28 January to 3 February — WIND Europe’s wind sector faces severe headwinds A combination of supply chain problems, inflation, and market interventions caused a steep fall in wind investments in Europe. Wind turbine orders dropped 47% in 2022. There was no new investment in offshore wind in 2022, despite the EU’s climatic targets requiring an additional 30 GW of offshore yearly. SOLAR Solar+Wind surpass gas in the EU

Solar power is booming Solar power is a fast-growing market. It grew 30% a year from 2011 to 2021. And then, it expanded by more than 20% in 2022, despite supply problems and rising prices. Estimates anticipate that the growth will continue, with PV installations expected to triple between 2022 and 2030. Solar price power keeps dropping An explosive…

The new electric world A world without fossil fuels will be primarily electric. Several sectors, previously powered by fossil fuel combustion, progressively pivot to electricity. An easy enough example to observe is transportation. Cars, vans, and trucks progressively turn electric. Boats and planes will follow. Homes provide another example. Heating will follow cooling and…

ENERGY STORAGE Struggling rust belt town gets a boost from rust Weirton, in West Virginia, a former steel town with a population of 18,813, will get 750 new jobs with a battery factory. The Form Energy plant will produce iron oxide batteries for utilities to provide long-duration storage (100 hours). …

The evershifting electric demand Electricity demand varies, both throughout the day and seasonally. Load drops to a minimum at night as most people and most activities stop, and it picks up during the day. It spikes in the evening as people return home from work. It also varies depending on the region. In colder…

Heat and cool with sound Heating water with sound; how could this be? Let’s look at the basics. Heat measures the movement of atoms and molecules. The more they move and giggle, the greater the heat energy. Sound is a vibration that propagates through gases, liquids, or solids. Sound is a snooker game of molecules…

HYDROGEN Cleaver design French Symbio unveiled a system to facilitate on-the-road repair It pinpoints which stack at the fuel cell is damaged. It allows for easy replacement with a spare by the driver. Symbio is a joint venture between Michelin (a French tire company and…

Electric vehicles are too silent Electric vehicles (EV) are silent. Particularly at lower speeds, under 30 Km/h. EVs are too quiet, according to regulators. EVs at low speeds beep alarms to warn pedestrians. What at first glance may seem a defect of EVs can be ours. We got too used to tolerating a noise-polluted environment. Our environment is just too loud …

Solar energy (or, more nerdishly, photovoltaic conversion) displays many advantages, and I love it. So I decided to write a listicle about why it is so incredible. It’s a love letter to solar power. 1 You can use it everywhere. Solar energy works virtually anywhere on the planet. It generates more energy closer to the equator…