The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) is funding the Ireland division of U.S.-based Ocean Renewable Power Co. (ORPC) to identify feasible tidal energy sites in the coastal waters of County Donegal. 

At more than 10,800 ft above sea level, the 510-MW Zangmu Hydropower Station -- the largest in Tibet and one of the highest elevation hydroelectric facilities in the world -- is fully operational. Constructed at a cost of US$1.5 billion, the facility is located in Gyaca County, Shannan Prefecture on the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River), that flows through Tibet downstream into India and Bangladesh.

Published reports indicate the 165-MW Sultan Mahmud hydroelectric facility located on the Kenyir River in the interior district of Hulu Terengganu, Malaysia, suffered no damage after a 2.7 magnitude earthquake was recorded 10 km below the surface of its catchment, Kenyir Lake, at 9:25 p.m. local time on Feb. 23.  

Capping a busy February for the European Marine Energy Centre is an announcement that tidal turbine manufacturer Tocardo has signed a 20-year deal for testing at EMEC's array in Orkney.

A report released this month by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) indicates hydropower development in India can play a crucial role in the country’s sustainable energy security if sites for new installed capacity -- among other things -- are accessible, stable and affordable.
 

British Columbia-based tidal developer, Yourbrook Energy Systems Ltd., is testing what it calls a prototype of a shallow water tidal-powered generator pump that could one day be used as part of a pumped storage hydroelectric project.
 

As the water levels in dams in South Africa continue to dwindle, the 2015 Zimbabwe Humanitarian Situation Report notes that water levels in all of Zimbabwe’s seven catchment areas are about 18%, their worst levels in decades.
 

Construction resumed Oct. 4 on tunnel works after a brief work stoppage that began on Sept. 28 at the 20-MW Lower Modi Khola run-of-river hydropower facility.
 

U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Patty Murray, D-Wash., today announced funding will be awarded to build the United States’ first open-ocean, power grid-connected wave energy test facility at a site off the Oregon coast, according to a U.S. Senate press release.
 

The North Carolina Attorney General's Office has filed a court injunction against the German ownership group that owns the damaged Woodlake Dam in an effort to make it pay for dam safety repairs.

In a portion of her statement delivered yesterday to the European Union, United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May said, “I hereby notify the European Council in accordance with Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the European Union.”
 

A new paper is being launched today at the House of Lords in London that challenges government, regulators and companies working on clean energy to make gender diversity a key priority. The paper has been produced by the EWiRE network, set up by Regen to provide a vibrant network for women working in clean energy.

Only time will tell whether this is right, but EV adoption is clearly rising both on the individual and fleet fronts. Utilities such as Southern California Edison and Ameren, among many others, are working to build EV charging infrastructure and align power distribution in a way to handle it.

What happens when a famously left-leaning city dives into the buttoned-down business of electric utilities? San Francisco may soon find out.

This week, ConEdison subsidiary, Orange & Rockland Utilities (O&R) and Key Capture Energy (KCE) announced that O&R has selected KCE, an Albany-based, independent developer of utility-scale battery storage projects, will plan, design, install and operate O&R’s new battery storage project in Pomona.

New research shows that small run-of-river (ROR) hydropower projects can provide just as much baseload stability as reservoir-based hydropower plants while being highly responsive to real-time grid and market changes. This means that as the U.S. seeks to expand renewable energy sources without compromising reliability, one option is more flexible (and profitable) hydropower that doesn’t involve dams.

Last week, the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) announced it had officially signed more than 100 affiliates in an effort to become the world’s largest blockchain ecosystem.

The unit of NextEra Energy announced plans to build a 409-MW energy storage facility in Manatee County. FPL says the Manatee Energy Storage Center will be the world’s largest solar-power battery system by four-fold.

In a first for the country, Germany generated 54.5 percent of electricity from renewable energy in March 2019. This is according to data collected by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Solar energy companies could fill the void created by the lack of secure energy transfer between UK and EU, the group says.

The viability of electric vehicles depends in part on a manufacturing plant in eastern Australia, where gleaming white cabinets the size of large refrigerators are loaded onto shipping crates. They’re among the most advanced car chargers available, promising to deliver a full tank of juice in minutes.

Experiments have shown the ability to store ten-times the capacity of water, and for months on end. It is hoped the technology will help overcome any weather-related fluctuations in renewable generation from wind or solar.

For more than 100 years, electricity has been reliably provided to end users through a centralized generation and transmission model. Large coal, hydro and (later) nuclear generating facilities produced huge amounts of electricity and, through a spider’s web of high voltage transmission lines, sent the power to distribution substations which in turn, through a secondary set of lower voltage feeders, distributed the power out to the end users. And when the end user flipped the switch, their lights would go on. This system was very reliable.

This weekend at its “Earth Day Every Day Fair,” Green Mountain Power announced an energy vision to have a 100 percent carbon free energy supply by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The utility said the move is among the most aggressive carbon targets for a utility of GMP’s size in the country.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to use PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy to take over some of the company’s assets for the city’s power needs, a move that would shake up California’s largest utility and remake the state’s energy landscape.

Last Friday evening in Surprise, Arizona a storage facility owned by Arizona Public Service (APS) exploded, injuring four firefighters. Reporter for azfamily.com, Maria Hechanova, visited the scene yesterday and reported that the explosion happened while four hazmat firefighters from Peoria were working to extinguish a battery fire at the facility.

