Energy Vault said in a press release that its new technology combines physics fundamentals of potential and kinetic energy with a cloud-based software platform to operate a newly developed six-arm crane. The crane operation is automated and moves massive concrete bricks that provide the basis for the storage and discharge of electricity. 

Energy Vault said that material is a “low cost waste debris concrete,” which enables the system to achieve significantly lower cost per kilowatt-hour and high round trip efficiency while delivering a 30-40 year life without any degradation in storage capacity. 

The company also announced a technology and commercial partnership with CEMEX Research Group AG that will focus on material applications which include the optimization of various concrete based composite materials that will support Energy Vault’s system deployments globally. 

Energy Vault’s technology was inspired by pumped hydro plants that rely on the power of gravity and the movement of water to store and discharge electricity. The company’s solution is based on the same fundamentals but replaces the water with concrete bricks. 

The large bricks are combined with Energy Vault’s system design and algorithm-based software, which calibrates the energy storage tower and electricity charge/discharge while accounting for a variety of factors including power supply and demand volatility, weather and wind. 

As a result, the company said it can deliver all the benefits of a pumped hydro system, but at a much lower price, higher round trip efficiency and without the requirement for specific land topography and negative environmental or wildlife impacts.

Specifics of the system include:

• 35 MWh nominal energy capacity and 4MW peak power; can be modulated as required

• Millisecond response ramp time with 100 percent full power achieved in 2.9 seconds, supporting critical Ancillary Services (spinning reserve, frequency response, black start, etc.)

• Roundtrip efficiency of ~90 percent; zero storage degradation over time with no energy loss; >30 year lifetime with unlimited cycles

Further bolstering its eco-friendly advantages over existing chemical storage solutions is the fact that Energy Vault’s storage conduit – the large concrete bricks – do not degrade over time and therefore eliminates the need for replacement equipment. Future systems will roughly double the amount of MWh energy storage capacity and peak power discharge while continuing to significantly reduce the cost.

“Innovation in energy storage represents the largest and most near term opportunity to accelerate renewable deployments and bring us closer to replacing fossil fuels as the primary source to meet the worlds’ continual growth in energy demand”, said Bill Gross, founder, Idealab, and co-founder, Energy Vault.  “We’re excited to support Energy Vault in bringing this groundbreaking technology to the market.”

As part of its efforts to rapidly bring projects to market, Energy Vault has initial agreements with customers on multiple continents.

Read more HERE

The latest company born out of General Electric Co. expects sales of its industrial engines fired by natural gas to benefit from the spread of renewables such as solar and wind.

Advent International Corp.’s $3.3 billion purchase of GE’s distributed-power assets was completed on Tuesday. The deal gives the private-equity company custody of a maker of generators used at campuses, factories and hospitals to keep electricity flowing when the grid goes dark.

Increasingly, small gas engines and turbines are seen as the backbone of microgrids that are reshaping the way communities get power because they can back up supplies from solar panels or battery systems. The new company, called Innio and based in Jenbach in the Austrian Alps, is seeking to ride “a massive energy sector transformation” driven by the shift to greener energy supplies, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Lange said.

“We’ve seen massive growth in renewables that are intermittent and volatile,” Lange said in an interview. “When the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, we’re there.”

The flood of intermittent wind and solar power on grids is opening new markets for companies such as Innio, whose engines are sold across Europe and North America. It’s Jenbacher and Waukesha brands have more than eight decades of manufacturing experience and have already shipped some 64 gigawatts of generation.

Demand for their products could rise as green power producers increasingly look at gas as a cheap option for on-demand, dispatchable power supply. In some cases, Innio’s engines have cut costs and emissions by a fifth, according to the CEO.

“I am bullish on distributed generation and demand response, where small reciprocating gas engines will play a role,” said Bloomberg Intelligence energy analyst Elchin Mammadov. “The main challenge for such engines is the ongoing decline in the cost of battery storage technology, hybrid power plants and climate policies.”

Innio expects its sales to top $1.5 billion this year. The 3,000 employees in GE’s distributed power business posted sales of $1.3 billion last year.

“We like the space because we see a couple of megatrends, namely decentralization, decarbonization and gas replacing diesel,’’ Advent managing partner Ranjan Sen said in June. Advent said it plans to let Innio develop as a standalone business with a focus on distribution and digitalization.

“Our sweet spot is power and heat at the point of use,” said Lange, who was president of GE’s distributed power division. He also said:

The company sees “mid-single-digit” increases into the future as “the market is good and continues to grow.” Innio sees a market among large European companies that have experienced retail electricity-price increases. The company is looking at renewable production of hydrogen that could be mixed with natural gas to power its engines.

Read more HERE

“Climate change,” she told the audience of attendees from solar, storage and other clean energy businesses and organizations. “Specifically, anthropogenic climate change.”

Utilities across the country are increasingly taking a proactive role on initiatives to advance clean energy and grid modernization. But to hear a utility CEO like Kipp focus unequivocally on one of the most critical drivers for the growth of solar and storage was striking — and yet another sign of the sector’s ongoing transformation.

The educational nonprofit I lead — the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) — has long supported a collaborative and incremental approach to energy industry change. Bringing our 100-year-old electric power system into the 21st century will take time, particularly to ensure we have an economically robust industry that provides clean, safe, reliable and affordable power for all customers.

However, “incremental” can be a purposefully imprecise word. The challenge before us now is whether and how much we can accelerate the speed at which different steps in the transformation are achieved.

The urgency behind this question is mounting. Recently, both the International Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued reports warning, respectively, of the dire impacts of climate change ahead and the need for a much faster ramp-up of renewable energy in response. Indeed, the IEA predicts that renewables will make up only 14 percent of the world’s total energy use by 2040, about half of what the agency says will be needed to curb the more catastrophic impacts of climate change.

How can we bridge that gap?  Technology transitions, such as the ones currently underway in both the energy and transport sectors in the U.S., are enormous economic opportunities for both the startups that often drive initial disruption and the larger, existing firms that can adapt to fast-changing conditions. Recent history shows us that cycles of innovation and new technology adoption by consumers almost invariably occur faster than expected — the solar booms in Hawaii and California being a case in point.

What we see in these states and elsewhere is that what most effectively drives change is often a combination of policy, economics and cross-industry collaboration between utilities, clean tech developers and other key stakeholders. For U.S. utilities, part of this process is shifting from thinking about renewables as a threat to seeing them as multifaceted, complex opportunities — with all the risks and challenges such complexity implies.

The UK model: RIIO

In early October, SEPA led a group of about two dozen U.S. energy industry executives on a fact-finding mission to the United Kingdom (UK), where one of our main objectives was to study that country’s adoption of performance-based regulation. In the past four years, the energy industry there has undergone a major shift, from the traditional utility business model, to what is called RIIO, which stands for Revenue = Incentives + Innovation + Output.

Essentially, what this means is that utilities in the UK make their money not from investing in large, capital projects such as power plants and transmission, the model for investor-owned utilities in the U.S. Rather, revenue is based on achieving specific performance-based outcomes related to customer service, system efficiency and innovation, including the growth of renewables. Capital and operational expenses are effectively capped.

Such changes do not come without problems, as we heard from UK energy officials. Debates have arisen about how utilities are measuring outcomes and what a reasonable rate of return should be, and reforms to the next iteration of RIIO are in the works.

Obviously, the UK is a much smaller and more homogenous market than the United States, where energy policy is shaped to a large degree by state-level policy and market conditions. However, the UK does provide a significant model for accelerated change driven by a cohesive energy policy focused on rapid decarbonization in response to climate change. In addition to performance-based regulation, electrification of transportation is another top issue in the UK.

Is this model, or parts of it, replicable in the U.S., and how might it be done?

SEPA is not an advocacy organization; we do not take positions on any energy policy issues, state or local. However, we know the U.S. energy system is changing — once again, faster than anticipated. The lack of a national energy policy has left a vacuum where states and industry — including the electric power sector — can provide leadership and momentum. We see five issues, or pathways, as critical to accelerating the energy transition, and the opportunities it creates, across the diverse state markets in the U.S. We will be focusing our work on these issues in the coming year:

• Regulatory innovation: Regulation must keep pace with technological change and foster innovation.

• Grid integration: Continued growth of large-scale renewables and DERs, whether behind or in front of the meter, will require new tools and business processes.

