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Tag Archives: Roger Andrews
The Valhalla solar/pumped hydro project
The Valhalla solar/pumped hydro project When and if it gets built the Valhalla project will consist of a 600 MW solar farm and a 300 MW pumped hydro plant which, it is claimed, will in combination deliver continuous baseload power to Northern Chile. If the project works as planned it will indeed deliver continuous baseload […]
More on going off-grid in UK
More on going off-grid in UK In my previous Going off-grid post I reviewed the question of whether Tesla Powerwalls or overgeneration, considered separately, might allow a UK homeowner with a rooftop solar array to go off-grid. In this post I consider the two in combination. Once more using 10 Mossbank Way as an example […]
Going off-grid in the UK
Going off-grid in the UK In my recent post featuring a residence in Tucson, Arizona (latitude 32 north) I found that no reasonable number of Tesla Powerwalls would allow the homeowner to go off-grid using a combination of solar and battery storage. In this post I review a residence in UK (latitude 52 north) and […]
Will solar panels and Tesla Powerwalls meet your home’s energy needs?
Will solar panels and Tesla Powerwalls meet your home’s energy needs? Tesla is now marketing its Powerwall2 storage battery for domestic applications, claiming among other things that it can make your home self-powered and blackout-proof. Here I review Tesla’s claims using an existing rooftop PV array in the Arizona desert as a real-life example. Will […]
Helm and the death of UK wind and solar
Helm and the death of UK wind and solar In his recent post on the Helm Review Euan Mearns predicted that Helm’s recommendation that “intermittent producers need to bear the cost of converting intermittent to firm capacity” will, if adopted, “sound the death knell for new wind and solar projects in the UK”. This post […]
The California Duck Curve isn’t confined to California
The California Duck Curve isn’t confined to California The California Duck Curve is causing concern among California’s utilities, who wonder whether they will be able to ramp generation up quickly enough to meet evening peak demand when all the new solar capacity California plans to add over the next few years comes on line. As […]
Australia, energy storage and the Blakers study
Australia, energy storage and the Blakers study Roger Young’s recent post focused on the question of whether the energy storage requirements listed in Prof. Andrew Blakers’ study “100% renewable electricity in Australia” were realistic, but at the time no hard numbers on exactly how much storage Prof. Blakers’ scenarios would require were available. I have […]
Can Puerto Rico go 100% solar?
Can Puerto Rico go 100% solar? With seasonal variations in output of only around 30% Puerto Rico is at an ideal latitude for solar power, and despite generally low capacity factors (caused by cloudiness) it can be argued that if solar doesn’t work there it won’t work anywhere. And as the results of this post […]
The myth of a nuclear-free Austria
The myth of a nuclear-free Austria Since Austria passed a law banning the importation of nuclear electricity in 2015 it has claimed to be 100% nuclear-free. But 25% of the electricity Austria imports and over 8% of the electricity it consumes is still of indisputably nuclear origin. Austria’s claim to be 100% nuclear-free is either […]
Blowout Week 199
Blowout Week 199 Australia has rejected the Clean Energy Target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel in favor of an “affordable, reliable” plan, but has adopted Finkel’s recommendation that energy companies “must deliver a certain level of dispatchable power from ready-to-use sources such as coal, gas, hydro or batteries”. We follow with the Kurdistan conflict; […]
The UK’s Clean Energy Strategy – and the greens are back
The UK’s Clean Energy Strategy – and the greens are back The UK government’s just-published Clean Energy Strategysupposedly leads the way to the low-carbon future that the 2008 Climate Change Act calls for. But all it actually does is dust off all the old, shop-worn green remedies (smart meters, smart grids, EVs, hydrogen, bioenergy, carbon […]
Blowout Week 198
Blowout Week 198 This week we feature the UK’s just-published Clean Growth Strategy, which finally gives the UK a defined energy policy. Or does it? One of the two follow-up articles describes it as “next to worthless”. We continue with our usual mix of energy-related stories, including oil in Brazil; China’s shale oil reserves; Russia […]
UK offshore wind capacity factors – a semi-statistical analysis
UK offshore wind capacity factors – a semi-statistical analysis The average capacity factor at 28 operating UK offshore wind farms is 33.6% (most recent 12-month average) and 34.5% (lifetime), increasing to 36.1% and 37.5% when four demonstration projects are discarded. There is a dependence of capacity factor on age, with older farms showing capacity factors […]
Blowout Week 196
Blowout Week 196 The big news in the Energy Patch this week is the Kurdish independence vote, which threatens to disrupt the global oil market and could lead to civil war in Iraq. We follow up with the usual dose of stories from around the world: surging global demand for diesel; the Aramco IPO; US […]
Apple, Google, and how not to go 100% renewable
Apple, Google, and how not to go 100% renewable Earlier this year I described how the Dutch Railwayswere using “alternative logic” to claim that their trains were running on 100% wind power while in reality they were running about 90% on coal and gas-fired electricity from the Dutch grid. But Nederlandse Spoorwegen aren’t the only […]
