Rethink Energy Talks Ep. 16: Hystar's PEM electrolyzer manufacturing
In this episode we spoke to Tina Anderson, Head of Sales at Hystar, a Norwegian electrolyzer manufacturer with 100 MW production capacity - growing towards 4.5 GW. We cover topics including ramping up and down to react to electricity prices - as well as providing demand response services to the grid, the production cost of hydrogen electrolysis, and the policy environment in Europe.
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Rethink Energy 224: Spain's historic blackout, thermal energy storage for industry, and the future of the silver shortage
Spain's massive blackout vindicates the investments being made into synchronous condensers and grid-forming inverters in Australia and northern China. While an official post-mortem has not been released yet for Spain's blackout, South Australia's 2016 blackout may provide a close parallel - including the policies adopted afterwards to stop it from happening again.Thermal energy storage is being adopted at scale in China in order to provide heat to industry - with molten salt tanks installed in pilots at coal power plants.The solar industry's silver paste consumption is roughly equal in scale to the global silver shortage - we discuss the prospects of adopting alternatives to intensive silver paste use.
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Rethink Energy Talks Ep. 15: Voltalis demand-side flexibility operation comes to the UK
In this episode, we spoke to Randall Bowen, Managing Director of Voltalis UK – the biggest European demand-side flexibility operator. Of particular interest to the UK's energy strategy is its GW-scale fleet of storage heaters, which are not currently responsive to spot market electricity prices. When the relevant authorities give their stamp of approval for Voltalis to install its devices, they will become part of grid flexibility – a crucial step given the UK’s struggles with other types of grid development.Voltalis is a French company with 1,500,000 integrated appliances across more than 200,000 residential and commercial buildings in Europe, now expanding into the UK.
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Rethink Energy 223: Australia's pumped hydro fleet, Trump kills offshore wind, solar manufacturing output shrinks 45%
Australia's pumped hydro fleet now promises over 500 GWh of storage capacity - meaning the county is set to be a world leader (or leader of the West) on pumped hydro, mostly with 10-hour duration, just as it was a world leader on BESS adoption.President Trump has mauled the offshore wind industry by calling Empire Wind 1's approvals into question - in an even harsher move than we'd expected.Solar manufacturing is down 45% year-on-year, as output declines back towards the 600 GW "plateau" value of demand - which the world will struggle to accelerate beyond.
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Rethink Energy 222: Trump's tariffs, UK and South Korean zonal pricing, Trina Solar's perovskite licensing
Trump's tariffs mark a redoubled shift of the US away from free trade, but it's hard to find a direct impact on renewables - since the US was already a hostile policy environment, and the rest of the world already had Chinese overcapacity.The UK and South Korea are both considering zonal pricing reforms to their power markets, which would rationally push industries to move closer to renewable energy power projects, but may disadvantage renewables and South Korea's KEPCO.Trina Solar and Oxford PV's technology licensing deal is big news for perovskites - but it's still hard to say how far away commercialization is.
The Rethink Energy Podcast complements Rethink Energy's weekly strategy bulletin, as we dive deeper into the dynamic factors of the energy market. From offshore wind to carbon credits, we discuss the week's key issues, while providing insight into our own research and forecasts to explore where momentum is building through the energy transition.
The team: Connor Watts, Bogdan Avramuta, and Andries Wantenaar.
If you want to stay ahead of the game, and avoid falling victim to the under-optimism of the market giants, find out more at rethinkresearch.biz/product/rethink-energy/
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