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Can Renewable Portfolio Standards make RE Work?
Can Renewable Portfolio Standards make RE Work? Guest post by Geo who is a geologist working in Alaska People want energy to be cleaner (i.e. emit less carbon dioxide). One way to do this is to use regulations to force either greater efficiency, or a switch to cleaner fuels. A good example would be Corporate […]
Open Energy 4: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths
Open Energy 4: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths Don’t believe the spurious claims of nuclear shills constantly doing down renewables, writes Mark Diesendorf. Clean, safe renewable energy technologies have the potential to supply 100% of the world’s electricity needs – but the first hurdle is to refute the deliberately misleading myths designed to […]
The Gyle Premier Battery – The Loch Ness Minnow of energy storage
The Gyle Premier Battery – The Loch Ness Minnow of energy storage The Gyle Premier Inn in Edinburgh has just installed a 100kW Li-ion storage battery, enough to power about 70 hair dryers. Rarely in the history of renewable energy has a battery so tiny attracted the attention of so many. Here, based on limited […]
El Hierro fourth quarter 2018 performance update
El Hierro fourth quarter 2018 performance update In 4Q 2018 Gorona del Viento (GdV) supplied only 27.7 % of El Hierro’s electricity and 6.4% of its total energy consumption, down by a factor of almost three from the 74.2% and 17.1% recorded in 3Q 2018. Since project startup in June 2015 GdV has supplied 45.2.% […]
The end of the Little Ice Age
The end of the Little Ice Age The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a recent and significant climate perturbation that may still be affecting the Earth’s climate, but nobody knows what caused it. In this post I look into the question of why it ended when it did, concentrating on the European Alps, without greatly […]
Powering the Tesla Gigafactory
Powering the Tesla Gigafactory Tesla has repeatedly claimed in publications, articles and tweets from Elon Musk that its Reno, Nevada Gigafactory will be powered 100% by renewables. Specifics on exactly how Tesla plans to do this are sparse, but the data that are available suggest that Tesla’s 70MW rooftop solar array won’t come close to […]
Attenborough and the deluded elites of Katowice
Attenborough and the deluded elites of Katowice Transcript of the speech by Sir David Attenborough COP24, Katowice, Poland 3rd December 2018. Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. ‘We the peoples of the United Nations’. These are the opening words of the UN Charter. A charter that puts people at the centre. A pledge to give every person in the […]
Fact-checking the second volume of the U.S. National Climate Assessment
Fact-checking the second volume of the U.S. National Climate Assessment This recently-issued study (the “Assessment”) was seized on by the media as proof of the massive damage the US will suffer if nothing is done about climate change. The Assessment’s conclusions are based largely on speculative model projections that aren’t amenable to checking, but it […]
Now Spain proposes to go 100% renewable
Now Spain proposes to go 100% renewable The list of countries, states, cities and towns that have announced ambitious plans to go 100% renewable continues to grow. The latest entrant is Spain, which according to the Guardian plans to switch to 100% renewable electricity by 2050 and aims to fully decarbonize the country’s economy shortly after. Evaluating […]
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 […]
How to save the world from climate catastrophe – the IRENA study
How to save the world from climate catastrophe – the IRENA study IRENA, the International Renewable Agency, has just published a study showing how the world can meet the not-to-exceed-2°C emissions goal set by the Paris Agreement. It’s not a 100% renewables study – it still includes a little oil, gas and nuclear – but […]
A brief review of the Buckland, Alaska, solar project
A brief review of the Buckland, Alaska, solar project Buckland is one of a number of projects in remote Alaskan villages that aim to replace expensive diesel with “cheap” solar. Here I examine how much diesel the Buckland array will actually save and how cheap the solar electricity that replaces it will be. The results […]
Quantifying wind surpluses and deficits in Western Europe
Quantifying wind surpluses and deficits in Western Europe This post updates my January 2015 Wind blowing nowhere post using 2016 rather than 2013 data. The 2016 data show the same features as the 2013 data, with high and low wind conditions extending over large areas and a decreasing level of correlation with distance between countries. The […]
Scotland’s wind exports to England and the myth of a 100% renewable Scotland
Scotland’s wind exports to England and the myth of a 100% renewable Scotland Well over half of Scotland’s wind generation between January 12, 2018 and the present was exported to England and not consumed in Scotland. Euan Mearns reached substantially the same conclusion in his review of January and February 2016 data. Scotland’s government nevertheless […]
Every Big Bit Helps
Every Big Bit Helps The post describes how new supercritical CO2 Brayton Cycle turbines may revolutionise the efficiency of electricty generation. Background image, existing Rankine Cycle steam turbine. Foreground, Brayton Cycle turbine with same power rating. Let’s say you and I need to move 1 million tons of sand. You show up to the site […]
