December 4, 2008 by Casey Cole
Made it in the paper this week.
Casey Cole of low carbon consultant, Fontenergy, said the unregulated nature of heat has led to some “questionable practices” and needed outside regulation: “Both a technical standard for heat networks and a customer charter for heat are very welcome developments and we’ll be helping LEP with their work alongside the CHPA.
“While many buildings in London are now “district heat ready”, to date there’s been no common standard to ensure these schemes are actually able to connect to each other. In addition, rules for the provision of heat will give greater protection to customers and hopefully unify the many disparate methodologies in use at the moment.”
Posted in chp, engineering, london | Tagged CHPA, DH, district heating, LEP | Leave a Comment »
November 27, 2008 by Casey Cole
The mighty triumvirate has received royal assent: the climate change bill (excellent), the energy bill (excellent), and the planning bill (frightening) have now become acts. So now the UK is legally bound to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 with interim targets along the way. Within a year we’ll see feed in tariffs for distributed energy up to 5MW. And ironically, the planning bill may be used to railroad through airport expansion and new coal fired power – but let’s ignore that for now.
Continue Reading »
Posted in climate change, energy, feed in tariff, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities | Tagged climate change bill, DECC, Energy Bill, planning bill | 1 Comment »
November 27, 2008 by Casey Cole
Some people have got the wrong end of the stick on the Citiworks ruling. But some companies appear to be deliberately spreading misinformation to further their own ends.
Just to be clear the ECJ ruling doesn’t make private wire illegal. It does require that private wire networks allow third party access. In other words, if I operate a private wire network I have to allow other electricity suppliers access to my customers. This can be done in a couple of ways, but it can be done without changing the private wire arrangement. In other words, the network will still be license exempt.
So if you come across people saying otherwise, you can contradict them with confidence.
Posted in private wire | Tagged Citiworks, ECJ | 7 Comments »
November 23, 2008 by Casey Cole
Til recently, I’d only dealt with the very end of the wood chip supply chain, the part where the chips arrive in a lorry, ready to be tipped into the chip store and burned in the boiler. But in connection with a number of new projects, I’ll be more closely involved in the whole woodchip lifecycle: chipping, drying, storing, delivery etc. And while getting to grips with some practicalities a few interesting quirks have come to light. Maybe not earth-shattering, but interesting just the same so I thought I’d note a couple down here.
First, when you buy wood chip don’t forget you’re paying for water. So if you hold on to that chip for any length of time in the right conditions it will dry further, reducing your tonnage and so increasing your cost per tonne. For example, if you buy a tonne of fresh wood chip at 55% moisture content for £45 and then store it under cover and let it dry out, here’s how the total mass and £/tonne will change as the chip dries to around 25% moisture.
Fig 1 – Total mass and £/t for a tonne of wood chip as it dries
Continue Reading »
Posted in biofuel, biomass, energy, renewable energy | Tagged wood chip | 5 Comments »
November 17, 2008 by Casey Cole
Over on the Sustainability Blog, Michael pointed out that, according to the IEA report, the cost of decarbonising the world’s energy supply would be less than has been spent recently in shoring up the world’s economies. For me a slightly more disturbing number is hidden deeper in the IEA report.
$3.6 trillion – the cost of decarbonising all the world’s energy production between 2010 and 2030.
$9.5 trillion – required investment into oil infrastructure in order to meet demands for oil between now and 2030.
So the cost of decarbonising is a fraction of the amount needed in order to shore up oil infrastructure to maintain business as usual. Sure, this is an oversimplification, but at the heart of it is a sad truth.
Posted in climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability | Tagged IEA report | Leave a Comment »
November 16, 2008 by Casey Cole
There have been further amendments to the Energy Bill in the Lords in connection with feed-in-tariffs. The one year implementation deadline is back in. Excellent news as the detail of how FiTs are implemented will almost inevitably be bogged down in long discussions between government and power suppliers – a one year limit should focus minds.
Also, the 50kW limit on capacity of gas CHP has been lifted. This means Continue Reading »
Posted in energy, feed in tariff, micro chp, other stuff, renewable energy, uncategorized, utilities | Tagged Energy Bill, FiT | Leave a Comment »
October 30, 2008 by Casey Cole
Last night, Lord Hunt came back with his amendments to the Energy Bill and, as promised, here’s an update. For electricity feed in tariff, he’s proposed:
- Feed in tariff for renewable generation up to a maximum of 3MW (excellent).
- Qualifying technology: biomass, biofuels (oh dear), fuel cells, photovoltaics, water (including waves and tides), wind, solar power, geothermal sources, combined heat and power systems with an electrical capacity of 50 kilowatts or less.
- No timetable for implementation (as far as I could see – is it buried in there somewhere? What will the Baroness say?)
On a heat incentive:
Continue Reading »
Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, feed in tariff, heat pumps, micro chp, renewable energy, sustainability, wind turbines | Tagged Energy Bill, heat incentive, heat obligation, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, renewable heat | 1 Comment »
October 28, 2008 by nickdevlin
A quick thought on feed in tariffs.
If a value is agreed for micro power generating renewables, what will the impact be on the solar thermal industry? Would this amount to an anti-competetive subsidy for one type of technology over another? And if so, what are the wider implications?
I can see a scenario in super low energy dwellings where the feed-in tariff for PV might result in an electric heating and DHW solution, but without solar thermal as it may have a poorer pay back. This could result in solutions biased towards oversized PV in situations where solar thermal provides a more common sense fit.
Any thoughts?
Posted in climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, renewable energy, sustainability | Tagged Feed In Tariffs | 2 Comments »
October 28, 2008 by Casey Cole
This is my first post from an iPhone using the free wordpress blogging app. Very fun.
Wired magazine recently predicted the end of blogging. As the once democratic medium is hijacked by journalists, apparently people are flocking to twitter as the best means of keeping “in touch” with friends and colleagues. For me it doesn’t make sense to replace blogging with twitter’s vacuous soundbites, which seem tailor made to discourage coherent discussion. Having said that, this sort of mobile blogging isn’t far off. Excuse me, I think I nearly tweeted.
Posted in other stuff | Tagged iphone | 1 Comment »
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