#news from 02024: “Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, #Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, #solar or #wind power.” In 02022 I think. #solar-energy #energy
on 02026-04-12archive of https://www.fastcompany.com/91314089/this-solar-powered-steel-mill-in-the-mojave-desert-is-a-glimpse-of-the-future #news by Patrick Sisson from April about Mojave Micro, the new #solar and #wind powered steel mill in the Mojave Desert, which opens in two years, owned by Pacific Steel, which supplies a quarter of California’s rebar. But it has grid #energy as a backup, which it plans to use 15% of the time.
on 02025-12-12Sweetwater, #Texas has a dump of #wind turbine blades. “General Electric filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to fulfill its promise to recycle thousands of blades. GE says it paid the company $16.9 million to recycle about five thousand wind turbine blades, but that GFS instead stockpiled them at facilities in Sweetwater and Iowa. “Only after GFS took millions of dollars from GE, did GFS all but shut down its operations without recycling the Blades,” reads the complaint, filed in U.S. district court in New York.
GE says it later contracted with another company to recycle its blades and is seeking damages to cover these costs as well as reputational damage. Global Fiberglass has not responded to the lawsuit. GE removing its blades from Sweetwater wouldn’t clean up the giant dump; blades manufactured by other companies would still remain.” #energy
on 02025-07-21The #Netherlands also has a 700MW subsea #HVDC cable to #Denmark to get #energy, presumably #wind. It broke for several months in 02020.
on 02025-07-20overview of electrical #energy generation in #Spain in 02024: 248478 GWh total generated, of which 59512 #wind (3% less than 02023), 52391 nuclear (4% less than 02023), 43609 #solar #photovoltaic (19% more than 02023), 34909 hydroelectric (36% more than 02023), 29107 combined-cycle [gas] (27% less than 02023), and 2972 coal. That’s 18% photovoltaic and 23% wind out of 28 gigawatts. There’s a handy CSV to download.
on 02025-06-17maybe overvoltages from #solar and #wind #energy were the cause of the #Iberian-blackout? More because it’s distributed than because it’s not spinning? Because generation operators don’t get paid for reactive power? This is confusing. Solar and wind supplied 33% of #Spain’s electrical generation in 02024 and 37% of #Portugal’s.
on 02025-06-17bar chart of #wind #energy windmill #pricing from 02012 to 02022 shows a decline from about US$1.10/Wp down to about US$0.90/Wp in 02015, holding steady there until 02020, and then rising back to US$1.10/Wp in 02022!
on 02025-05-28#Sky #news propaganda #video opposing #solar #photovoltaic #energy. Shows the nameplate of a house-sized Mitsubishi Hitachi hydrogen-cooled steam turbine generator (310RK09-776-1) producing 3-phase 20kV at 50Hz and what looks like 17984 amps, saying it produces 570–580MW, though my calculation gives 360MW from those numbers. Shows a real-time power price of [AU?]$235, presumably per MWh, attributing the high price to a cold snap in Victoria. Says 1200 tonnes of cheap brown coal per hour produces 1140 megawatts electric, which works out to 3.4MJ/kg, which would be about 15% efficiency, which seems improbably low. “[In the past] you were seeing wholesale prices around (...) $20–40/MWh”, says a guy who’s been working in the field for only 30 years; that also seems improbably low. “10 Australian coal-fired power stations closed in the last decade. There are 15 still running, but most are slated to close in the next decade.” 62% of electric generation on #Australia’s main grid is from fossil fuels, the other 38% from renewables. At 7'51”, it profiles Belinda Jones, a pensioner who’s paying AU$1073.31 per month (US$697/month) because she’s paying AU$0.191/kWh for 3410kWh (AU$651, becoming AU$716.63 after GST) and AU$0.216 for 2700kWh (AU$582, AU$640.10 after GST), from which subsidies are deducted. That implies her house is averaging 8400 watts! Possibly in part because she’s using resistive space heaters instead of heat pumps, but more likely it’s not actually a one-month bill — yes, in fact, at 9'13” we see it’s for 92 days, but she’s still averaging 2800 watts around the clock. (The average comes out to 11.4¢/kWh, which is very cheap by retail standards.) Also, we see at 9'22” that the previous bill was only AU$457.45. A different power bill shown at 45'04” shows someone paying $415 with time-of-day billing — also for 92 days. “Energy scarcity emerges everywhere #wind and solar become the dominant form of electrical generation.” Shows the #LNG export gas terminal at Gladston, the Petra Nova #carbon-capture pilot plant in Houston, and a US$21B #nuclear power plant in Georgia, the second to be built in the #USA in the last 30 years. #Microsoft has signed a deal to reopen #Three-Mile-Island. #politics Viper-7 reports paying 27.56-67.44c/kWh: Peak time (4:00pm to 7:59pm): 67.44c per kWh; Shoulder time (7:00am to 3:59pm, 8:00pm to 9:59pm): 29.65c per kWh; else 27.56c per kWh, including GST.
