38% Electricity OECD Europe Renewable

More than gas and coal combined (March 2018).

[twitter.com] – IEA

[iea.org] – Monthly Electricity Statistics

Groningen Wants to Become the Dutch Hydrogen Province

Why Groningen? Prof. van Wijk and premier hydrogen evangelist in the Netherlands sums it up:

1. Paris Accords. Not specific for Groningen, but important stimulus.
2. Groningen produced natural gas for decades. The expertise and infrastructure for a replacement is there.
3. There is a lot of renewable electricity on offer from Norway and from Danish, German and Dutch offshore wind parks.
4. There is a lot of chemical industry already present that could work with hydrogen.

The goal is to produce 270,000 tons of hydrogen annually, in order to bring down per kilo hydrogen prices to 2-3 euro.

[nltimes.nl] – Groningen to Test Netherlands’ First Hydrogen Train
[profadvanwijk.com] – The Green Hydrogen Economy in the Northern Netherlands
[northerntimes.nl] – Groningen Seaports investing in green hydrogen
[deepresource] – Prof. Ad van Wijk
[deepresource] – Price of Hydrogen Production via Electrolysis
[deepresource] – Cost Hydrogen From Renewable Energy

NOOR – World’s Largest Solar Power Plant in Morocco

The countries of Northern Africa have one of the best solar resources in the world, lots of space and additionally close proximity to one of the economic power houses of the world, Europe. Additionally, the Maghreb has a weak economy. As part of the international division of labor nothing would be more logical than that Northern Africa would concentrate itself on producing renewable energy, like electricity and/or hydrogen, for European markets, replacing Arabia as an important oil-energy supplier to Europe.

Airborn Solar Panels

“Liftoff, we have a liftoff!”. Europe, one of those territories eagerly absorbing photo-voltaic energy generation, has a little bit of a space problem, being one of the most densely-populated areas in the world. A field covered with solar panels unfortunately can’t be used for agriculture. Or can it? The Fraunhofer Institute has found out that it is very well possible to use land for both agriculture and energy generation by stacking both functionalities.

Upshot agricultural yield: corn slightly negative, but grass and shadow-loving potatoes make no difference.

Influence partly shadowing on different crops

[wikipedia.com] – Agrivoltaic
[ise.fraunhofer.de] – Agrophotovoltaics Goes Global: from Chile to Vietnam
[biomlandconf.files.wordpress.com] – 20 slides Fraunhofer Institute
[cleantechnica.com] – Fraunhofer Experiments In Chile And Vietnam Prove Value Of Agrophotovoltaic Farming
[cleantechnica.com] – Combining Solar Panels With Agriculture Makes Land More Productive

Britain Rules the Waves of Offshore Wind

This graph depicts the total amount of offshore wind projects that are “in the pipeline”, a branch of sport dominated by Europeans, who are lucky to own large, shallow water tables in the North Sea, Irish Sea and Baltic Sea, with excellent wind speeds (>10 m/s average). These 600,000 km2 combined have the potential to supply the entire EU with clean electricity three times the current consumption. Currently the British are adopting wind energy at a breath-taking speed, pun intended, although the developers and equipment producers are mainly continental Europeans, that is Danish, Germans, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedish, whose industries are growing rapidly and have the potential to become the successors of the Anglo Seven Sisters oil giants of the 20th century.

[cleantechnica.com] – UK Leads Offshore Wind Rankings As Global Pipeline Increases 10% In 2018, Reports RenewableUK
[deepresource] – The Enormous Energy Potential of the North Sea
[wikipedia.org] – Seven Sisters (oil companies)
[deepresource] – Gold Mine North Sea
[deepresource] – Goldmine Windenergy

Renewables 2017 – Global Status Report

[ren21.net] –

Enyway – kWh Flea Market

Enyway is a new market for locally produced electricity and spin-off of a large renewable energy producer Lichtblick (“glimmer of hope”), a sort of AirBnB for electricity. Enyway is not a producer but a market place, a mediator. If you have a spare roof or unused piece of land, you can install solar panels and directly sell you electricity to others via the Enyway portal. This development could encourage private investment in renewable energy. The key-success factor could be the feed-in tariff system, that could be abolished soon, now that the energy transition is in full swing. Local producers could use this to sell their renewable energy to buyers, who prefer renewable energy over fossil-generated kWh’s. The real upshot is that new investment opportunities open up for private persons. increasing the speed of the energy transition.

[enyway.com] – Company portal
[spiegel.de] – Diese Mühle erzeugt 100.000 Kilowattstunden Strom
[de.wikipedia.org] – Lichtblick (Unternehmen)

High Efficiency Electricity Storage With Antiferroelectrics

[source]

Here we report our first-principles-based theoretical predictions that Bi1−xRxFeO3 systems (R being a lanthanide, Nd in this work) can potentially allow high energy densities (100–150 J cm−3 [*]) and efficiencies (80–88%)

[*] That would be 1 kWh/24 liter.

[phys.org] – Antiferroelectrics for storing energy from renewable sources
[phys.org] – First step toward creating efficient electrolyte-free batteries
[nature.com] – Designing lead-free antiferroelectrics for energy storage
[wikipedia.org] – Antiferroelectricity

Dockwise Used to Transport Windfarm Jackets From Gulf

Offshore wind moving into the area formerly reserved for giant oil platforms only. The world’s largest heavy lifting vessel Dockwise Vanguard of the Dutch based Boskalis was used to transport 36 jackets from Lamprell’s construction yard in Jebel Ali to Vlissingen, from where they will eventually be installed in the 714 MW East-Anglia ONE offshore wind farm. Partners: ScottishPower Renewables (developer), Boskalis & van Oord (logistics), Lamprell (jackets), Siemens (102 x 7 MW turbines + rotor blades).

[offshorewind.biz] – Lamprell Hires Dockwise to Transport East Anglia ONE Jackets
[offshorewind.biz] – First Lamprell-Produced EA1 Jackets Arrive in Vlissingen
[wikipedia.org] – East Anglia Array

The State of Solar

[worldatlas.com] – Countries That Use The Most Solar Power
[energy-charts.de] – Electricity-production in Germany