Articles by Chris F Goodall

A new 50 kilowatt PV array at the Eden Project has just become the UK’s first employee owned renewables installation. Ebico, the Witney-based social enterprise that is the UK’s only not-for-profit electricity supplier, lent money to a new company that put 200 panels on the roofs of some of Eden’s storage buildings. Employees are now able to buy shares in the new business and the proceeds of this unique offer will be used to pay back Ebico. Savers putting in as little as £200 each will share in the feed-in tariff income for the next 25 years. Returns are projected to be over 10% per year for small investors. Read the rest of this entry »

Air source heat pumps are a risky choice for householders trying to save money and CO2 emissions. This piece looks at the experience of one householder in the south of England who has kept detailed meter readings over the last few weeks. The findings are disturbing. The recent low temperatures (early February 2012) have shown that the costs of running a heat pump can be unacceptably high in cold weather. Anybody considering this new – and apparently eco-friendly technology – should be very wary indeed about their energy bills in deep winter. In fact, they should consider turning off the pump and going back to electric radiators when temperatures drop. Read the rest of this entry »

A venture capitalist idly glancing through business plans probably wouldn’t give an energy storage business a second glance. All the glamorous companies are focused on finding cheap ways of making low cost energy. Storage is down-market, and ever so slightly dull.

This will to have to change. Without cheap, robust and very large scale electricity storage, electricity grids are going to find it very difficult to cope with the unpredictability of vastly greater supplies of electricity from wind, wave or sun. HIghview Power, a UK company that has operated in what private equity calls ‘stealth mode’ for several years, went public yesterday with an intriguing proposal for a new form of energy storage – air liquefaction. The energy commentators read the press release and politely yawned. Were they right? Read the rest of this entry »

Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think tank, has come out with a paper attacking the subsidies for offshore wind in the UK. Its reasoning is that offshore wind will always be too expensive and that the overseas market for British engineering is limited.

Both of these assumptions are probably wrong. One credible source sees the cost of offshore wind falling to levels competitive with gas, albeit over several decades. And foreign interest in offshore wind is growing as the best onshore sites are completed. A Chinese study estimated the potential for exploitable wind power offshore is about 750 gigawatts, perhaps ten times the UK’s likely resource. Over the next few years China plans enormous investments in sea-based turbines. Similar opportunities are available in the US. Read the rest of this entry »