Quick Take: It’s always important to study smart grid pacesetters. These days, that means studying China. Especially since the smart grid market in the United States contracted a painful 33% in 2013, as you will read below. – Jesse Berst Who’s leading the world in smart grid? Consider the five points below before you give your answer:… Keep reading →
Can government stimulate investment in renewable energy generation by guaranteeing an electricity price for developers of sources such as wind and nuclear?
The UK government thinks it can, and recently introduced a long-awaited bill that would set a “strike price” for power generated by low-carbon producers, and recover the costs from consumers via electricity suppliers. Keep reading →
While some parts of the world take hydropower for granted, it’s an unfamiliar concept in many others. Energy market analysts at GlobalData, however, say government support globally is “making hydropower a key renewable energy resource” and that small hydropower plants (SHP) in particular are showing serious growth, largely because of the numerous advantages they have over larger facilities.
According to a recent GlobalData report, global installed hydropower capacity grew from 896.9 gigawatts in 2006 to 1.072.1 gigawatts in 2011. The company anticipates that number to climb to 1,443 gigawatts by 2020 because of continued government support. Keep reading →
Nuclear plant operators around the world are helping to meet higher demand for electricity by extending the operating lives of plants rather than embarking on the costly and time-consuming process of building new ones, according to a new report.
The cost of operating a Plant Life Extension (PLEX) program is considerably lower than the capital cost of building a new plant, and so is being widely adopted as a way to meet power demand, which is expected to show a compound annual growth rate of 4 percent worldwide between 2012 and 2020, said the report from the U.K.-based business-intelligence group GlobalData. Keep reading →
