Grids & Integration

With buildings responsible for 36% of EU greenhouse gas emissions and half the bloc’s energy demand, European cities will have to accelerate deployment of renewable energy and foster substantial investment in energy efficiency to become carbon neutral by 2050. A new report has found ‘solar skins’ are well positioned to help achieve that goal and multiply the contribution of rooftop solar.

A public enterprise grade energy blockchain has powered up with the promise to accelerate a low-carbon, distributed electricity future. For the first time, energy sector companies are hosting validator nodes on a decentralized network as they seek to adapt to a more digitalized and decentralized energy system.

Netherlands-based EV startup Lightyear has released a prototype for its first solar-powered, long-range EV. Is the car really the environmental dream it’s pitched as?

After earmarking €3 million last year and €4 million in 2017, the Italian region of Lombardy has decided to further support residential and commercial storage projects linked to renewables.

The Finnish company has commissioned a large scale storage project to reduce curtailment of wind and solar assets on Bonaire. The system will use machine-learning based energy management software to provide grid services and manage all of the island’s power generators.

The procurements relate to self-consumption projects with a generation capacity of 100 kW-1 MW. The next tender will be launched in September and will allocate 25 MW of solar capacity. The tenders had been suspended because of low interest and disproportionately high final tariffs for surplus power injected into the grid.

Norwegian hydropower company Statkraft has revealed more details of its solar-storage-wind-gas network. Previously announced plans to potentially double capacity this summer were not mentioned in the update.

The world’s biggest solar market is on track for an unsubsidized future but policymakers continue to grapple with grid planning. A report by the German Energy Agency has offered suggestions on how China’s approach to grid design could be tweaked to ensure priority dispatch for PV while slashing administrative costs and reining in renewable energy losses.

This year’s New Energy Outlook report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts renewables can keep us on track for less than two degrees of global heating for the next decade. But after that, other technologies will have to do their bit.

German power distributor Energy2market intends to develop its international activity under its new French owner. The founding shareholders and Trailstone UK will sell their stock to EDF subsidiary Pulse Croissance.