• Utility business models: Rather than relying on capital investments, utilities will need to look at new programs and business models that provide value to customers and the grid.

• Transportation electrification: Electrification represents new power demand for utilities, while also driving innovation and rapid decarbonization.

• Resilience: New technologies will enhance system reliability and resilience, and provide an opportunity to offer customers a range of new products and services.

The Rampion Offshore Wind farm is located eight miles out in the English Channel. (Photo by Erika Myers)

The last day of the fact-finding mission, we visited the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm, 116 turbines in the English Channel, marveling at the technology, which now provides the UK with a growing amount of its power. Seeing such large-scale renewable energy projects — wind or solar — I always feel a bit awed, but also an enormous sense of possibility.

Like any issue, climate change can be seen in a number of ways. Certainly one of the most beneficial  — for utilities and society as a whole — is to use it as engine for change, innovation and opportunity.

This article was originally published here.

The deal was signed in London yesterday between Hervé Morin, President of the Normandy Region, and Tim Cornelius, chief executive of renewables company SIMAC Atlantic Energy.

Together they have formed Normandie Hydrolienne which will build a tidal stream plant in Raz Blanchard that could eventually deliver around 2 GW of capacity to the Normandy region.

The pact will create a public-private partnership with funding coming via the French region's economic development agency, AD Normandie and its investment fund, Normandie Participations. Under the terms of the deal, SIMEC Atlantis will hold a majority stake in Normandie Hydrolienne.

SIMEC Atlantis Energy, previously known as Atlantis Resources, will now start site development, permitting and consenting works. It will construct the project in phases, initially installing 20 x 2 MW tidal turbines. SIMEC intends to deploy its next generation tidal turbine, the AR2000, by the end of 2019.

Speaking to PEi, Tim Cornelius said: “The first phase will be completed in 2021 and we are waiting for government consent to expand the project to 200 MW by 2023, enough to power 250,000 homes.”

The turbine technology being deployed will be similar to that used in the company’s Maygen project in Scotland, however it will have improved features: “We will use a larger rotor size and all the turbines will be linked to an undersea DC substation,” said Cornelius. “There will be triple redundancy built in to reduce maintenance requirements.”

France has a feed-in tariff for tidal energy of €150 MWh but SIMAC believe that its scaled-up project could see costs being brought down to around €70 MWh. As a source of predictable firm and dispatchable power, the tidal array offers a valuable source of decarbonized energy to meet the requirements of the local power grid.

Speaking at the signing, Hervé Morin expressed his satisfaction in bringing this project to the region. He said that Normandy is one of the greatest energy regions in Europe, with extensive wind resources. He hinted that future energy development in the region may include the announcement of a second EPR nuclear reactor power plant as well as new renewable energy projects. Morin said that through AD Normandie and Normandie Participations, Normandy has decided to support a key player in the private sector.

Normandie Hydrolienne will begin hiring employees immediately and Cornelius praised the availability of skilled French engineers.  “Normandy has all of the attributes required to deliver large scale tidal power projects, including excellent natural resource in close proximity to load, available grid capacity, a feed-in-tariff, an established offshore energy supply chain and port facilities in Cherbourg and Le Have and access to EU funding. We hope this is the start of a long and profitable relationship”.

Since 2012, the Normandy region has been committed to pilot deployment and commercial use of marine power. It has invested greatly in Cherbourg Port and supported the creation of the Naval Energies/OpenHydro tidal-turbine plant in Cherbourg.

Through the French region's economic development agency, AD Normandie and its investment fund, Normandie Participations, Normandy has decided to support a key player in the private sector. For several years, the SIMEC Atlantis Energy has been keen to develop a large-scale project in Alderney Race.

French renewable generation projects will feature at the POWERGEN Europe conference, being staged in Paris 12-14 November 2019, alongside European Utility Week.

The feasibility study, which has been awarded funding by Innovate UK, will assess the economic, social and environmental value of creating the VPWN to centrally manage the energy use of the university’s estate, which is spread across Oxford.

The current system sees each building controlling its own energy usage, which is said to lead to inefficiencies and reduces the ability to implement estate-wide carbon reduction measures.

A VPWN is expected to help connect multi-site assets, such as battery storage and on-site generation capabilities, with demand behind a single metering point. It would also mean renewable technology and storage could be more easily integrated across an estate in the future.

This will be made possible by the MindSphere Internet of Things operating software from Siemens, a partner on the project, which will analyse each connected building’s energy use and be able to manage it while also implement efficiency measures to reduce carbon emissions.

Parth Mehta, campus lead at Siemens Distributed Energy Systems, said: “The development of decentralised energy provides huge opportunities for universities and industrial facilities to become self-sufficient, however, large organisations cannot easily coordinate different types of energy storage and generation across multiple sites.

“This innovative study is just the start and will prove that a virtual private wire network has the dual benefits of reducing the cost of balancing supply and demand with reduction in carbon emissions and service reliability.”

Consuming around £1 million of energy each month, and with the fourth highest emissions of all UK universities, Oxford hopes to address all these issues with the new system.

Professor McCulloch of the Department of Engineering Sciences at University of Oxford, added: “Energy systems are becoming smarter and more local. This exciting project demonstrates the role buildings can play in emerging energy systems.

“The impact will have international importance as we move to decarbonise electricity heating and cooling systems in buildings, while delivering flexibility services to the local and national grid infrastructure.”

Universities, and more specifically the private networks that many can have access to, are offering an innovative proving ground for new approaches such as the VPWN. In January, Keele University announced that it was also working with Siemens to deliver the Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND).

This has set out to turn the university’s private utilities network into a national test bed for new smart energy technologies and services in partnership with business and industry.

Speaking this week about the new project with Oxford, Joy Aloor head of digital grid for Siemens Energy Management, said: "We are in the midst of an energy transformation driven by decarbonisation, electrification, decentralisation and digitalisation.

“The scientific community and industries have a big role to play to redefine regulatory paradigm, embrace new business models and deploy enabling infrastructure to achieve the objectives of this energy transformation."

Read more HERE

The market growth will be powered by the quest to deliver uninterrupted electricity to remote locations across the globe, where in some cases, electricity is a luxury.

Growth will be further stimulated by market innovation delivering a range of highly advanced networks endowed with superior connectivity and storage that would help electrify rural areas.

This will, in turn, encourage microgrid market players to create unique and reliable products that would be easy to install and operate.

The Li-Ion battery storage microgrid installation has been forecast to reduce the usage of close to 600,000 liters of carbon-emitting fuel, underlining how effectively microgrids can be used for electricity generation, thereby benefiting the overall microgrid market outlook.

Regional governments and regulatory bodies have an influential role in the development of the microgrid market. Regulatory frameworks are increasingly geared to promote sustainability, limiting fossil fuel deployment.

Microgrid market companies have been motivated to tap into areas prone to natural disasters given how important resilient power installations have proven to be in these areas.

A series of highly profitable initiatives have resulted across the microgrid market including:

• Robben Island, the World Heritage Site in Cape Town, has recently witnessed the launch of an R25 million solar energy, lithium-ion battery storage microgrid. The region had been dependent on diesel for power generation, however, now, with the launch of this microgrid, it is expected that Robben Island would prove to be a viable exemplar to stimulate microgrid market demand.

• The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities and Boston City Council approved a proposal for the state legislature to pave the way for constructing a microgrid at the Raymond L. Flynn marine park.

• The secretary of the Philippine Department of Energy (DOE), Mr. Alfonso G. Cusi, has recently outlined the government's aim to stimulate the deployment of mini and microgrids in the country by tapping renewable energy. The goal is to achieve total electrification by 2022.

• PanaHome, a unit of Panasonic, in tandem with the METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), has revealed that the company has plans to connect 117 homes in the western part of Japan, to a solar-powered microgrid system.

Read more HERE

A significant proportion of the UK’s energy assets will be in the hands of local communities within a decade.

That’s according to Matt Allen, CEO of Pivot Power, who told ELN Editor Sumit Bose about his company’s plans to create a platform for community-level investors to get involved with and help enable strong regional infrastructure facilities to be built.

He suggested such a platform would increase confidence, encourage investment and thereby increase utilisation, as investors would want to see the returns offered by the projects they have financed.

Mr Allen said the mechanism would prove “beneficial and attractive” to both large, traditional investors and also community-based groups.