The insurance industry has lots of exposure to climate change. But as Warren Buffet has explained, not so much for companies that do annual policy adjustments, like Berkshire Hathaway. Their exposure is limited because the trends are baked into the premiums. But there is an opportunity for reducing insurance risk due to climate change, and it comes from the insurance industry itself. The business model is to have car insurance salespeople provide leads to virtual electric car charging services. This has perfect demographics because electric vehicle owners are very receptive to solar electricity. Who wouldn’t want a clean transportation solution with local job creation that can’t be offshore?

As of 2018, the city of Los Angeles boasted close to 350 MW of installed local solar power, according to reports. Its solar capacity increased some 44 percent year over year.

ABB is working with Italian utility Evolvere on how to use blockchain technology to deliver transparent and secure peer-to-peer energy transactions.

A new report produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) and released this week says that despite significant progress in recent years, the world is falling short of meeting the global energy targets set in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030.

Brazil is the second-largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world, after only China, and hydropower accounted for more than 70% of the country’s electricity generation in 2018. Brazil’s latest 10-year energy plan seeks to maintain this level of hydro generation while increasing the share of nonhydro renewables, particularly solar.

Duke Energy Florida (DEF) announced three battery storage projects, totaling 22 megawatts, that will improve overall reliability and support critical services during power outages, according to the company.

Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.

Commercial property owners with existing energy storage systems, or owners considering implementing an energy storage system, may be able to benefit from a recent order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) allowing utility companies to pay customers who agree to rely upon their energy storage systems and dispatch the energy during peak events.

Energy generation and consumption is rapidly transforming into a decentralized, decarbonized, and digitized model due to a number of market forces. The declining costs of solar energy systems, as well as the increasing price of energy from the grid has led to grid parity. This has caused PV proliferation to accelerate to such an extent that in the past five years alone, PV installed capacity has increased by 300%. Simultaneously, the EV market is also on the rise and is expected to reach the electrification tipping point by 2030. This is due to support from governments trying to limit the effects of climate change, thus leading to automotive manufactures transitioning their fleets from standard petrol- and diesel-powered cars to EVs. As a result of the acceleration of both of these markets, EV charging has created demand patterns causing an even steeper and faster ramp-up in the evenings than the PV duck curve. , This is causing the grid’s balancing act to be increasingly complex. In order to support this new energy dynamic, advanced management software is required to ensure grid stabilization and to unlock the value of these energy resources.

Global infrastructure services firm AECOM said that Shell Retail has hired it to deliver ultrafast electrical vehicle (EV) chargers across the Netherlands. A total of 200 fast chargers – under the brand name Shell Recharge - will be available at Shell forecourts (filling stations).

A new report from Navigant Research released this week says that revenue from device and data management technologies could grow from approximately $14.8 billion in 2018 to more than $22.1 billion in 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6%.

Presentation by Don Ball of Chemcut Corporation

Presentation by Jason Fullerton of ACI Technologies, Inc.

Presentation by Reza Ghaffarian, Ph.D. of NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Most talk of "energy efficiency" and “sustainability” is insidious or naïve, or even misdirected. We all should switch off the lights when we leave a room, use efficient, gas-fired tankless water heaters (even when they are uneconomical), and work in LEED certified buildings. Intelligent thermostats — Nest, for instance — may regulate our air-conditioning to assure comfort while generating savings, and shaving “peak” load on the electricity grid. Using LED lamps and star rated appliances is admirable too. These solutions and behaviors, while praiseworthy, are beside the point; we should rather favor “supply action” before demand response.

The Americans and the French have been getting on well of late. President Francois Hollande’s successful visit to the White House in February is a case in point — despite the backdrop of his high-profile sex scandal.

Today, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its renewable electricity generation projections as part of its "Annual Energy Outlook — 2014" (AEO2014).

New York State is pushing its utility industry to shift away from a century-old business model into a system that can accommodate more power from solar and wind.

Bracing for greenhouse-gas rules from the Obama administration, two industries are staking out different positions. Coal companies are pledging to sue. Electric utilities are ready to talk.

Utilities, get ready: Massachusetts is in revolutionary mode again. No one is throwing tea into Boston Harbor, but the state is trying to sink outmoded ways of moving around electrons.

Energy use in the U.S. can be split into two large (very, very large) pies. One is electricity for use in homes, buildings, and industry, and the other is transportation, which is powered primarily by liquid fuels (gasoline and diesel) from oil. There are some exceptions, and small overlapping fuel uses — direct industrial use of liquid fuel (a fairly significant quantity), some liquids burned to make electricity (this used to be a significant amount, but is now only a very small amount), and now a very small amount of electricity used to power electric vehicles (EVs).

It's the environmentalist's third rail question: "Should we promote nuclear power as an expedient way to reduce CO2 emissions?" On the one hand, nuclear power generates electricity with almost negligible CO2 emissions — potentially a good way for our society to reverse the current global warming trends. On the other hand, nuclear power is...well...nuclear. Problems related to waste disposal, proliferation and high costs have not been solved, and we still have the occasional disaster.

As a businessman exploring investments, I need simple answers, however complicated the problem. I wish to know: Are microgrids economical? How much investment is needed and for what? What are the factors that principally affect profitability, within the system and in the environment? If microgrids are not profitable at the present, when will they be? I recognize that understanding microgrids as a system requires complicated mathematics and modeling. I’m sympathetic to and respect those who do that.

German electricity consumers will for the first time see a drop in the fee added to their bills to fund renewables, a boost for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pledged to curb the cost for voters.