on 02024-11-27latest #CREA #PDF slides on #China: “China #energy and emissions trends: November 2024 snapshot”. Astonishing: “Total power generation increased by 6.6%, while large-scale power generation grew by 2.1%, indicating most power generation growth comes from #solar and #wind installations that are outside of the industrial production statistics. (...) National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) underreports wind and solar generation, particularly from rooftop and smaller solar plants.” I think those figures are year-over-year rather than month-over-month because, on the same slide, they say, “solar power generation saw an increase of 46.2%.” Carbon emissions are said to have peaked in February 02024 despite #coal electric power generation growing 2.2% (in what I assume is year over year). Astoundingly: “After H1 2024 saw no new permits issued for coal-based steel plants, China issued a policy in August suspending all new #steel plant permits.” (Are they going to import their steel from India, or what?)
on 02024-11-27Press release from #China’s National #Energy Administration (国家能源局), saying, “the installed capacity of #solar power generation is approximately 790 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 48.0%; the installed #wind power capacity is approximately 490 million kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 20.3%.” (“太阳能发电装机容量约7.9亿千瓦，同比增长48.0%；风电装机容量约4.9亿千瓦，同比增长20.3%。”) They also increased thermal power capacity (火电, which apparently specifically means fossil fuels and excludes an almost insignificant #nuclear) by 3.8% to 142597 tens of thousands of kilowatts (万千瓦); if I have the units correct, that’s 14200 gigawatts total fossil generation capacity, increased by 54 gigawatts, vs. 256 new gigawatts solar. More than half of all installed renewable capacity is wind (486GW) and hydro (431GW) so the 22.1% capacity factor I calculated from the other press release is probably mostly due to hydro’s typical 90+% and wind’s typical 40+%, with solar still down in the teens. If we assume 15% for solar and 700 gigawatts as the average installed capacity over the year, we would have 105 gigawatts of generation on average, which would be about 10% of the 1.08TW total inferred from the earlier press release. At 48% per year exponential growth, in 49 months (02028) they’d get the majority of their electricity from solar, and in something like 6 years (02030) the majority of their energy. #photovoltaic
on 02024-11-26#clickbait #video on #solar #energy claiming #China is “no longer approving” coal power plants. Talking-head filler interspersed with web-page screenshots and misleading stock footage (e.g. of concentrated solar power to illustrate a #photovoltaic plant). Claims #Australia will build an even larger solar farm than China’s at, implicitly, Crescent Dunes within the next 5 years. Claims 210 gigawatts of renewables added so far in 02024 (as of November 19, according to a Renew Energy reneweconomy.com story) of which 161GW was grid-scale solar, 39.1GW of #wind power, 7.97GW of hydroelectric, and 1.37GW of biomass, and that coal power plant approvals have fallen 80% according to Greenpeace, or that last year approvals for new coal power plants fell by 92%, or that over the first 9 months of 02024, an increase of 21% over last year; “86% of all power added to the Chinese grid was renewable energy” (unclear if peak or average). Claims that the average [residential?] solar [power] system being installed in #Australia now is 10 kilowatts. Claims that 70% of coal power plants are running at a loss, and that coal power plants need to hit a 70% capacity factor [in what country or countries?] to be profitable. Claims that China shuts down its coal power plants during the day, which seems unlikely to me. Claims that at the end of the third quarter this year, “China’s renewable energy generating capacity had reached 1.73 terawatts, a year-on-year increase of 25%.” Confusedly claims that the difference between the 25% increase in total renewable energy capacity and the 21% increase in the pace of renewable energy installations results from installing batteries and therefore improving the capacity factor of solar, but of course there is not particular reason why these figures ought to be close (it just indicates that growth is nearly exponential) and both numbers are nameplate capacities into which the batteries don’t figure at all. Claims China has installed more solar than the rest of the world combined this year, which is of course true. Claims Tesla’s installation of [utility-scale?] batteries this year is double that of last year, and that they have a two-year backlog of orders.
on 02024-11-26#video about the 20GW 283km² (or 39000km²?) #wind #energy farm in Gansu, #China, the Jiuquan Wind Power Base, with 7000 windmills, for which they’re building #HVDC transmission lines. As usual with Matt Ferrell #Undecided videos, it’s 100% talking heads and stock footage, therefore a waste of time. Although seeing the wind farm was cool.
on 02024-09-17#GE, in preparation for splitting into three companies, cuts 20% of its onshore #wind #energy workforce because of aggressive competition from Siemens, among other things. “While demand for clean energy options is rising as energy shortages continue to wreak havoc, analysts say it's been difficult to make wind energy a cost-effective option.”
on 02022-10-12