He said: “We need to participate, we can’t be sitting on the sidelines watching this very fast-moving train, that is very daunting and very intimidating and that’s one of the biggest things that we’re focused on, how do we provide those opportunities for engagement, participation, understanding the narrative, understanding the opportunity, understanding the risks.”

Read more HERE

Of the various renewable energy sources, tidal and wave power get less attention and fewer investments than many others. This is because of the inherent risk of any energy generating technology that has to operate in the brutal environment of the sea. Between the wear and tear from waves, the corrosive nature of saltwater and the inaccessibility of something installed offshore, the odds are often stacked against a technology before it can really get started.

So why do we keep trying? Because the potential energy from these sources could easily power the world if technologies are successful and seeing as a majority of the world's population lives with 60 miles of a coast, it puts electricity close to where it will be used.

A tidal power project called FloTEC believes that it has solved many of the problems that have faced the industry before. Its pilot SR2000 turbine is the most powerful tidal stream turbine to date and it has just finished a full year at sea continually generating electricity.

The project leaders have a goal of creating tidal power systems that are low cost, low risk and reliable and with the SR2000 turbine they've proven that this is achievable. The 2-MW turbine has been stationed off the Orkney Islands since last summer and in that time has generated 3 GWh of energy, that's equivalent to the annual electricity needs of 830 British households and is more power than has been produced by all wave and tidal energy projects in Scotland in the past 12 years.

The turbine has been feeding electricity to the Orkney Islands' grid and has supplied more than a quarter of their power needs over the year.

The turbine, which looks like a large yellow submarine, was able to weather the harsh fall and winter storms typical of the area and withstood waves over 7 meters in height. It was able to maintain continuous generation in waves 4 meters high. The team says that the improved performance over other tidal systems was thanks to bigger, more robust rotors that were able to generate energy at lower speeds.

The FloTEC project was able to keep costs down because the SR2000 was easy to access for maintenance using inexpensive rigid inflatable boats which kept costs down and also keep outages to a minimum. The crew has plans to construct a 2 MW commercial version of the SR2000 after this year's successful pilot. It should be ready by the end of the year and will be tested off Orkney before hitting the market.

Read more HERE

Chief executive of Scottish Power Keith Anderson said: “This is a pivotal shift for Scottish Power as we realise a long-term ambition. We are leaving carbon generation behind for a renewable future powered by cheaper green energy. We have closed coal, sold gas and built enough wind to power 1.2m homes.”

The company said it was investing £5.2bn in UK renewable energy over four years with the aim of more than doubling its existing two gigawatt capacity.

The sale is part of Spanish parent company Iberdrola’s goal to reduce emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 and be carbon neutral by 2050.

Chief executive of Drax Will Gardiner said: "We believe there is a compelling logic in our move to add further flexible sources of power to our offering, accelerating our strategic vision to deliver a lower-carbon, lower-cost energy future for the UK."

Drax has agreed a £725m acquisition bridge facility to finance the deal which is subject to Drax shareholder approval.

JP Morgan Cazenove is acting as financial adviser and joint corporate broker to Drax and Royal Bank of Canada is joint corporate broker.

Drax shares rose 3.7 per cent in morning trading.

Read more HERE

There will be a need for 13 gigawatts of flexible generation and storage assets to help balance the grid and integrate increasing flows of intermittent renewable power, according to a report by Aurora Energy Research Ltd. published Thursday. Investors should look to spread their investments across small gas engines, renewables and batteries to protect themselves against market uncertainties.

Investment in renewable energy is expected to grow as European nations move towards a 27 percent target for green power in electricity demand by 2030. Grid operators will need access to more flexible, quick-start generation as well as storage to harness excess green power.

“There has been a visible shift in the way such technologies are being regarded and what may once have been seen as a high-risk investment, is now considered a strategic long-term investment, that has benefits across many levels,” said Steve Shine, executive chairman of battery operator Anesco Ltd.

Despite this message, prices have been in decline as batteries flood areas of the 600 million-pound ancillary services market. They’re especially prevalent in serving fast-frequency response, where the requirement is to start up in less than a second. Investors that once counted on frequency response as a revenue stream are now looking for earnings in other areas such as the balancing market.

Aurora expects the value of National Grid Plc’s balancing and ancillary services market to double in size to about 2 billion pounds by 2030.

Opportunities are emerging for batteries to earn additional revenue through off-grid bilateral agreements, alongside renewables or electric vehicle charging, or for developers to trade directly in the balancing and wholesale markets, according to Aurora.

Profit margins from gas engines and battery storage vary from year to year, depending on factors such renewables output, plant outages and commodity prices. Investors can protect their returns by adopting a mixed portfolio approach, according to Felix Chow-Kambitsch, head of flexibility and battery storage at Aurora.

“Gas engines and renewables provide a natural hedge to one-another -- lowering the volatility of investor returns on a year to year basis,” he said.

Read more HERE

Tech companies like DEPsys, Greenbird, Cuculus, Venios, and Utilidata are firms with solutions to this question — forging the way in transforming the power grid and modernising the role of the Distribution System Operator (DSO). To elaborate more on DSOs, we talk with venture capital firm Statkraft Ventures‘ founder, Dr. Matthias Dill, on why it has invested in smart-grid startups. And we spoke with founders Michael De Vivo and Thorsten Heller of DEPsys and Greenbird respectively, to find out how DSOs can be more than infrastructure and why that’s so important.

New technology and growing demands on today’s power-grid system mean that the infrastructure must adjust — we simply cannot expect a grid designed more than a hundred years ago to adequately meet today’s energy needs. With the influx of solar power and electric vehicles, energy generation and consumption no longer adhere to traditional supply-demand roles. And as these roles shift, so must the way we distribute energy adjust to new challenges and growing demands. This is where DSOs come in. The Distribution System Operator (DSO) is the connection between energy generation and consumers. In a non-traditional market, with self-consumption and generation of energy changing the infrastructure of the grid, so must the role of the DSO modernise and adapt.

Both DEPsys and Greenbird are working to update the way DSOs manage the grid — making them smarter and more capable of maintaining a balance between generation and consumption. Switzerland-based DEPsys, founded in 2012 by Michael De Vivo, has a total funding of $5.3M and creates software to help DSOs monitor the grid in real-time, and to control the system. Thorsten Heller founded Greenbird in 2010, and the firm works to digitally transform utilities and connect them with big data. The company is based in Norway and has a total funding of $4.6M. In our discussion, we find out how its technology is revolutionising the industry, and hear insights from Dr. Matthias Dill as to why Statkraft Ventures has invested in its work.

What is a DSO and why is it important?

Michael De Vivo, DEPsys: The DSO is the Distribution System Operator, the link between central energy generation and the consumers at the edge of the power grid. Its traditional role is to distribute the energy to all the end-users. In an electrical grid, there must be a permanent balance between generation and consumption to guarantee a stable supply. In the old world, the generation was adjusted to the changing needs of the consumers.

The energy transition tries to replace traditional, central nuclear and carbon-based energy with decentralised renewable resources, such as photovoltaic (PV) installations. At the same time, it wants to replace traditional cars with electric vehicles (EV). This disturbs the generation-consumption balance, as PV installations generate energy when the sun is shining, and not when energy is needed. In the same sense, EVs want to be charged when their owners come home from work, not when most energy is produced.

Self-consumption of house owners or self-consumption communities try to generate, store and consume electricity locally, changing the role of the DSO today and tomorrow. It will be the link between producers and consumers, making energy exchanges between neighbours possible.

Thorsten Heller, Greenbird: DSO stands for Distribution Service Operators or the grid company. DSO are undergoing a huge transformation, driven by the 4 Ds: decentralisation, deregulation, decentralisation, and decarbonisation.

More and more local production, changing load and consumption profiles, electrification of transport, IoT or big data are forcing DSOs to become a platformed digital to stay relevant and in business.

Tell us a little bit about your company and how you are working with DSOs?

Michael De Vivo, DEPsys: The DSO challenge is the management of the new power grid — the balance between generation and consumption in a highly dynamic environment. For this, DEPsys develops GridEye, a system that identifies the network conditions in real-time, and that orchestrates all the stakeholders of a local area, such as PV installations, charging infrastructure, and energy storage, with the goal of a stable and safe power supply for everybody. In this respect, DEPsys is a supplier of the modern DSO that provides a toolbox of applications for monitoring, analysis, planification, asset management, outage reduction, network control, and other needs.

