Renewable Trading
Initial trials of Good Energy and Open Utility’s peer to peer energy trading service Piclo have concluded that the system could “bring renewable tariffs to life” and benefit both generators and consumers. Trading on the platform began on 1 October 2015 with 37 different participants from across the country buying and selling renewable-generated electricity between themselves. The Piclo system uses meter data, generator pricing and consumer preferences to match demand and supply over half-hourly periods. The trial was only open to sites with half-hourly settled meters capable of holding Good Energy contracts. Piclo matched generation and consumption according to various criteria including preferences, locality and pricing, while consumers were able to select and prioritise where they purchased their electricity from.
Solar Portal 6th May 2016 read more »
London Elections
The most recent polls all but suggest a convincing victory for Labour’s Sadiq Khan, paving the way for him to succeed Boris Johnson as London mayor. But while Khan and all the other mainstream candidates promised to support solar in the campaign’s early throes, air pollution has overtaken it as the environmental message of choice.
Solar Portal 5th May 2016 read more »
Solar Ulster
Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) tenants are beginning to reap the benefits of having solar panels installed as part of the largest ever domestic renewable solar PV installation in the province. The value of the initiative at 1,000 NIHE tenants’ homes was recently recognised by the flagship awards for the renewables industry in Northern Ireland. NIHE scooped the ‘Most Successful Renewable Electricity Installation’ at the Action Renewables Awards. In the Mid-Ulster area over 50 homes, which were identified as having aspects and rooves suitable for solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, have already been fitted. The £5m project is being privately financed by Saliis Limited and is based on the ‘rent a roof’ model at no cost to NIHE. According to NIHE, the scheme is proving highly successful showing opportunities for substantial energy saving as well as delivering direct cost savings to tenants. It is one of a number of ground-breaking projects that NIHE, as Northern Ireland’s Home Energy Conservation Authority, is using to help combat fuel poverty in the province.
Rural Energy News 5th May 2016 read more »
Green Gas
Sainsbury’s is now generating 10 per cent of its energy consumption from leftover food waste. Ten of the supermarket’s outlets are running on energy collected from Sainsbury’s depots in in Sherburn-in-Elmet and Haydock in a partnership with Refood, a UK food waste recycle initiative. The food is used to generate carbon-neutral electricity for power and heating.
Independent 5th May 2016 read more »
Sainsbury’s has cast doubt on the UK’s ability to keep the lights on, revealing it has built a string of new power plants for its supermarkets in part due to fears of a looming energy crunch. Paul Crewe, a senior executive at the supermarket giant, said he had sleepless nights over energy security and feared UK electricity demand could soon outstrip supply. The new gas-fired power generators – already supplying electricity for 10 supermarkets, and due to be built at a further six this year – would enable the stores to keep trading even in the event of a blackout, he said. “It gives us energy security,” Mr Crewe said. “Energy security is extremely important, it keeps me awake at night if I’m honest thinking about it – especially as we use just under one per cent of power in the UK. We know UK grid infrastructure is at an extremely stretching period of time.” He raised concerns about the UK being “reliant on interconnectors from Europe and gas from the Baltic and Russia”. “Having the ability to generate our own power at a local level gives us surety of supply at these locations as the availability of electricity becomes more stretched across the national grid infrastructure, with demand potentially outstripping supply in the near future,” he said. Mr Crewe, head of sustainability at Sainsbury’s, said the new generators, which produce both heat and power, would be profitable and also formed part of its strategy to go green by generating energy from leftover food waste. Sainsbury’s sends inedible food waste that cannot be used for human or animal consumption to anaerobic digestion plants where it is turned into ‘biogas’. This is fed into the national gas grid and the supermarket giant then buys an equivalent amount of gas back out of the grid for use in its new power plants.
