EV

• UK govt axes plug-in car grant, with immediate effect, in order to “pledge £300 million towards providing incentives on plug-in taxis, motorcycles, vans, trucks and wheelchair-accessible vehicles.”
• UK govt calculates that EVs now have ⅓ of lifetime carbon footprint vs. ICE.
• Bloomberg predicts VW will overtake Tesla by 2024. And BYD claimed they just did (though that includes hybrids).
• NWave, whose parking occupancy sensors can guide drivers to available chargepoints, released an RoI calculator.
• With controversy over using corn as biofuel rather than food, given Ukraine crisis, fascinating to see the analysis that solar panels powering EVs is about 100x more productive use of land than biofuels powering ICE vehicles.

Smart Energy

• We “could save 6-10 bcm [billion cubic metres] of gas if just 10% of homes in Europe adopted Smart Thermostats” says Senior Advisor for Energy Security to the US Congress. 
• The UK’s independent Climate Change Committee issues its annual report including a useful summary of where UK is on track, and where not. Look how fast UK grid carbon intensity has fallen. The UK is decarbonising the quickest of the major economies (40% down on 1990). Scotland just blew up its last coal-fired generation plant.
• UK regulator Ofgem to spend £20bn over next 5 years on regional grids, with £2bn upfront for grid capacity, as part of its plan to get to decarbonise the grid by 2035. 
• UK taxpayers “will save £1.5bn by 2026” as 11GW of new renewables wins UK govt’s latest CfD auction - mainly offshore wind (at only 3.7p/kWh) and solar, but also including for the first time small amounts of tidal and floating offshore wind. 
• Meanwhile in Germany, 1 year forward electricity prices shoot up almost ten-fold to 34p/kWh (as the EU declares gas a "green fuel"!?).
• Grid flexibility:
• Tesla offers its 50k California Powerwall customers $10-$60 per event to support the grid if they opt in to its VPP.
• Meanwhile the UK is trialling a scheme to pay consumers up to £6/kWh for not consuming at peak times. 
• “Outgoing Octopus” is not some extravert cephalopod, but a beta scheme to take advantage of high spot electricity prices if you have lots of PV and/or batteries.
• Heat pumps:
• Many European countries have now announced bans on new-build gas boilers to take effect in the next few years
• Octopus CEO lays out roadmap to £1000 heat pumps
• Growing by 75% yoy in the Netherlands.
• Kensa gets £8m investment for its heat pumps from Legal & General
• Connected Energy secures £15m for battery recycling from Volvo, Caterpillar et al
• Risk that UK might cut off its gas connectors to Europe in emergencies (even though UK receives 20-25% of its gas from Europe during very cold weather).
• 74% of France’s electricity is nuclear, but with half of their ageing nuclear reactors offline, EDF is to be fully renationalised.
• It takes a team of only 4 people to install 600kW of solar PV a day, for an Ozzie gold mine

IoT

• The Cambrian explosion was probably driven by the invention of eyes. Soon IoT cameras will be everywhere as they become incredibly small, cheap and low-power [via Charles Arthur].
• Echostar launches pan-European LoRA network using S-band satellite
• Berg claims last year was a “breakout year” for cellular IoT, with growth of 39% to 428m units shipped.
• The arrival of the $6 Raspberry Pi Pico W brings WiFi to the world of low-cost embedded control.
• When Boston Robotics made their Spot robot dog available for $70,000, one use case we’ve seen is patrolling an expensive sensor around a site to mimic a sensor network. Now for just $2,700 you can buy a Chinese clone dog to do the same -  it's being made in large numbers and can run at 17kph! I blame science fiction dystopias.

Until next month,

-Pilgrim

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