Thorsten Heller, Greenbird: Greenbird is a software company headquartered in Oslo, Norway and provides with Metercloud a big data integration platform managing the data flows accelerating the digital transformation for utilities. Founded in 2010, Greenbird has now 42 employees and serves more than 80 clients in the Nordics, Europe and Middle East / Asia.

Can you provide a real-life example of how you’re implementing the technology?

Michael De Vivo, DEPsys: Reality within DSOs is far behind all the fancy developments for the future. DEPsys sees two main use cases in the market today. The smart grid, the network of the future, currently means monitoring for network transparency for a large portion of the market.. GridEye field units are installed at strategic network nodes to measure the state of the grid. Over an IoT platform, the information is sent to a central system with a user interface displaying the values graphically. This helps the DSO to visualise his grid and to analyse the short, mid and long-term behaviours.

The second use case is punctual voltage stabilisation. If PV installations generate more energy than necessary, the voltage in the network rises. Most grids are today still relatively stable, but they can have voltage issues at certain times. Based on the concept of edge computing, GridEye field units detect this unbalance and can act on generation, on controllable loads or storage elements, to rebalance the system.

Thorsten Heller, Greenbird: Smarthub is a a Norwegian alliance operating a smart metering and smart grid infrastructure for 10 utilities in a «* as a Service» model. Metercloud is the information backbone for Smarthub handling all integrations and data flows between the utilities’ core systems and Smarthub’s centralised infrastructure. Using Metercloud, Smarthub can operate the AMI infrastructure more efficiently and provide add value data insight services to their clients.

What impact can DSOs have today?

Thorsten Heller, Greenbird: DSO is responsible to manage and operate the grid infrastructure and therefore is always one of the major players in the energy system.

Michael De Vivo, DEPsys: Traditionally, the DSOs owned the distribution of the energy which generated their revenue. They have and will have a difficult time because the traditional revenue streams break away due to the fact that energy prices drop, and that prosumers generate their own electricity. Today, they have to lay the foundation for new business models and for a stable and dynamic network for the future. For EVs, they have to build the charging infrastructure for the future of mobility, making sure that the underlying grid can actually deliver the energy that is needed.

How do you envision it will make an impact in the future?

Thorsten Heller, Greenbird: Using Metercloud, utilities are empowered to become a platform operator for innovation and the smart city. From being an operator of a commoditised infrastructure, utilities might become the operator of a platform for smart and sustainable innovation.

Michael De Vivo, DEPsys: DSOs will move away from their pure distribution role, from the link that they build between generation and consumption. In the future, they will be an enabler, making energy exchange possible at different levels, between consumers and producers, between neighbours, between community members, but also across longer distances. Electricity will be the main energy vector in the decarbonised world, and everybody will be able to generate and sell electricity in a very dynamic and independent manner. The distribution network will have to absorb all this energy, which is only possible with intelligent orchestration systems, such as GridEye.

Why is Statkraft Ventures investing in smart-grid startups?

Dr. Matthias Dill, Statkraft Ventures: Power-grid topics tend to be overlooked by the generalist VCs. And for good reasons, since this segment needs very specific know-how both regarding technology and regulation. But for us as a sector focused fund it made sense to build up this expertise. And, from a fundamental perspective on the energy sector, the power-grid is a very relevant search-field for us.

More and more distributed power-generation (such as solar and wind) and EV-charging is connected to the power grid, with very intermittent generation-profiles and load-profiles. This creates a big challenge for the power-grid infrastructure that often has been designed hundred years ago. So there is a great and urgent need for investment in grid-infrastructure and the exiting question is what part of these billions will be invested in copper-cables and what part will be invested in smart technology. We see many great new technologies that can make the grid more efficient, more resilient and add new functionalities all at the same time. And it is unique timing these days: entrepreneurs can use technologies that have already been developed in other sectors (like IoT, data-analytics, cloud-stack), so it can be very capital-efficient today to build new firms with deep technology for the energy sector.

What specifically about these two companies, DEPsys and Greenbird, excites you?

Statkraft Ventures: Besides the fact that we like the topic in general there are additional aspects.

When we invested in DEPsys and Greenbird we were very impressed by the founders. Both Thorsten Heller and Michael DeVivo had very deep domain and technology expertise and had managed to transfer this into very unique products. As a VC we like the notion of being 10-times better. Greenbirds automated integration platform reduced the time for integration in smart-meter projects by more than a factor of 10 while offering the DSOs the agility of adding new functionalities on existing smart-meters in the future. DEPSys is also second to none: they can monitor and optimise the power-grid without needing to know its topology. Thereby they make the implementation faster and easier by an order of magnitude.

In both firms we had invested about two years ago and we are really happy to see that they did develop from local start-ups in Norway and Switzerland to global player that roll out their solutions with large DSOs in many countries.

Read more HERE

We’re in the vibrant city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s former capital and one of the world’s fastest growing cities. In the last years, the skyscrapers, buildings, and shops have flourished here at a rapid pace. And this is not surprising, as Dar es Salaam is still the Tanzanian capital for everything related to fashion, media, music, film, and television. It’s also a leading financial centre. But start talking to the inhabitants, and you’ll understand that this amazing expansion didn’t come without its troubles. Power cuts are, for instance, a recurrent issue.

“Lights go out about a hundred times a year,” explains Diana Mbogo, who was born and raised here. “This, of course, hinders economic development enormously,” she continues. Diana knows what it’s like to not have access to energy, but she decided to transform this challenge into an opportunity, and started her own renewable energy business.

Finding inspiration

Diana was still a student, pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, when she became inspired to work in the field of renewable energy. During an academic field project, in a team of seven students, she constructed a wind turbine to power a primary school in rural Tanzania. Thereafter she increasingly focused her research projects on energy access. In 2015, a fellow student showed her an advertisement posted in Buni, an Innovation Hub in Dar es Salaam, calling for applications to join a 5-day learning program where the main challenges around energy access issues would be explored. A good match, it seemed.

Coincidentally, the advertisement was published by the Energy Change Lab of Hivos and IIED. In the Energy Change Lab, Hivos and IIED work with pioneers, like Diana, to launch sustainable and people-centered energy businesses. The Lab is driven by the principle that enterprising young people have the ability to transform their energy system to power their businesses and lives, as well as the lives of others. Diana is the epitome of this.

“Energy means access to information, the ability to work more productively and for more hours. It means lighting and security. It’s civilization.”

Embarking on a safari, an Energy Safari!

Diana enthusiastically joined the Energy Safari, as the weeklong journey was called. In Swahili, ‘safari’ means ‘long journey’, and a journey it was. As far as Diana was concerned, the Safari exceeded her expectations. “It was a workshop… and it was an adventure! We got a really concrete idea of the energy sector in Tanzania and, because we worked together with so many different people, I was able to build a rich network of contacts. I still work together with some of the people I met during the Safari.”

Soon after she returned home, Diana founded Millennium Engineers, her own renewable company. Her idea was to offer consultancy and technical support to people interested in wind and solar energy, and she soon started to sell and distribute small-scale energy solutions to her community. “We sell solar water pumps to farmers, solar mobile chargers to laptop and phone owners, and solar home kits to families. Our wind turbines are larger and can be used by hospitals and schools.”

The backbone of development

“What drives me is the realisation that energy is the backbone of development. I don’t believe any community can develop unless it has access to it. Energy means access to information, the ability to work more productively and for more hours. It means lighting and security. It’s civilisation. However, more than half of the population of Tanzania doesn’t have access to energy. I see it as my duty to change this. We’ve only just started, but business is going well. The market potential for renewable energy is great,” Diana explains.

This year, the Energy Change Lab organised a new Safari in Arusha and the surrounding rural areas. For a week, youth from diverse backgrounds put their heads together to answer the question of how to foster productive uses of energy in rural villages that have been electrified with mini-grids. As in the 2015 edition, participants came up with fresh and interesting ideas that are currently being further developed. The mission to shake up the Tanzanian energy landscape is definitely being taken on by many!

From Africa to Southeast Asia for another inspiring story

We now leave lively Dar es Salaam for a quieter community located on the tropical Indonesian island of Flores to meet the inspiring woman entrepreneur, Margaretha Subekti, or Ibu Bekti as she’s lovingly known. ‘Ibu’ is a warm, colloquial term meaning Mama or Mrs.