Telegraph 4th May 2016 read more »
Energy Storage
Series of high profile deals suggest innovations in energy storage are starting to push down costs and push up commercial viability. A series of deals have this week underlined growing investor interest in the expanding energy storage market, as a number of leading firms announce progress in their pursuit of more cost-effective energy storage systems. UK-based battery start-up Nexeon became the latest energy storage specialist to pique investor interest yesterday, announcing it has successfully completed a £30m funding round to support its ambitious expansion plans.
Business Green 5th May 2016 read more »
South-west Renewables
Merlin Hyman, chief executive of Regen SW. says we have reached the point where wind and solar are significant contributors while the input of dirty coal is in decline. Plus, the focus for large-scale solar schemes is moving away from Cornwall and Devon and into Wiltshire. The reason is technical and to do with the set-up of the Grid. Mr Hyman says that solar and wind are now as cheap or in many cases cheaper than any other ways of generating electricity where there are good resources of sun or wind. The trend is towards smaller, community schemes which are in themselves less intrusive in their scale, and which bring direct benefit to those who live near them. Plymouth Energy Community, set up with the support of the city council, has 1,500 members and has helped more than 11,200 households, saving over £341,000 from annual fuel bills. In April, TECS, a Teignbridge community energy group, hit the target of £60,000 for its share offer for a solar installation at Teign School. Those projects show that small really can be beautiful in terms of their contribution to communities – and reducing the impact on our precious landscapes.
Plymouth Herald 5th May 2016 read more »
Solar Plymouth
A share offer in bid to raise £1.23m for solar power in Plymouth.
Plymouth Herald 5th May 2016 read more »
Solar Water
Thousands of solar panels floating on a reservoir are helping to keep water flowing to taps in Manchester. The solar power farm covers four hundred and eighty thousand square feet of water at Godley Reservoir. It’s one of the biggest projects of its type in Europe and already generates energy for a nearby treatment plant. It’s estimated it’ll pay for itself within ten years. And the water company involved wants to build more solar farms across the North West as Ashley Derricott explains.
ITV 5th May 2016 read more »
Community Funding
Marks & Spencer has launched the second wave of the M&S Energy Community Energy Fund, offering up to £350,000 of funding to renewable energy projects around the UK. The fund was originally launched in July 2015 to mark the company’s transition to 100% renewable energy in the UK. Following the success of its first phase, which saw up to £400,000 awarded to 26 community energy projects, M&S Energy is making a second fund available to enable more communities in the UK to generate renewable energy and become environmentally and financially sustainable.
Solar Portal 4th May 2016 read more »
Hydrogen
“Hydrogen could be the perfect zero-carbon fuel; burning it creates two products essential to society – energy and water. Use sustainable sources of biomass in its production along with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and you have the potential to deliver carbon-negative power and heat at either domestic or industrial scale.” Dr Hyungwoong Ahn, of Edinburgh University will take part in the Biomass, Biogas and Biofuel session today (4 May; Carron, 16:00 – 17:30) to describe his study of a biomass gasification combined heat and power (CHP) plant with carbon capture.
Scottish Energy News 4th May 2016 read more »
Heat Pumps
The company are committed to providing industry-leading products to help define the future of the renewable heating sector. As an integral part of government’s plans over the next decade, the importance of renewable heating is not to be underestimated since the heat used in UK homes, public buildings, businesses and factories is responsible for around 50% of all energy use. Housing associations all over the country are looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint by improving their renewable energy technologies, and the air source heat pump is a big game changer as it requires no new heating infrastructure. Colin Reed, Sustainable Manager for Glasgow Housing Association and one of the partners involved in the development of the 400kW low-carbon heat pump said “We intend to use heatpumps of this scale in our housing stock. We’re looking to deploy in Hillpark Drive. In Glasgow alone we have 127 high rise blocks with over 10,000 properties where district heating is a viable option.”
