My Experience of a Sustained Power Cut
Riding seamlessly through a power cut with a home battery.
Power shutoffs cause a battery boom in California
Contractors across California are seeing greater demand for battery storage than ever before in response to PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs. With the threat of blackouts on the 10-year horizon, customers have decided to take their power into their own hands. As has been well documented, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has begun Public
Chilling ‘Doomsday map’ shows how UK will be left underwater in 80 years’ time
Millions of homes across the UK are at risk of being completely submerged if carbon emissions go unchecked A chilling new map has revealed how parts of the UK will be left underwater in a matter of decades as climate change causes sea levels to rise. Major areas such as Liverpool, London and Humberside could
Huge Battery Investments Drop Energy-Storage Costs Faster Than Expected, Threatening Natural Gas
The global energy transition is happening faster than the models predicted, according to a report released today by the Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks to massive investments in the advanced-battery technology ecosystem. Previous and planned investments total $150 billion through 2023, RMI calculates—the equivalent of every person in the world chipping in $20. In the first
California offers extra solar, storage incentives after wildfires and shut-offs
Communities most likely to be affected by both the effects of and the response to devastating wildfires which have wreaked havoc on California will be given extra incentive to install solar-plus-storage at their properties. In addition to the impact of the fires themselves, the latter part of this year saw utility PG&E, already facing bankruptcy
Setting Economy 7 Times on Your PowerBanx (Victron) Home Battery Storage System
I have previously described how to set overnight charging times (for Economy 7 or similar tariffs) on our most popular PowerBanx systems which use an inverter made by Sofar; here I'm going to cover the same process for PowerBanx systems which use an inverter made by Victron. These inverters are more expensive but have
SSE targets EV drivers with new free overnight charging tariff
SSE Energy Services has become the latest supplier to launch an electric vehicle (EV) tariff, allowing drivers to charge for free. The ‘1 Year Fix and Drive’ tariff is, as the name suggests, a one-year fixed tariff that gives EV drivers up to 2,000 kWh of electricity for free per year, provided they charge their
Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors
DOHA, Qatar — It was 116 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade outside the new Al Janoub soccer stadium, and the air felt to air-conditioning expert Saud Ghani as if God had pointed “a giant hair dryer” at Qatar. Yet inside the open-air stadium, a cool breeze was blowing. Beneath each of the 40,000 seats, small
Rechargeable world: Nobel Prize recognises lithium’s role in a fossil fuel-free society
Earlier this month, John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino were, of course, jointly awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, as co-creators of the lithium-ion battery and therefore “a rechargeable world”. The Nobel Foundation recognised not only the role of lightweight, portable battery technology for mobile phones, laptops and latterly electric vehicles, but also
The Brains Behind our Renewable Technology
I very much enjoyed a recent episode of the The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, in which Professor Saiful Islam of Bath University, talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work studying the materials that make renewable energy possible. Professor Islam has accelerated the use of computer modelling of the behaviours of solids.