Access to the grid on small archipelago islands like Flores, particularly in rural villages such as West Manggarai where Ibu Bekti resides, is hard to come by. Such rural communities must rely on off-grid renewable energy sources to power their homes, schools, and workplaces to meet their livelihood needs. Ibu Bekti has taken on this challenge of improving energy access in her own community by capitalising on the power of two things for which she is very passionate  —  the environment and women’s empowerment. She chooses to live and breathe her commitments to the environment and to women by selling or trading clean energy products and empowering other women to do the same.

Ibu Bekti is a prominent figure in her community, utilising the business and sales skills obtained through Kopernik’s Wonder Women program, which is supported by ENERGIA. She is an exemplar of the training program, having motivated many other women around her to improve their incomes and livelihoods for their families and communities. She, for example, supports 30 women in three different women’s groups by providing peer support during recycling and upcycling projects with them. She moreover manages a team of eight women entrepreneurs who help her sell the technologies, making for a strong presence in the West Manggarai market. Together, she and her team have sold over 300 clean energy technologies, including solar lights, water filters and biomass cookstoves within the community. The women who help Ibu Bekti receive commissions from the sales.

“I believe that when you educate and empower women, you empower future generations”

Taking it slow

Ibu Bekti is confident when speaking in public about issues for which she advocates. She radiates positivity, which engages those around her to listen and take note. She takes a slow approach when introducing the new technologies to people around her as she recognises it takes time to build a full understanding of issues like clean energy. She believes that distributing the technologies is both good for the environment and for women in her community to make money and live healthier lives. As a result, she is determined to share them with as many people as possible. “If I cannot explain the benefits of these technologies in one meeting, I will explain it again, and again, and again,” she gently expresses with a motherly tone.

Given her devotion to the environment, women’s empowerment and education, she has also established Rumah Pintar, or ‘Smart House’ in English, a community group that offers women and children in her neighbourhood access to any kind of support they need. This includes those who may have experienced broken relationships with their families or suffer from various illnesses, among other situations. Her ‘house’ is always open. She trains and guides many women in activities including producing handicrafts, recycling practices, and organic vegetable farming.

“Supporting women and their children have been the core of everything that I do. Because I believe that when you educate and empower women, you empower future generations. So, I think women’s empowerment is extremely important as women manage households and educate their children. Women are the key to solving problems,” adds Ibu Bekti.

Another initiative that expands her market and reach is a local coffee shop that she opened in 2016 in partnership with a friend. Her business model involves supporting local farmers and maintaining a strong message of healthy eating to those who visit the cafe. Utilising her keen entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, she devises many ideas to continually support her community members, build her business, provide access to clean energy, and advocate for important issues. One such idea is the concept of trading agricultural produce such as coffee, tea, and vegetables from nearby farms with clean energy technologies, in place of cash. Ibu Bekti explains: “This means that my cafe has fresh, locally-sourced produce, while farmers and their families receive the benefits of the technologies in a financially viable way.”

Transforming their energy landscapes

Diana and Ibu Bekti are two incredible women, in two separate parts of the globe, who are standing at the helm leading the global energy transition to cleaner, renewable sources. And there are many more remarkable women and men around the world standing and working alongside them, driving the change everyday in their local and surrounding communities. It is up to the rest of us —  individuals, organisations, businesses, and governments alike — to join them in order to make clean energy access for all a reality.

The backstory

This ambition of equitable access to clean energy for all is clearly encapsulated in SDG 7 and is precisely what Hivos’ ENERGIA and Green & Inclusive Energy group work towards every day.

For the Hivos’ Green & Inclusive Energy group, advocating for greater energy access to renewable energy sources is front and centre. In addition, the group supports a number of partners in several countries, and hosts the Energy Change Lab together with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The Energy Change Lab finds and supports motivated energy changemakers to initiate and scale sustainable energy systems. The Energy Safari, in particular, prototypes possible solutions among the people that need to benefit from them; all in an unrealistically short time-frame. In that sense, the Energy Safari can be perceived as ‘pre-incubation’; offering a rich and intense learning experience and a process where ideas can blossom.

At the same time, ENERGIA seeks to empower women as energy entrepreneurs and strengthen women-led micro and small businesses in distributing sustainable energy solutions to their local communities, particularly to reach the last mile. Next to gender advocacy and research, ENERGIA actively supports a number of partners across Asia and Africa through its Women Economic Empowerment (WE) program. One of those partners is Kopernik in Indonesia. The goal of the WE program is to nurture women entrepreneurs by helping them develop their skills in accessing finance, agency building, leadership, as well as business development, such as bookkeeping, marketing and market analysis. Since 2011, Kopernik has worked with more than 400 wonder women micro-social-entrepreneurs, who have sold almost 16,000 clean energy technologies to date.

Read more HERE

Three thousand litres of water – that is the amount needed to produce the food each British person eats every day.

This is the opening line of a recent article also published on The Conversation. The piece reports on research published in Nature Sustainability, which investigated the water footprint of diets in three EU countries, considered national and regional differences, and comes to the overall conclusion that a healthy diet that is low in meat would significantly decrease our water footprint.

The scientific consensus is that eating less meat is a good way of reducing your carbon footprint (a measure of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by a person’s activities) and contribution to climate change. According to the Water Footprint Network, the water footprint of a kilo of beef is 15,415 litres, compared to 322 litres for a kilo of vegetables. When compared to domestic water use (each person in the UK uses about 150 litres of water per day) these numbers seem large and worrying. But the reality is that the concept of footprints cannot be used for water in a way that is environmentally meaningful.

The first flaw in the water footprint concept stems from the fact that water is renewable.

It can exist in lakes, rivers and the sea, below ground, as vapour in the air, in glaciers, and more. We neither create nor destroy water, it simply moves around the hydrological cycle. Water that we use in the present can also be used in the future. It isn’t going to run out in any permanent sense unless it is irretrievably polluted, or becomes incorporated into a glacier which will exist for millennia to come. So, regardless of how much steak you eat, the world is not going to run out of water.

The next problem with the water footprint concept is that it causes us to value water as being equally important wherever it is. But it’s fairly obvious that a thousand litres of freshwater in Wales is not of equal value to a thousand litres of water in a desert.

In addition, there is no clear relationship between the volume of water we use and the environmental impact of using that volume. So, although with carbon emissions we can reliably say that a serving of pulses contributes less to climate change than a serving of beef, we cannot be nearly so confident when comparing the environmental impacts of the water used to produce the two products.

Hydrologists express these issues of time and place using diagrams and equations known as water balances. Water exists in stocks, and flows occur between them. Measuring the size of each stock and flow allows us to understand what the consequences might be of changing flow rates into/out of stocks, or diverting flows in some way, with reference to a specific time period.

This helps us understand another problem with the water footprint concept. The footprint is defined as the volume withdrawn from a stock, minus the amount that is discharged back into that stock. When rain falls on grassland, much of it is taken up by plant roots, moves upwards through the stem and then evaporates from the leaves. If the grass is eaten by cattle, then the water footprint of the beef includes all this water. But if the rain was to fall on an area of forest rather than grassland, evapotranspiration (the process by which water evaporates from plant leaves and from the ground) would be higher.

Trees take up more water than grass, so trees have a large water footprint. Does this make forests bad? Clearly not. Evapotranspiration is simply a flow within the hydrological cycle, it is no better or worse in environmental terms than the rainwater that flows into streams and rivers.

However, this way of calculating water footprints also means that if a water company withdrew 1,000 litres of water for domestic water use from a river, and then discharged it back into the river after it had undergone sewage treatment, the water footprint is zero. The water has become immediately available again at local level.

Evidently, water footprints lack scientific validity, and don’t actually tell us anything very useful about the environmental impact of water use – but what can we do instead? The Alliance for Water Stewardship is promoting a promising initiative that considers industry and location-specific measures, such as whether water is being abstracted from an aquifer (an underground layer of permeable rock that holds water) at an unsustainable rate, whether irrigation schemes are necessary and properly controlled, and how to balance the needs of all water users in the area. However, these schemes are not yet widely adopted, and it remains difficult for consumers to make water conscious choices.

There is also a risk of worrying about water at the expense of other environmental issues. The effects of climate change are felt most immediately through water-related events such as droughts and floods, but we would do well to remember that these events are symptoms and it is the cause that we need to address.

