Smart Energy

• The UK’s largest battery project so far goes live early. Tesla 98MW, 196MWh designed for Dogger Bank windfarm which isn’t yet live. For comparison on a nationwide level, that’s only about 1/50th of the pumped storage capacity at Dinorwig, so battery storage still has some way to go.
• Well over a million domestic PV installations in the UK so far.
• Apparently only ~2% of US smart meters give their customers access to real time data - despite this being a goal of the federal funding which paid for them.
• Lots of focus on where the wind blows and how Europe’s interconnectors (and political friendships) will be stressed this winter.
• UK policy flip-flops back to allowing onshore wind
• Speaking of flip-flopping, the building of the nuclear reactor Sizewell C seems to be back on again (or is it?) - 12 years after it was first proposed.
  • Interesting thought that 1kg of raw uranium ore costs about £100 yet can provide all the power you need for your entire life (if you your nuclear reactor, spent fuel storage etc. is free!)
• China still adding more renewables than the rest of the world combined.
• Sunamp given a £9m grant to do a 100 home trial of heat batteries (watch our interview earlier this year with CEO Andrew Bissell).
  • And Sunamp heat storage can help address the dunkelflaute.
• Meanwhile at home while outside temperatures fall to -9C I've reduced my boiler flow temp to 55C to test how the home would feel with a heat pump. Generally OK but showed me that two rooms were missing ceiling insulation, and a handful of radiators need upsizing, and heating needs to come on earlier in the morning since house warms-up more slowly.

EV

• After giving-away more than 86m miles of free electricity, Tesco is now charging for charging.
• More than 90% of new car registrations in Norway now EV or PHEV. Although these (1 year-old) stats show that ICE cars are still doing most of the miles.

IoT

• The EU’s upcoming Cyber Resilience Act looks like it will place obligations on everyone in the supply chain, and extend across industrial and smart home applications.
• Self-powered IoT startup Everactive has launched an eval kit.
• Neat: ARM Virtual Hardware lets you set up and program a couple of ARM boards to talk to each other over Matter - all simulated in the cloud.
• Delivery robots rolling out in my home town of Cambridge UK. Being proper British robots, they know how to queue - though in a non-British twist, they do actually seem to work in the snow.

Until next month,

-Pilgrim