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Tag Archives: solar power
Getting Real About Green Energy: An honest analysis of what it CAN’T promise
Getting Real About Green Energy: An honest analysis of what it CAN’T promise I want to be optimistic about the future. I really do. But there’s virtually no chance of the world transitioning gently to an alternative energy-powered future. These Are The ‘Good Old Days’ I’m often asked where I stand on wind, solar and […]
Rethinking Renewable Mandates
Rethinking Renewable Mandates Powering the world’s economy with wind, water and solar, and perhaps a little wood sounds like a good idea until a person looks at the details. The economy can use small amounts of wind, water and solar, but adding these types of energy in large quantities is not necessarily beneficial to the system. […]
Why solar power can’t save us from the coming energy crisis
Why solar power can’t save us from the coming energy crisis Preface. Embedded within the posts below are even more reasons why solar electricity can’t replace fossil fuels. Meanwhile, all solar and wind do is add to the giant fire of burning fossil fuels and contribute a tiny bit more power, about 4% of all […]
It’s cheaper to replace most coal plants with renewables than keep them open, per report
It’s cheaper to replace most coal plants with renewables than keep them open, per report New research finds that replacing 74 percent of coal plants with renewables would immediately reduce costs. It would be more expensive to keep the majority of U.S. coal plants open than to replace them with new wind and solar power […]
Developing Country Issues at COP24 … and a Bit of Good News for Solar Power and Carbon Capture
Developing Country Issues at COP24 … and a Bit of Good News for Solar Power and Carbon Capture Photo Source Doman84 | CC BY 2.0 We humans are an interesting species … instead of seeing eye-to-eye, we are inclined to see eye-to-nose. We focus on the present and ourselves, particularly where our comfort is concerned, no […]
The cost of wind & solar power: batteries included
The cost of wind & solar power: batteries included For some time now we here on Energy Matters have been harping on about the prohibitive costs of long-term battery storage. Here, using two simplified examples, I quantify these costs. The results show that while batteries may be useful for fast-frequency response applications they increase the […]
Sustainable Living: A Primer on Batteries for Use with Solar Storage
Sustainable Living: A Primer on Batteries for Use with Solar Storage Ready Nutrition guys and gals, this article is being posted to address questions posed by one of the readers, as well as any others who might want to know about batteries for use with solar panels. The main thing is to understand this is […]
The Amazing Amount Of Solar Power Needed To Run The U.S. Transportation Sector
The Amazing Amount Of Solar Power Needed To Run The U.S. Transportation Sector The U.S. Solar PV Industry will never be able to grow large enough to power the transportation industry. Why? Because the amount of energy needed is well beyond the forecasted growth of U.S. solar power generation. And, it’s even worse than that. […]
The Most Ethical Renewable Energy Systems
THE MOST ETHICAL RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS The main thing in renewable energy systems is the embodied energy: the energy over the lifetime of the product versus the energy of manufacturing it. Lithium batteries are used a lot because they are lightweight, but they don’t last. Lead-acid batteries, like car batteries, are also short-lived. An old […]
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 […]
The National Infrastructure Commission’s plan for a renewable UK
The National Infrastructure Commission’s plan for a renewable UK The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) was launched by then-chancellor George Osborne in October 2015 to “think dispassionately and independently about Britain’s long-term infrastructure needs in areas like transport, energy, communication, flood defence and the like.” Well, the NIC has now thought dispassionately and independently about energy […]
Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World
Anton Balazh/Shutterstock Why The Coming Oil Crunch Will Shock The World And why we need a new energy strategy — fast. My years working in corporate strategy taught me that every strategic framework, no matter how complex (some I worked on were hundreds of pages long), boils down to just two things: Where do you […]
The Cook Islands go solar
The Cook Islands go solar Like a number of other remote island communities, The Cook Islands have decided to get rid of expensive diesel power and go to 100% solar within the next few years. To do this they are constructing solar arrays backed up with small amounts of Li-ion battery storage which they believe […]
Energy Externalities Day 7: Solar Photovoltaics
Energy Externalities Day 7: Solar Photovoltaics Solar PV is a multidimensional energy system difficult to evaluate on a global basis. Maximum concentration required from The Game players! First, there is solar thermal hot water, solar thermal power generation (also known as CSP) and solar PV. Today’s game is exclusively on the latter. And in solar […]
Australia’s east coast solar generation is replacing coal by only 2% in late summer
Australia’s east coast solar generation is replacing coal by only 2% in late summer This is an analysis of late summer. Data are taken from Open NEM: http://opennem.org.au/# The graphs in this post are a bit different from those on the above website Fig 1: Generation by fuel: 55% black coal, 19% brown coal, 9% […]