Read more HERE

Google is well known for big brands and great design, which made the acquisition of leading intelligent thermostat company Nest an obvious target. After the acquisition, the two companies set out to join forces, looking for opportunities to leverage each other as a platform to do more, together.

We spoke with Nest’s Jeff Hamel, who has spent the last 20 years of his career in the energy space, about the impact Nest has had on the energy industry and how he sees that trend continuing as utilities increase their focus on connected, demand response activities.

Nest came onto the scene in 2011 as the first connected, intelligent thermostat for residential customers. Its simplicity and intelligence put the power to adjust their thermostat into the palm of their hand with its smartphone app. Beyond just a connected device, Nest learned what the typical behaviour in the home looked like and dynamically shifted the operation of the thermostat accordingly, in an attempt to save the homeowner some cash.

In the early years, Nest demonstrated the potential to save energy and money with an intelligent thermostat and as it scaled up in volume, the potential grew as well. “That has really enabled the technology – and I’m primarily talking about the thermostat – to scale to the point where it’s a sizable – it’s of a size where it means a lot to utilities,” Hamel shared. When you can aggregate thermostats at the tens of megawatts per utility they get interested in being able to have a say in how that portfolio acts on the grid as a collective.

Thanks to its cloud connectivity, that goes beyond just connecting the thermostats to a homeowner’s smartphone, and also connects to Nest’s servers. Nest is able to look at the aggregated loads of all of its smart thermostats in each neighbourhood, in each city and in each utility’s service area. That translates to a massive electrical load that Nest can work with utilities to throttle up or down, provided it can develop a mechanism for compensating homeowners for this flexibility.

“The bulk of that connected load in the home today is thermostats,” Jeff shared. Looking just a few steps down the road, that is likely to change as electric vehicles with increasingly larger batteries will become a force to be reckoned with in terms of load on the grid. For now, Nest is focused on maximising the value it can provide to homeowners and utilities with its smart thermostats. “I think you’re going to continue to see a lot of growth for smart thermostats and demand response capability,” Jeff related.

It is already seeing early interest from a handful of leading utilities like California’s Southern California Edison (SCE). “SCE was one of our first partners who embraced our energy services – which is our Rush Hour Rewards program – which is our demand response program,” Jeff shared. The program allows homeowners with smart thermostats like the Nest to opt-in to the program that gives utilities some measure of control over their thermostat in situations where the grid is strained.

These programs are supported by California’s regulators who are constantly on the prowl for creative, low carbon solutions to keeping grid production in balance with fluctuating demand from consumers. Jeff shared that, “CALISO programs that allow for the monetisation of the aggregated load,” and that’s something Nest is already working on, but it requires active partnership with the local utility.

When it comes to homeowners, Jeff and his team at Nest are trying to make the process as intuitive, seamless and effortless as possible. He shared that their goal is to,”take that complexity and put it behind the scenes.”

While that might be easy enough to say out loud, delivering on that goal is high art and not something easily achieved. Simplicity in design is ironically one of the most complex tasks to achieve in the world of design, especially when it requires tying complex back end data calculations together with a beautifully intuitive user interface. Fortunately, design is one of Nest’s strengths and if anyone can do it, it is certainly on the shortlist of companies which can.

Google as a platform for change

Looking beyond Nest, Jeff shared that parent company Google is looking at enabling intelligent energy usage across the board, using its Google Home as a platform to bring about that change. “We are not only representing the thermostat hardware but the entire Google Home portfolio,” he shared. At the front end of that experience is the Google Assistant. “Google Assistant as really that key that brings together pieces of the smart home.”

That’s common knowledge to anyone who has a Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Apple Siri device that they call on to help out around the house. Yelling at the kids to turn on the lights has been replaced with yelling at Alexa to turn on this or that light, change the lighting temperature, or to change the actual temperature, thanks to integration with smart thermostats like Google’s Nest.

Jeff shared that they are looking not only at ways they can actively affect change, but also at ways where the platforms Google brings into the home can enable them to be more effective.  “Ultimately, we want to provide homeowners visibility and control and options with the various technologies they’re bringing into their home.”

Things start to get really interesting as technologies converge. Can homeowners change the load profile of their entire home with a voice command…from work? Can my Google Assistant throttle the charging down on a connected eMotorWerks JuiceBox? Can I run my home on battery power and stop drawing power from the grid with a remote command? Things start to get really interesting and maybe even a bit messy when we start to open up this Pandora’s box.

Demand Response is perhaps the 2018 buzzword when it comes to energy-focused smart homes. For now, everyone seems to be playing nicely together, but there are sure to be some interesting discussions as residential energy storage companies vie for control over the loads in a home with device builders like eMotorWerks, Tesla, ChargePoint, Nest, Carrier, Philips and the like.

As these worlds collide, 2019 is likely to be the year where we see the big question being asked more frequently as consumers start to install this next generation of intelligent energy management devices into their homes en masse. Who ultimately gets to make the deals with utilities to throttle the load in the home? Will it be your electric vehicle, your charger/EVSE, the company supplying your intelligent circuit breakers, or your home energy storage company?

Time will tell. Until then, Nest and Google are eager to be in the game as foundational enablers to bring more connected intelligent tech into the home. Jeff shared that they are, “Ultimately trying to get to the point of how do we provide the homeowner with a really awesome experience,” and that, “we’re actively shaping that, we’re actively creating that.”

Read more HERE

Plastics are among the most valuable waste materials – although with the way people discard them, you probably wouldn’t know it. It’s possible to convert all plastics directly into useful forms of energy and chemicals for industry, using a process called “cold plasma pyrolysis”.

Pyrolysis is a method of heating, which decomposes organic materials at temperatures between 400℃ and 650℃, in an environment with limited oxygen. Pyrolysis is normally used to generate energy in the form of heat, electricity or fuels, but it could be even more beneficial if cold plasma was incorporated into the process, to help recover other chemicals and materials.

The case for cold plasma pyrolysis

Cold plasma pyrolysis makes it possible to convert waste plastics into hydrogen, methane and ethylene. Both hydrogen and methane can be used as clean fuels, since they only produce minimal amounts of harmful compounds such as soot, unburnt hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide (CO₂). And ethylene is the basic building block of most plastics used around the world today.

As it stands, 40% of waste plastic products in the US and 31% in the EU are sent to landfill. Plastic waste also makes up 10% to 13% of municipal solid waste. This wastage has huge detrimental impacts on oceans and other ecosystems.

Of course, burning plastics to generate energy is normally far better than wasting them. But burning does not recover materials for reuse, and if the conditions are not tightly controlled, it can have detrimental effects on the environment such as air pollution.

In a circular economy – where waste is recycled into new products, rather than being thrown away – technologies that give new life to waste plastics could transform the problem of mounting waste plastic. Rather than wasting plastics, cold plasma pyrolysis can be used to recover valuable materials, which can be sent directly back into industry.

How to recover waste plastic

In our recent study we tested the effectiveness of cold plasma pyrolysis using plastic bags, milk and bleach bottles collected by a local recycling facility in Newcastle, UK.

We found that 55 times more ethylene was recovered from [high density polyethylene (HDPE)] – which is used to produce everyday objects such as plastic bottles and piping – using cold plasma, compared to conventional pyrolysis. About 24% of plastic weight was converted from HDPE directly into valuable products.

Plasma technologies have been used to deal with hazardous waste in the past, but the process occurs at very high temperatures of more than 3,000°C, and therefore requires a complex and energy intensive cooling system. The process for cold plasma pyrolysis that we investigated operates at just 500℃ to 600℃ by combining conventional heating and cold plasma, which means the process requires relatively much less energy.

The cold plasma, which is used to break chemical bonds, initiate and excite reactions, is generated from two electrodes separated by one or two insulating barriers.

Cold plasma is unique because it mainly produces hot (highly energetic) electrons – these particles are great for breaking down the chemical bonds of plastics. Electricity for generating the cold plasma could be sourced from renewables, with the chemical products derived from the process used as a form of energy storage: where the energy is kept in a different form to be used later.

The advantages of using cold plasma over conventional pyrolysis is that the process can be tightly controlled, making it easier to crack the chemical bonds in HDPE that effectively turn heavy hydrocarbons from plastics into lighter ones. You can use the plasma to convert plastics into other materials; hydrogen and methane for energy, or ethylene and hydrocarbons for polymers or other chemical processes.

