Home » Posts tagged 'energy matters' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: energy matters
The Coober Pedy “hybrid” renewables plant
The Coober Pedy “hybrid” renewables plant The Coober Pedy hybrid wind-solar-diesel plant, a clone of the King Island plant discussed in this recent post, achieved 68% renewables generation in its first year of operation and is expected to achieve around 70% for the rest of its operating life. According to Energy Developments (EnGen), the plant’s […]
Blowout Week 251
Blowout Week 251 We are told that the cost of Li-ion storage batteries is decreasing. Not so with Tesla, which has just increased the price of its 13.5 kWh Powerwall unit plus supporting hardware from $US6,600 ($489/kWh) to $7,800 ($578/kWh). The $100/kWh “holy grail” price considered necessary to support mass deployment of battery storage is […]
An update on the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project
An update on the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project A number of operating small-scale renewables plants provide advance warning of the potential problems involved in transitioning the world to renewable energy, but only two of them – Gorona del Viento in the Canary Islands (GdV) and King Island, Tasmania (KI) – provide grid data […]
The IPCC Special Report – mountain or molehill?
The IPCC Special Report – mountain or molehill? According to a number of media sources the just-released IPCC Special Report confirms that climate change is about to fry us (We need massive changes to avoid climate hell says Wired Magazine). In fact it adds nothing of significance to what the IPCC concluded in its 2014 […]
Are people really concerned about climate change? What the polls tell us
Are people really concerned about climate change? What the polls tell us A review of recent public opinion polls reveals that the public, when asked only about climate change, will agree overall that it’s a serious problem that demands action. When asked to rank climate change against other concerns, however, it comes well down the […]
El Hierro third quarter 2018 performance update
El Hierro third quarter 2018 performance update In 3Q 2018 Gorona del Viento (GdV) supplied 74.2 % of El Hierro’s electricity (95.4% in July) and 17.1% of its total energy consumption, up from 64.2% % and 14.8% in 2Q 2018. Since project startup in June 2015 GdV has supplied 46.5% of El Hierro’s electricity and […]
California goes carbon negative
California goes carbon negative Last week Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to cut California’s electricity sector emissions , which account for about 16% of the state’s total emissions, to zero by 2045. But an Executive Order he signed on the same day calls for 100% of California’s totalemissions not only to go to zero […]
Who Killed the Small Modular Reactor Programme?
Who Killed the Small Modular Reactor Programme? Posted on September 17, 2018 byGuest post by Andy Dawson. “Who Killed the Small Modular Reactor Program?” is an abridged version of a Global warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) briefing paper. In his Autumn Statement of 2015, the then Chancellor, George Osborne made an announcement that surprised and enthused many; […]
Assembly Bill 100 and a 100% renewable California
Assembly Bill 100 and a 100% renewable California The California legislature just passed Assembly Bill 100 (AB100), which according to the inset calls for “100% clean energy by 2045”. The brief review presented in this post shows that AB100, which targets electricity, not energy, will cut California’s greenhouse gas emissions by only about 16% even […]
Oil Production Vital Statistics September 2018
Oil Production Vital Statistics September 2018 Four months have passed since the last update in May 2018 and it is time to take a fresh look at the global oil market, especially in light of the unique OPEC+Russia+others deal coming to an effective end in July. This led to a predictable fall in the oil […]
Batteries, mine production, lithium and the “cobalt crunch”
Batteries, mine production, lithium and the “cobalt crunch” Growth in Li-ion batteries depends on a number of imponderables, such as how rapidly the world converts to electric vehicles, how quickly battery manufacturing capacity can be ramped up and where the electricity to power millions of EVs will come from. This post ignores these issues, concentrating […]
Solar PV potential in Scotland
Solar PV potential in Scotland More than 35,000 homes and 600 businesses in Scotland have installed solar PV panels, but only because of lavish government subsidies. Now that these subsidies are being discontinued the question becomes whether solar PV in Scotland can stand on its own two feet. The data from operating PV arrays presented […]
Coire Glas – the raging beast of pumped hydro storage
Coire Glas – the raging beast of pumped hydro storage Back in December 2013 Scottish and Southern Energy PLC (SSE) was granted planning approval for the 600 MW / 30 GWh pumped hydro storage (PHS) scheme at Coire Glas, northern Scotland. At the time I wrote a post called The Coire Glas pumped storage scheme […]
Have investors lost interest in “clean energy”?
Have investors lost interest in “clean energy”? Before 2011 global investment in clean energy (wind, solar, biomass, biofuels etc.) grew rapidly. Then in and around 2011 many governments abandoned renewables subsidies in favor of capacity auctions, and growth in global clean energy investment ceased. Investment in North and South America has not increased since 2007 […]
Blowout Week 241
Blowout Week 241 This week’s lead story features YouTube, which is fighting what it considers to be the misinformation on videos posted by global warming dissenters with fact-checking boxes (inset), with the data sourced from Wikipedia. We continue with Saudi Arabia’s oil production – is it up or down?; the Saudi/Canada standoff; US LNG and […]
