers? He mentioned a price per pack of $250 per kwh of storage capacity (for 100mwh+), assuming that is usd, how does it compare to generation costs given the typical lifetime usage cycles of storage?

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Do Tesla have more batteries than buyers? He mentioned a price per pack of $250 per kwh of storage capacity (for 100mwh+), assuming that is usd, how does it compare to generation costs given the typical lifetime usage cycles of storage?

I don't know what the warranty is on the PowerPack. The older smaller model (100kWh I think) was 5,000 cycles. The new ones are 210kWh, and presumably 5,000 cycles.

So at a minimum you could divide the cost by 5,000, $250/5,000 = 5c/kWh of storage, or $50/MWh. Hopefully they'll last longer, so the cost will be less.

This EOS model is $32/MWh if bought in 40MWh+.

Martyn1981

Northvolt plans Europe’s answer to the Gigafactory

The Stockholm-based company’s website reveals plans for what will be Europe’s largest battery factory, standing at more than 32GWh divided into four blocks of 8GWh capacity and needing more than €4 billion investment.

Martyn1981

Good news:

CO2 emissions stay same for third year in row – despite global economy growing

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy have not increased for three years in a row even as the global economy grew, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

Global emissions from the energy sector were 32.1bn tonnes in 2016, the same as the previous two years, while the economy grew 3.1%, the organisation said.

Bad news, the proverbial supertanker is still going in the wrong direction, and too fast, but we've stopped accelerating.

The pause in emissions growth was welcomed by the IEA, but it warned it was not enough to meet globally-agreed targets to limit temperature rises to below 2C above pre-industrial levels – considered to be the threshold for dangerous climate change.