'The Turning Point' explores the destruction of the environment, climate change and species extinction from differentperspective,by Steve Cutts

'The Turning Point' explores the destruction of the environment, climate change and species extinction from differentperspective. Music by Wantaways. Created in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Clip Studio Pro and Cinema 4D. Written, directed and animated by Steve Cutts

Music by Wantaways
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Britain's electricity since 2010: wind surges to second place, coal collapses and fossil fuel use nearly halves

According to a report in The Conversation (LINK, republished below) by  Grant Wilson, Great Britain generated 75% of its electricity from coal and natural gas in 2010. Now a decade later, these fossil fuels accounted for just 40%, with coal generation collapsing from the decade’s peak of 41% in 2012 to under 2% in 2019. Today natural gas is in the lead at 38%, followed by wind power at 21% and nuclear at about 19%.

Chart created by Grant Wilson, Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham., University of Birmingham.

Full article re-publishe through Creative commons license:

Cheap and efficeint solar panles killed Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project before it came online

The 110 MW Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada was the world’s first utility-scale facility to use molten salt power tower energy storage. It has 10,347 tracking mirrors (heliostats) that follow the sun and reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a heat exchanger, a receiver, atop a 640-foot (200 m) tower. 

 

Crescent Dunes is designed for 10 hours of storage and was to deliver 500,000 MW hours of electricity per year, day and night, to 75,000 homes. In September 2011, SolarReserve received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the project and broke ground. The project had a 25-year agreement with NV Energy for 100 percent of the electricity, but this was terminated by NV Energy in October 2019 due to the project having "failed to produce." Alleging a takeover by the DOE, SolarReserve has raised the possibility of this project filing for bankruptcy. 

 

Cost of Solar Technology in $ Per Megawatt-Hour (Source & credit: BloombergNEF) 

 

According to a recent article in Bloomberg (LINK), cheap solar panels have grown wildly more efficient in recent years, and that is a disaster for such companies as SolarReserve that can’t easily upgrade their dated components. As can be seen in the graph above, the current cost (2019) per megawatt-.hour is almost 2.5 times higher for the Cresent Dune plant as compared to a photovoltaic solar farm.

 

 

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project as seen from an airliner (Wikipedia) 

 

Background: SolarReserve (LINK)

CNBC on how energy storage could revolutionize industries in the next 10 years

CNBC reports (LINK) that over the last decade a surge in lithium-ion battery production has led to an 85% decline in prices, making electric vehicles and energy storage commercially viable for the first time in history. Today the batteries hold the key to transitioning away from fossil fuel dependence, and are set to play a greater role in the coming decade.

Credit CNBC

UBS estimates that over the next ten years the energy storage market in the United States could grow to as much as $426 billion, and there are many ways to buy into the surge, including chemical companies, battery cell makers, car companies, solar companies and utility companies. “Capturing the massive economic opportunity underlying the shift to controls and battery-based energy systems requires that planners, policymakers, regulators, and investors take an ecosystem approach to developing these markets,” sustainability-focused research firm Rocky Mountain Institute said recently.

Credits: Ron DiFelice, Thanks for sharing LinkedIn!

IBM proposes sustainable successor to lithium-ion battery

IBM Research reports (LINK) on a cobalt and nickel free battery technology based on a new cathode and electrode material. Dr. Young-Hye Na (LINK) is the manager of the research group dedicated to ‘Materials and Process Innovations for Energy Industry’ at IBM Almaden Research Center. Her research team is currently focusing on the development of next generation energy storage systems including metal-air batteries, solid-state electrolytes, new battery chemistries based on Cobalt-free cathode materials, and microbatteries.

Most lithium-ion battery material stacks include metals such as nickel and cobalt, which pose tremendous environmental and humanitarian risks in the sourcing of metals. Especially cobalt that is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo has come under fire for careless and exploitative extraction practices. Recently, International Rights Advocates sued Apple, Tesla, and other tech companies over the deaths of children working in these mines (LINK).

The new battery still uses lithium, but because it is generated from seawater rather than mined, there is little impact on the environment.

IBM development lab for next-generation batteries (Photo credit: IBM Research's lab in Almaden, California)

US Federal officials plan to approve a massive solar farm with energy storage in the desert outside Las Vegas

According to the Los Angeles Times United States Federal officials plan to approve a massive solar farm with energy storage in the desert outside Las Vegas. A $1-billion project that will provide electricity to Nevada residents served by Warren Buffett’s NV Energy. At 690 megawatts across 7,100 acres, the facility would generate more power than the largest solar farm currently operating in the United States.

 

 

Germany’s energy consumption and power mix in charts 2019

Fraunhofer ISE just released the 2019 Energy charts for Germany (LINK). In 2019, solar and wind energy plants jointly produced approx. 173 TWh. This puts them ahead of the sum of lignite and hard coal at 151 TWh.

 

Credit: Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE

 
Photovoltaic systems fed approx. 46.5 TWh into the public grid in 2019. Production increased by approx. 0.8 TWh or 1.7% compared to the previous year. The installed PV capacity at the end of October was approx. 48.6 GW. The expansion in 2019 amounted to October approx. 3.3 GW. The maximum solar capacity was approx. 33.5 GW on 19.04.2019 at 13:00. At this time, 48% of the total power generation came from photovoltaic. The maximum share of solar energy in the total daily energy of all electricity sources on 29 June was 27%. From March to September 2019, the monthly electricity production of PV systems was higher than those of coal-fired power plants.

Wind energy produced about 127 TWh in 2019 and was about 15.7% higher than in 2018, making wind energy the biggest energy source share, followed by lignite, nuclear energy, and gas. In eight months, wind power production exceeded the lignite-based generation, and in all twelve months, wind energy was ahead of nuclear energy. The maximum capacity generated was approximately 46.7 GW on 15 March 2019 at 19:00. The share of onshore wind was approx. 102.6 TWh. Offshore Wind was able to increase production from 19.1 TWh in 2018 to 24.4 TWh in 2019. Approx. 20.2 TWh were generated in the North Sea. Offshore production in the Baltic Sea amounted to approx. 4.1 TWh. At the end of October 2019, the installed capacity of onshore wind at 53.1 GW and offshore wind at 7.6 GW.

Hydropower produced approx. 19.2 TWh compared to 15.9 TWh in 2018. The installed capacity is about 4.8 GW. It has hardly changed compared to the previous year.

About 44 TWh were produced from biomass. Production has been declining slightly since 2016. In total, renewable energy sources solar, wind, hydro, and biomass in the year 2019 about 237 TWh. They are thus 7% above the level of the previous year with 221 TWh.