Best of all, the reaction time with cold plasma takes seconds, which makes the process rapid and potentially cheap. So, cold plasma pyrolysis could offer a range of business opportunities to turn something we currently waste into a valuable product.

The UK is currently struggling to meet a 50% household recycling target for 2020. But our research demonstrates a possible place for plastics in a circular economy. With cold plasma pyrolysis, it may yet be possible to realise the true value of plastic waste – and turn it into something clean and useful.

Read more HERE

Sustainable energy is an enabler of health care delivery and the lack of reliable access has consequences on essential health care services especially in areas where grid extension remains a challenge. In resource-constrained settings, unreliable electricity access affects health facilities’ operating procedures, causes vaccine to spoil, and affects the use of essential diagnostic and medical devices. Access to energy is important for night-time care and for major health-care priorities such as reducing mortality and improving maternal and child health. It has real implications for educational outcomes too. The lack of reliable electricity access for instance, has implications for human capital development. As households get denied of their rights to beneficial information (through the television and internet), and children go home and study in under-lit and under-heated homes, the risk of falling into persistent poverty is inevitable. 

Happenings and circumstances in some parts of the world emphasise how important it is for sustained efforts to address energy poverty. On June 3, 2018 when Guatemala suffered one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions, the search for survivors got hampered as many vital rescue hours were lost to darkness. Certainly, a reliable source of power could have extended the search hours and probably saved more lives. In Bangladesh, where only half of the over 160 million people have access to adequate and reliable electricity, it is hard to imagine how long the less-privileged must endure the pain of energy poverty. The implications on key development priorities including job creation, human capital development, gender equality, and sustainable health care delivery among others is worrisome.

Like many developing countries, energy poverty in Africa is real, severe, and widespread. Appreciating this reality is necessary and represents an important starting point for devising lasting solutions that ensure energy access is reliable, sustainable, and affordable for all.

Energy Poverty in Africa

From Djibouti in the east to The Gambia in the west, and from Algeria in the north to Lesotho in the south, Africa takes pride in being home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world. Beyond this hype however, several millions of the continent’s population remain affected by energy poverty. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about two-thirds of the population, equivalent to nearly 620 million people do not have access to electricity and almost 730 million depend on traditional solid biomass for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the household electrification rate in 2016 averaged 42 percent, while the population without electricity reached 591 million. There is also a vast gap in electrification rates between rural and urban households. Access rate among rural households is about 22 percent, compared to 71 percent among urban households.

Even more disturbing is the Center for Global Development’s interactive map on Africa’s energy poverty hotspots. Apart from a few countries including South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana, and Algeria that have electrification rates of more than 70 percent, estimates for many other countries are disturbing. Malawi, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have rates below 5 percent. Many others including Togo, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, Tanzania, and Burundi have below 30 percent electrification rates.

In Nigeria, the gap between electricity supply and demand is huge, access unreliable, and cost expensive. Despite the abundant renewable energy resources, over 60 percent of the population is not connected to the national grid. Even more troubling is the fact that about 112 million people depend solely on wood as a source of fuel for cooking. Notwithstanding some recent strides, the situation in Ghana is unfortunately the same. Electricity outages, otherwise known as “Dumsor”, is a persistent problem. The 159 days of blackout in 2015 is perhaps the most striking signs evincing the deepening energy crisis and the urgency for long-term policy interventions to address the energy challenge. In the horn of Africa, Ethiopia has the largest energy access deficit, with about 70 percent of the population living without sufficient access to electricity.

From the foregoing evidences, it is fair to suggest that energy poverty is a challenge the African government needs to give serious attention. The continent has over 50 countries, each with unique energy access challenges. While a case-by-case presentations of the situation in each could be valuable, the message perhaps remains same for all – energy poverty is real; addressing it is critical to economic growth and inclusive development; and not tapping into renewables, which Africa has in abundance, would be a great disservice.

Africa’s Renewable Energy Potential

Africa's renewable energy potential is immense and various estimates abound to suggest that the continent’s energy future is optimistically bright. By 2050, Statista projects the region’s technical potential of renewable energy to reach 5,360 exajoules followed distantly by Australia and Oceania (1911 exajoule), Middle East (I,335), North America (864 exajoule), and South America (761 exajoules). These resources and the settings in which they exist, point to country-specific green energy solutions to fit each country’s strengths and needs. The exploitable hydroelectric power potential, according to the African Energy Commission(AFREC), is estimated at 13 percent of the global total. Solar resources are also abundant everywhere, with daily solar radiation of between 5 and 7 kwh/m2 across many African countries. Biomass and geothermal energy are also aplenty along the Great Rift Valley as well as in the wet, forested central and southern regions.

By 2024, Transparency Market Research projects the small-scale hydropower market in Africa to reach 49, 706.1MW relative to 9,752.9 MW in 2015. Owing to their unique relief and drainage characteristics, countries such as Benin, Cameroon, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have the greatest potential for small-scale hydropower investments. The increasingly favourable regulatory environment, technological improvements, and the rapid decline in cost also present enormous opportunities to scale-up investments in solar and wind energy. In the difficult-to-reach rural communities where centralized grid extension makes little economic sense, the cost advantages in modern green energy technologies is perhaps a great opportunity for governments to improve energy access especially through mini-grids and standalone solutions.

Addressing energy poverty in Africa requires strong political will and sustained collective commitment from all well-meaning stakeholders including the private sector. Sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy access should be seen as a co-requisite to the fight against poverty and as an important part of the bundle of products needed to drive economic growth and inclusive development. Accordingly, pursuing strategies, policies, and regulations that holistically embrace renewable energy options and create a more conducive ecosystem for a strong corporate, governmental, and civil society partnerships is necessary. Specific consideration should be given to lowering barriers to decentralised production systems including mini grid investments as they enhance remote energy access, promote independent power generation, and offer significant bankable investment opportunities in the energy access markets.

Read more HERE

Figures released today by the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy also reveal that gas accounted for 42 per cent, while the nuclear contribution was 21.7 per cent: nuclear output was 6.7 per cent lower due to outages at several large reactors.

Renewable capacity was 42.2 GW at the end of the second quarter, a 10 per cent rise on the same period a year earlier, with over half of the annual increase coming from offshore wind.

Low carbon electricity’s share of electricity generation remained over 50 per cent in the second quarter at 53.4 per cent, compared to 53.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.

Onshore wind generation fell by 12 per cent due to lower wind speeds, although this was more than offset by an increase in offshore wind, due to a 2.2 GW increase in capacity. Generation from hydro fell by 4.5 per cent on a year earlier, because of lower rainfall. Generation from bioenergy was up by 8.9 per cent, despite a fall in generation from landfill gas.

Meanwhile, solar PV increased to a new record of 4.6 TWh, 0.9 per cent higher than the second quarter of 2017, which held the previous record.

James Court, Policy Director at the UK’s Renewable Energy Association, hailed the renewables record as “a significant achievement for the industry. Renewables have never been more affordable and accessible as they are now and this is reflected in the data released today.

“However, for renewables to continue to become more affordable and for the UK to grow its green jobs base, the government must continue to support the industry. Figures show that the lack of support is already having a significant impact on solar power for example which is currently the cheapest option for new power generation.”

He said the UK government “must introduce alternative support and unlock a route to market if the UK is to benefit from cheaper, greener and smarter energy”.

Read more Here

The reason Tesla names its Nevada battery production factory the Gigafactory was to help people understand that only when operating at a larger economy of scale does EV battery production truly become profitable.

Tesla’s mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Now, I don’t want to predict whether Tesla will have to do all of the heavy lifting to completely transition the earth to sustainable energy or if it only needs to get the ball rolling and make the blueprints. My goal is simply to help people understand where we are now and what it is going to take to move the world to sustainable clean energy through battery power. The real world is much more complex, but this simplified math should give a good general image of the situation.

Battery Uses

First off, let me start by explaining that there are 4 main uses for batteries.

Up until recently, the most common uses for batteries were all kinds of consumer electronics. A single AA battery has an energy capacity of approximately 3.75 watt-hours. But for the sake of round numbers, let’s say that a single AA battery has 4 Wh or 0.004 kWh of capacity.

The second most common use for batteries is electric vehicles. EV batteries come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from 16 kWh all the way to 100 kWh. As a couple of examples, a Volkswagen e-up! has about 18.7 kWh of battery capacity and a Tesla P100D has 100 kWh.

