UK power prices turned negative for nine consecutive hours on Sunday in what’s been billed as an “extraordinary turn of events” for the country’s electricity system. Unusually low demand, some 2GW below forecasts, combined with high wind generation to send prices spiralling, and National Grid was even forced into instructing onshore and offshore wind farms
Great Britain has completed a full week without coal generation, the first time it has done so since the Industrial Revolution in 1882. National Grid ESO confirmed the landmark had been reached in a tweet at 1:25pm this afternoon, having previously guided that the feat was likely to occur. Coal was last used to generate
The government is aiming to start the legislative process for the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) before the summer in a bid to have the export tariff up and running before the end of the year. Earlier this week Labour MP Kerry McCarthy quizzed officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) on
The UK could end its contribution to global warming by phasing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said, a target which would drive a revolution in the country’s power system. Today the CCC has published a landmark report establishing its recommendation that the UK government set a target
Committee on Climate Change sets out how UK can reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 “Make no mistake, this report will change your life,” says Prof David Reay at the University of Edinburgh. “If the meticulous and robust expert advice here is heeded it will deliver a revolution in every facet of our lives,
With continued global growth of electric vehicles (EV), a new opportunity for the power sector is emerging: stationary storage powered by used EV batteries, which could exceed 200 gigawatt-hours by 2030. During the next few decades, the strong uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) will result in the availability of terawatt-hours of batteries that no longer
A new pilot will replace coal with molten salt to create giant Carnot batteries. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or DLR) is investigating whether Germany’s coal plants could be reused as energy storage assets. The research body, which has a track record in concentrated solar power (CSP) development, is planning
The transition to a low-carbon energy system is a few steps closer after two technologies that were immature and hugely expensive only a few years ago saw spectacular gains in cost-competitiveness in the last year. New research from Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) shows that the cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 35% over the past
Renewable energy generation hit a record high in 2018, with gas, coal and nuclear all falling.New statistics released by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) showed that renewable energy accounted for 27.5% of the UK electricity supply last year, an increase of four percentage points on the previous year.Renewable energy production in
2018 may have been the year of residential energy storage, according to a leading analyst, but grid storage was no slouch.2018 was also the year that grid-level batteries broke out of early adopter states, said Dan Finn-Foley, a senior analyst with Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, and began appearing in places that might once have