According to this Handelsblatt article by Klaus Stratman, the German Cabinet will approve the Hydrogen Strategy that has been discussed for some time now tomorrow. I have been writing lots of posts about hydrogen on this blog over the years. So I welcome the fact that Germany will put some effort in getting green hydrogenContinue reading “German Hydrogen Strategy”
Category Archives: Energy from the desert
Desertec Progressing Nicely
Ed Reed at Energy Voice just posted on plans of the MENA region to get a head start into the market for exporting green hydrogen. The idea is to build large scale solar power stations, then use those to generate CO2-free clean hydrogen for the export market. The article contains lots of quotes from PaulContinue reading “Desertec Progressing Nicely”
DLD 2020 Bitcoin Energy Panel
There was some informed comment on how bitcoin mining helps with solving the climate emergency, as opposed to being a part of the problem. The conference for this panel was the “DLD Munich”, which means “Digital Life Design”. It was founded in 2005, is backed by a large German media company, and attracts a lotContinue reading “DLD 2020 Bitcoin Energy Panel”
Shade from Desert Solar Panels
This Bloomberg article describes one of the largest solar panel projects of the world, with a scale of 2 GW built in China. I learned from that article that putting large numbers of solar panels in an arid area has another benefit I wasn’t aware of. From the article: Shade provided by the project’s panelsContinue reading “Shade from Desert Solar Panels”
Mojave Desert Project
Good news from the United States: The Obama administration is coming up with a “Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan”, according to Carolyn Lochhead at the San Francisco Chronicle. That plan would make available up to 2,000 square miles of desert public land available for large scale solar development. Of course some “environmentalists” worried more aboutContinue reading “Mojave Desert Project”
Kees van der Leun Was Wrong
He wrote five years ago that solar would be the cheapest option by 2018, expecting it to go below 6 cents a kWh by that time. Now Bloomberg reports on the latest auction results in Mexico, where solar averaged 4.05 cents. That beats wind, which averaged 4.39 cents in the same auction. And it beatsContinue reading “Kees van der Leun Was Wrong”
Report on Dii
The German “Tagesspiegel” has published an article about what the “Desertec industrial initiative” has been up to lately (in German). We learn that the number of shareholders has been reduced to three: RWE, ACWA, and SGCC. The latter is the world’s largest utility and based in China, which will be convenient for all Desertec workContinue reading “Report on Dii”
Toaster Challenge
I have made this point before: Energy is extremely cheap in our age, if you compare it to using human work. The last time my headline was “Energy Slaves”, because of an Wikipedia article with that title. Now a team has put Olympic track cyclist Robert Förstemann to work for toasting one piece of bread. TheContinue reading “Toaster Challenge”
Congratulations To Solar Impulse
Solar Impulse is an airplane that runs only on solar power. They are on their way to fly round the world. And they just made it from Japan to Hawaii, after an effort of flying close to five days. That’s good news, as far as it goes. On the other hand, this has only symbolicContinue reading “Congratulations To Solar Impulse”
Christian Roselund On “Capacity Factor Limit”
I recall that I discussed the strange theory of limiting the market share of some variable renewable energy technology by its capacity factor a couple of days ago. Now Christian Roselund goes into more detail. He agrees with me. There is no reason why the share of solar in some grid or other should beContinue reading “Christian Roselund On “Capacity Factor Limit””