The size of a home battery storage unit ranges from 2 kWh to 17.1 kWh per unit. According to Tesla, most households need or will need about 27 kWh, which is why its 13.5 kWh Powerwalls are sold starting with 2 units.

The last and newest battery usage that recently became popular is industrial/utility-scale battery storage. The Tesla Powerpack has a capacity of 210 kWh per Powerpack. The current largest battery installation in the world is in South Australia. It has 129,000 kWh, which is about 614 Powerpacks.

Some Fun with Statistics

According to one statistic, in 2017, there were almost 71 million passenger cars sold worldwide. Now, let’s assume all of the following to be true:

• All 71 million cars are electric.

• Every car has a 70 kWh battery pack (this is average for cars with what is now considered an adequate range).

The Tesla Gigafactory 1 is the largest battery factory in the world. As of the end of July 2018, the Gigafactory had a production rate equivalent to ~20 GWh/yr. By the end of 2018, Tesla planned to be at a production run rate of 35 GWh per year. Once the construction of the Gigafactory is complete, it is supposed to have a total capacity of 105 GWh of battery cells and 150 GWh of total battery pack output per year (which includes EV batteries, Powerwalls, and Powerpacks).

Now, obviously, this has been oversimplified. Passenger cars are not the only vehicles on the roads. Nonetheless, if you wanted to meet the world’s 2018 demand for cars purely with EVs, with every Gigafactory not producing any Powerwalls or any other products, you would need 34 factories that are almost 8 times larger than the largest battery factory in existence today.­ In other words, if you build the factories the size that the current Gigafactory is today, you would need 249 of them.

A lot of people currently believe that the worldwide battery shortage will be met within the next 2 years. That is beyond ludicrous. To meet the worldwide battery demand for EVs alone, we need a chain of Terafactories, not Gigafactories.

Powerwalls & EVs in the United States

Unfortunately, there is very little information on housing and electricity usage per household per country across the world. Thus, it’s extremely difficult to calculate how many Gigafactories we would need to supply the entire world with Powerwalls. (There are also numerous other factors that must be considered to determine how many home storage batteries are needed.) So, instead, let’s try to calculate how many Gigafactories we would need to provide the entire United States with Powerwalls so that, in combination with solar or wind, all households could become self-sufficient. (There are reasons why this is not the logical solution — not every home needs to be equipped with an energy storage unit, and handling storage on the utility scale is largely more efficient. But it seems useful to include in this thought + math experiment.)

There are 126 million households in the US. On average, most households need at least 2 Powerwalls. One Powerwall has a usable capacity of 13.5 kWh. However, in reality, the battery probably has at least 15 kWh. This is to make sure that you can’t charge it to the maximum and always have a minimum reserve. This way the battery will have a longer lifespan. So, in total, we need two 15 kWh Powerwalls (30 kWh per household). That is a total of 3,780 GWh for the entire United States. Let’s assume that a Powerwall needs to be replaced every 10 to 30 years depending on how you use it. Let’s calculate how many Gigafactories we need in order to manufacture 3,780 GWh of energy storage every 10, 20, or 30 years.

We know that Gigafactory 1 will devote 45 GWh to Powerwalls and Powerpacks and 105 GWh to battery packs for cars, so let’s make 2 separate calculations for the potential 10, 20, or 30 year product lifespan.

Now, let’s redo the previous calculation about cars but only for the United States. In 2017, there were 71 million cars sold worldwide, and there were 11.3 million sold in the United States. That means we need 791 GWh.

Now, if energy and car demands don’t rise from 2017 levels and if Powerwalls last at least a little over 10 years, then 8 Gigafactories should be enough to cover all passenger car and residential Powerwalls needed in the United States.

In Conclusion

At this point, I feel inclined to point out that I don’t care how quickly the Chinese, the Germans, Tesla, or anyone else can build large factories — they are not in competition as much as they are in cooperation on the macro scale. There is a shortage of lithium-ion batteries and there is absolutely no way that we can build enough batteries for our needs quickly, not in the next 2 years, not in the next 20 years.

We are going to need much larger and more favorable economies of scale and a cost per kWh that is a lot lower than the $100 per kWh world record that Tesla has just achieved. In addition to that, factories need to become even more space efficient. Tesla’s improvement from 35 GWh to 150 GWh is a notable achievement in that direction, but even they can and will do better eventually. I just hope that other brands will learn from them.

We are not going to need Gigafactories, we are going to need Terafactories or even Petafactories that are built everywhere around the world and not just by Tesla — by everyone. This is the only way that we will be able to meet the constantly increasing global demand for batteries. Companies should be on their knees begging Tesla for its technology and Gigafactory blueprints if they want to stay relevant in the industry.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we will look at past, current, and planned battery factories — what products they produce and for whom.

Read more HERE

The Moray West Offshore Windfarm aims to deploy 90 turbines off the coast of the Moray Firth which could provide power for more than 900,000 homes.

The development manager for the project yesterday stressed the company’s commitment to supporting local firms in the Aberdeenshire and Moray region.

Jamie Grant, development manager for the Moray West Offshore Windfarm, said: “We’re really keen to make a success of the local procurement policy. We’ve put a stakeholder manager in place and his job will be about driving the supply chain plan and trying to capture that local supply chain side of things at an Aberdeenshire and Moray level.”

Mr Grant, who described the numbers as “cautious”, said the economic value to the economy would hit £90m locally, while topping £160m Scotland-wide.

Adding that 150 local onshore jobs would be created, Mr Grant said his team will also look to go out and engage with local firms to make them aware of the opportunities.

The Moray West project is due to go before area committee meeting next week in which the local community will be represented.

In July, the local Sandend community celebrated after winning a David vs Goliath battle against the development.

Residents had been arguing since January against plans for the windfarm substation cabling to come ashore at the beach.

The spot is a favourite among surfers, and they were among the campaigners fighting against the green energy scheme cutting through the sands.

Due to begin in late 2021, Mr Grant said there was now “optimism” about the projects timetable given the end of the saga.

He said: “We’re really proud that we have radically altered and improved the scheme from the community’s perspective, which we’ve done at the behest of the community.”

Mr Grant added many of the projects upcoming meetings would about “understand the concerns of constituents” and focused on some of the “broader concerns of the farming community”.

MP for the Moray constituency, Douglas Ross said: “It’s extremely welcome that such a significant investment will be using local talent and ensuring significant financial investment in the local area.

“It’s good to see this project progressing and the positive impact it will have on the local economy.”

Read more HERE

European-based renewable energy developer DP Energy is managing two berths in the Bay of Fundy through its Canadian registered company, Halagonia Tidal Energy Limited. It intends to develop both berths together at the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) as a single project under the banner Uisce Tapa, which means fast running water in Gaelic.

The project will incorporate five Andritz Hydro Mk1 1.5-MW seabed-mounted tidal turbines and one SR2-2000 floating turbine by Scotrenewables Tidal Power Limited. At 9 MW, this will make it the largest tidal stream array to be deployed anywhere in the world, DP Energy says.

DP Energy says it anticipates deployment of this 9-MW pre-commercial array at FORCE will cost $117 million.

DP Energy has been working with both turbine suppliers for the past two years, during which time turbines from both manufacturers have been deployed in real sea environments in Scotland. In the case of Andritz, the three Mk1 turbines installed at the MeyGen Project have produced a cumulative output of more than 8.2 GWh since their deployment. The SR1-2000 prototype deployed by Scotrenewables at the EMEC facility in Orkney has produced more than 3 GWh since October 2017.

The ERPP aims to help Canada meet the commitments made under the Pan Canadian Framework on Climate Change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing government and industry experience with new technologies and building supply chains to support emerging renewable energy sectors such as in-stream tidal.

DP Energy Chief Executive Officer Simon De Pietro, commenting on the award, said he is “thrilled that NRCAN has recognised the value and potential of the tidal sector as well as the merits of the project proposed. In 2008 DP Energy added Ocean Energy to its Wind and Solar Energy projects and has been actively involved in the marine energy sector, developing projects in the UK, Northern Ireland and Canada since then. Uisce Tapa represents an opportunity to realise a project of meaningful scale in one of the most energetic tidal sites in the world”.

DP Energy has developed 393 MW of wind energy systems. The company has a further 1,476 MW of projects, which are consented, in planning or in late stage development in Australia, Ireland and the UK as well as a number of large solar PV projects across Canada.

Read more HERE