As with so many things, Californians are going first where the rest of us will follow Monday morning dawned smoky across much of California, and it dawned scary – over the weekend winds as high as a hundred miles an hour had whipped wildfires through forests and subdivisions. It wasn’t the first time this
More batteries installed. More markets opening up. And grid storage making itself indispensable in unanticipated ways. For too long, the rhetoric around what storage can do for the grid vastly outweighed the actual doing. This year, the industry closed that gap more than ever before. Exceedingly few batteries actually live up to the vision
Electric car, home solar installation and an energy storage system that all complement each other. Fully Charged's Robert Llewellyn, a well known electric cars enthusiast, from the beginning was also very interested in the electrification of homes, which means own electricity generation using solar and storing the energy using batteries. In one of the
California’s fire season is back. Yet if this past week is any indication, our emergency response remains woefully inadequate. When disaster strikes we are far from being energy resilient, ensuring reliable access to electricity for our most vulnerable communities. Climate fires are California’s new normal. Dangerous combinations of high (20-60 mph) sustained winds and
Energy storage is no longer an asset class that utilities can ignore. One of the biggest criticisms of renewable energy has been its inherently intermittent nature. Solar energy plants don't produce power at night, and wind turbines don't produce power without wind, so utilities need fossil-fuel or power plants to keep the grid running.
Introduction For nearly a decade I have been following the bad news on climate change and peak oil and become increasingly concerned by them. In recent years I have started to both reduce my personal carbon footprint and actively prepare for what looks like an uncertain and troubling future for us all. I have now
Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) tariffs have been unveiled after the legislation came into full effect yesterday (1 January 2020), with pricing ranging wildly from Social Energy's 5.6p per kWh down to the barely-compliant 0.001p per kWh that Shell Energy is offering. Under the SEG, suppliers with over 150,000 domestic customers were required to launch
With Public Safety Power Shutoffs increasingly common in California to prevent the spread of wildfires, many are calling for more residential solar plus storage to help keep the lights on. The Californian wildfire season has been devastating, with some 53,354 acres burned according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. This autumn,
Climate experts ‘bewildered’ by government ‘burying their heads in the sand’, and say bushfires on Australia’s east coast should be a ‘wake-up call’ Leading scientists have expressed concern about the lack of focus on the climate crisis as bushfires rage across New South Wales and Queensland, saying it should be a “wake-up call” for
For a brief period a few days ago, Bordesholm in Germany became a showcase for how entire communities could switch over to renewable energy, with the backing of energy storage capacity. Solar inverter maker SMA’s devices, including its Sunny Central Storage battery inverter and SMA Hybrid Controller XL, were used in a trial whereby