Star Refrigeration 4th May 2016 read more »
Solar Kindom
Award-winning Scottish installer, Solar Kingdom has completed its largest ever roof integrated system, fitting a single roof with 60 panels, or 15kWp – in the process creating significant savings in installation costs. Installed for businessman Craig Muir at Strathore Business Park, near Kirkcaldy, the Strathore Plant Hire main office building (above) was to be re-roofed as part of a major refurbishment. During the process, he decided this was an opportunity to consider a solar installation and invited Solar Kingdom to complete the work. By fitting the solar panels as part of the building renovation, all installation work on the roof became cost-neutral. Scaffolding was already in place and fitting the panels was substitutional for the work of fitting tiles. There were further savings of over £1,000 in cost of roof tiles. Solar Kingdom opted to use the new Viridian Solar Fusion system which is fast and easy for experienced roofers to install. This combination reduced the total cost of the project compared to a conventional installation process.
Scottish Energy News 4th May 2016 read more »
Energy Voice 5th May 2016 read more »
David MacKay
Members of the renewable energy industry have responded to comments made by the late Sir David Mackay, who said in his final interview that further deployment of solar capacity was not an effective energy strategy for the UK. Leonie Greene, head of external affairs at the Solar Trade Association, commented: “There is striking consensus now in the energy industry about the shape of a clean energy system and it is smart, highly distributed, much more active on demand-management and centred around consumers who may also be producers. The technological challenges Professor MacKay defined are readily surmountable and the plummeting costs of renewables are our best hope of averting dangerous climate change.”
Solar Portal 4th May 2016 read more »
Renewable Heat
It could already be “too late” for the UK to meet its renewable heat target by 2020, the Energy Saving Trust has warned. Speaking at a conference in London the Trust’s chief executive Philip Sellwood said that, although the energy efficiency of homes is improving, “significant policy gaps” mean it could already be too late for the UK to meet its target of 12 per cent of heat demand from renewable sources by 2020.
Utility Week 3rd May 2016 read more »
Island Energy
Given recent newspaper headlines, one might think it a bit strange to suggest that anyone should actually be encouraged to invest in anything “offshore”. Well, that’s exactly what I’m calling on our politicians to do. However, instead of funds quietly disappearing off to tax-havens such as Panama or the Cayman Islands, I’m proposing an investment that would genuinely benefit society, just off our own shores, on the islands of Scotland. More precisely, I’d like to urge the Prime Minister David Cameron to deliver on his promise last year to help unlock the green energy potential of Scotland’s islands. Establishing a financial mechanism, or “Contract for Difference”, to support renewables on the islands as he committed and enabling them to connect to the National Grid would lead to massive investment into some of our most remote and rural communities. Home to some of the best wind, wave and tidal resources in the entire country it makes total sense for us to try and tap into that island potential to generate clean power for Britain’s homes and businesses. It’s been estimated renewables schemes in the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland could generate five per cent of total UK power demand by 2030. That’s approaching the same output expected from the troubled Hinkley C nuclear power station, but with none of the radioactive mess to clean-up afterwards and for a fraction of the cost.
Herald 4th May 2016 read more »
Local Energy
NEW project is set to examine the possibility of using Scotland’s vast renewables potential to link local energy generation to local energy use. The initiative Algal Solutions for a Local Energy Economy (ASLEE) will be discussed at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow next week, organised by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC). It is no secret that the west coast and islands of Scotland have some of the best potential for renewables in Europe – 25 per cent of wind and tidal energy and 10 per cent of potential wave energy. However, many schemes are constrained or delayed because of weaknesses in the electricity grid and ASLEE will consider how constraints could be removed if more energy was used locally. The project will examine the technical and economic viability of using renewable energy and grid balancing to reduce manufacturing costs in remote areas.
The National 30th April 2016 read more »
Orkney Hydrogen
A HYDROGEN fuel technology project in Orkney has been awarded more than 2 million euros in EU funding. The initiative, entitled Big Hit, will see a device which converts electricity to hydrogen fuel being installed. The project aims to use an electrolyser to convert excess electricity generated on the islands. As part of it, 10 electric vans will be fitted with equipment which means they can use the hydrogen fuel to extend their range.
The National 30th April 2016 read more »