New advances in batteries and storage technologies for electricity may soon solve one of the most vexing issues with wind and solar energy – dealing with their intermittency. The wind and sun […]
Train-Pumped Energy For Grid-Scale Power Storage
Thinking global: China’s coal-fired energy conundrum
In China about 150GW of new coal plants will likely be completed over the 2016- 2018 time frame. The plants are being built because lower coal prices (half what they were) and relatively fixed […]
Brookings Institute: net-metered solar a net benefit to all utility customers
PV Magazine The prestigious Washington D.C. think tank’s analysis of existing literature shows a broad consensus that net metering – where solar households receive the same rate as the general electricity tariff […]
Why rooftop solar – and full retail feed in tariffs – benefits all consumers
(Ed: The issue of feed in tariffs is a critical one in all countries, particularly Australia, where new tariffs offer a fraction of the retail price. Yet this detailed study from the […]
Hybrid Energy Storage Systems Get the Best of Both Worlds
Many years ago, I was part of a U.S. Air Force program with the goal of reducing the battery weight carried by airmen and soldiers by 25 percent. The Air Force Program […]
Oil: Not Yesterday’s Fuel, Just Yet
The new hype is to say that the end of the oil age is near. In the long run, the importance of oil will diminish, write Peter Simon Vargha, Chief Economist at […]
Net Metering Is Not a Drain on the Grid. But That Doesn’t Mean It Should Stay, Say Researchers
A new paper from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution finds net energy metering is not a financial drain on the electric grid, as some utilities argue. Brookings’ review of literature on the costs […]
The Changing Face of CHP Customers
What method of distributed electricity generation is energy-efficient, cost-effective and well-established in the U.S.? More so than wind or solar, or a combination of them with storage, it is actually co-generation, or […]
How Renewables Are Competing in the Wholesale Market Without Mandates
State renewable portfolio standards have long been the top driver of U.S. utility-scale solar and wind energy growth — until now. This year, for the first time ever, more than half of […]
How Fast Could the Market for Electric Vehicles Grow?
Various policy driven scenarios show electric vehicles gaining market share over the next few decades but with the turnover of the vehicle stock taking longer. I recently argued that BP’s projections showing […]
Prometheus Institute 