Rethink Energy Podcast

With DeepSeek and other LLMs achieving reduced energy intensity, data centers in the US can still add easily 40 TWh of power demand per year - under President Trump, some of this will be met by gas plants. Batteries have replaced gas plants in the new-build category in the Polish and UK capacity markets - but when will the capacity market be designed around long-duration storage instead? Western w...

DeepSeek and other new AI models promise the same performance for one order of magnitude less power consumption - does this really change forecasts for load on the grid? China's battery exports are up 17.1% year-on-year in December by volume - but the dollar value was stuck at $60 billion for 2024, the same as previous years, as prices decline and volume expands. Shandong Province provides som...

The Trump Administration has quit the Paris Accords as is clearly opposed to wind power. But if the Administration doesn't support renewables, corporates will, as data centers add ever more load to the grid. The solar industry continues to post record manufacturing scale, demand, and low prices simultaneously - with Indian and US reshoring as the only dynamic stories alongside perovskite Compa...

Hydrostor has received a $1.76 billion loan guarantee from the Biden Administration for its compressed-air energy storage project in California - how does this technology compare to BESS? Australia's Victoria state is the latest government to slash solar feed-in tariffs, which will force distributed solar development into further battery adoption. China alone will manufacture 1.4 TWh of batter...

Data center power demand will grow to between 6.7% and 12% of total US power demand by 2028, per a new report published by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - growing to fit the grid. China's green hydrogen industry has achieved $1.6 per kilogram green hydrogen, but this still isn't cheap enough for mass adoption over grey hydrogen. Europe's negative power price periods become...

The global solar industry will install over 500 GW this year, with a final module cost of just $95 per kW as overcapacity continues to mount Nexwafe posts 24.4% cell efficiency built on its wafers made via epitaxial deposition - a significantly cheaper alternative for the solar supply chain Sodium-ion and vanadium-flow chemistries have continued growth in the energy storage segment despite lithium...

China's export controls will spur further price increases for high-end semiconductor and other materials Battery prices set for consistent gradual decline through 2025 and beyond More investments into perovskite factories and pilot projects - is low-light performance good enough tyo conquer cloudy regions?

China's perovskite sector keeps announcing new factories - but what's needed to produce a Minimum Viable Product solar panel using the new semiconductor? Germany's 215 GW solar target for 2030 implies up to $100 billion investment also needed in energy storage batteries on the grid. Policy contrast widens on Chinese EV import tariffs between US exclusion, Australian free trade, and EU indecision.

Northvolt, Europe's flagship battery manufacturer, has filed for bankruptcy - in keeping with the region's weakness in upstream manufacturing. Entrion has patented a guyed monopile design which blurs the distinction between fixed-base and floating wind projects. China's government has issued tighter guidelines for solar manufacturing investments - in a case of locking the stable door after the hor...

China has exported 116 GWh of energy storage batteries and battery systems in the first 10 months of 2024, indicating 140 GWh full-year and a global manufacturing scale well north of 200 GWh, meaning the industry is grow between 50% and 100% year on year India became a net exporter of solar equipment in Q2 - and with President Trump in office, India is very likely to become the main supplier of so...

The EV industry's initial adoption of solid-state batteries remains set for 2027, just one of the quality upgrades which will offset the pain inflicted by tariffs. Global solar manufacturing has fallen by over one-third if you measure from the historic peak in March 2024 to October, with the industry's growth decelerating amidst module stockpiling, while price cannibalization forces investment int...

The second Trump Administration will disrupt the energy transition in three ways - disrupting equipment imports, cutting federal funding, and preserving the fossil fuel industry. Energy storage batteries will go from strength, with ever more price volatility including negative pricing on the one hand, and consistently low manufacturing costs on the other. Carbon fiber production capacity already r...

In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks, we're joined by Paul Moonie, CEO of Australia's perovskite company Halocell, to discuss perovskites' performance in low-light conditions, dusk, and dawn - starting with a Microquanta test from a few months ago in which perovskites had 38% more usable light-hours under 75% cloud cover compared to standard silicon. We also discuss Halocell's various routes to...

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: The true price of China's solar panels - they're being sold below cost, but how far below cost? Carbon fiber production capacity is set to expand dramatically, courtesy of China, with just three factories in the past couple of months amounting to 82,000 tons - half of global demand India's $386 billion in energy transition finance pledges...

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: The 14th ICAO Air Navigation Conference has called for streamlining regulatory processes for implementing new aircraft designs which will accompany the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen and battery power. Rethink Energy has published a new forecast on perovskites - which will take over the solar industry by 2040, with cer...

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: Tandem perovskite modules are being shipped to customers by Caelux, Oxford PV and others - these are still small-scale trial shipments, but this signifies that the technology has reached the threshold of parity on lifetime power output with conventional silicon modules. Per a new study from Boeing, 12% of global feedstock requirement f...

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: Hydrogen has a little-explored route into the trucking segment, with hydrogen-fired combustion engines offering lower Capex than battery EVs. Australia has committed $1 billion AUD to solar manufacturing - but this only enough for the module segment, plus something more in the cell segment - maybe perovskites? Also in Australia, the va...

In this episode of Rethink Energy talks, we're joined by Tyler Hortin, CEO of Lion Energy, to discuss the future of battery energy storage in the US. That includes Lion Energy's use of technology such as EMS and BMS to optimise charge and discharge timing, integrating multiple demand and supply sources as well as accounting for electricity price variation on the grid. We also discuss the U...

In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks we're joined by Nicola Battey, Director of Sustainability at Hometree - a residential installer of heat pumps, solar panels and batteries in the UK. We discuss the adoption of heat pumps and other residential energy systems - including why the UK is behind mainland Europe, and the abrupt rise to viability of batteries, even without a photovoltaic system.

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: South Korea's hydrogen fuel cell powered tram system, due for mid-2028 - and why such experiments should be shelved in favour of electric power. The US now has one wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) compliant with the Jones Act - but its final cost came to $715 million, larger than the original $500 million price tag from back...

In this week's episode, the Rethink Energy team discusses: Hazer Group's turquoise hydrogen production pilot scheme and whether the synthetic graphite byproduct will compensate for the cost of its high energy intensity. China has produced 100 GWh of energy storage batteries in H1 2024 - showing the continued rapid growth of the BESS industry to accompany wind and solar at scale. Ming Yang&...

In this week's episode , the Rethink Energy team discusses: ClearVue's Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) glass, and the startup's latest agreement with Alu-Tec WLL to foster distribution of its products through the MENA region. Illinois has introduced a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) incentive - not steep enough to close the gap with jet fuel, but another step toward the new ind...

In this week's episode , the Rethink Energy team discusses: Solar manufacturing output has stalled for the first time in over a decade, passing 50 GW a month in June 2023 - a level from which it first grew to 70 GW, before shrinking back to 50 GW in June 2024. This reinforces the reality of vast solar equipment stockpiles, and that the new limiting factor on project development is transmission...

In this episode of Rethink Energy Talks, we're joined by Duncan Burt, the Chief Strategic Growth Officer at Reactive Technologies, a pioneering grid frequency stability company which measures the stability of power grids around the world. These measurements replace the old method of modelling - enabling grid operators to know for certain exactly how far they have to go to maintain the stabilit...

In this week's episode , the Rethink Energy team discusses: China's ammonia-coal co-firing pilot scheme, and how otherwise-curtailed renewable energy could help to make green ammonia affordable. China curtailed 17 GWh of its wind and solar in 2023. First Solar's TOPCon patent investigation which is looking to inconvenience its silicon-based rivals - and how First Solar will pursue next...