Author archives: admin

This report draws on a survey of wind industry professionals to clarify trends in the expected useful life of land-based wind power plants in the United States. Researchers at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that most wind project developers, sponsors, and long-term owners have increased project-life assumptions over time, from a typical term of ~20 years in the early 2000s to ~25 years by the mid-2010s and ~30 years more recently. Current assumptions range from 25 to 40 years, with an average of 29.6 years.

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This report from the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (an office of the US Dept of Energy) provides stakeholders with statistics and analysis of the distributed wind market, along with insight into its trends and characteristics. The report analyzes distributed wind projects of all sizes and details the U.S. small wind market.

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Smart meters form the foundation of the utility sector’s digital transformation. But what has the industry learnt about how to use the vast quantities of data at their disposal?

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A meshed HVDC transmission grid in the North Sea is envisaged by some as the optimal solution to interconnect the growing offshore wind capacity to ensure a sustainable and secure supply of electricity into the region. Such a grid would provide both new interconnections between countries as well as multiple routings for the flow of electricity in the case of failures.

A deployment plan for a meshed HVDC grid in the North Sea is under development in the PROMOTioN project.

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Utility Week Live, the UK’s leading utilities industry exhibition, is now in its fifth year and will be held once again in the NEC Birmingham on 19 and 20 May, 2020. The event each year is attended by over 6,000 industry professionals across energy retailers, gas and electricity network operators, water companies, water and wastewater companies and water retailers.

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The UK’s success in cutting carbon emissions by 38% since 1990 has been largely driven by the decarbonisation of electricity. However, there remains a huge amount of work to do to decarbonise industry, heat and transport and achieve the government’s net-zero commitment by 2050.

This is a challenge faced by governments around the world, but there is a solution that the UK is in an ideal position to pioneer – green hydrogen and green hydrogen-based fuels. Read more

Ready or not, disruption has come to the energy world

The modern utility has to embrace innovation and shake off the conservative, cautious strategies of yesterday. Digital transformation is turning traditional business models upside down, with formerly lucrative markets squeezed and new value chains popping up as customer behaviour evolves.

Start-ups, like teenagers who baffle their parents with their seemingly instinctive knowledge of how to work a smart TV, are dragging utilities into the digital age with their more nimble structure and better grasp of new technologies. But policy and regulation are still mired in the vestiges of the previous ...