Cloud computing is big business. Amazon’s AWS division, the industry’s largest cloud provider, is fast approaching the $10 billion mark in annual revenue, earned by selling computing capacity to businesses and public sector organisations around the world.
Is critical infrastructure destined for the cloud? Read More »
The UK will meet its next carbon budget, but don’t even think of stoking the fire or turning up the heating in celebration, because the next target – to reduce 1990 carbon emission levels by 37 per cent by 2020 – is not such a dead cert, in fact it’s looking all but unattainable.
Home is where the heat is Read More »
Recent research and demonstrator projects are beginning to show that integrating the use of hydrogen into Britain’s energy system is feasible.
H21 project highlights potential of hydrogen Read More »
Disruption to travel, no access to money, problems with telecommunications and petrol pumps rendered out of service – these are just some of the issues that would be faced by the public in the event of a blackout. “Catastrophic” is the word used by Peter Chandler (pictured below), project lead for the Distributed ReStart project at National Grid ESO, to describe the extent of the problems caused in this situation. Nor would the effects be over in a hurry, with Chandler indicating that restoring full power across the whole country could take up to a week in a “Black Start” scenario.
Getting the power back on Read More »
While attention has been focused on the review of the innovation mechanism, network companies have continued quietly to vie for the funds up for grabs every year. In early December, Ofgem revealed the six successful projects from this year’s Network innovation Competition (NIC). Projects that will shape the future of the sector. It also identified projects that were found wanting.
Given the green light: electricity Read More »
While attention has been focused on the review of the innovation mechanism, network companies have continued quietly to vie for the funds up for grabs every year. In early December, Ofgem revealed the six successful projects from this year’s Network innovation Competition (NIC). Projects that will shape the future of the sector. It also identified projects that were found wanting.
Given the green light: gas Read More »
Whilst substantial progress has been made in the electricity sector, the decarbonisation of transport and heat is further behind – and these two topics took centre stage at September’s Network Asset Performance Conference. In terms of switching road transport from fossil fuels to electricity, there is less concern about producing enough megawatt-hours to meet the overall increase in demand from electric vehicles (EV) than ensuring there is the network capacity to deliver the power.
Getting green networks up to speed Read More »
One of the main subjects for debate was the governance and regulation of the energy system. Energy Systems Catapult head of innovation Eric Brown (pictured) kicked off the discussion by laying out the scale of the challenge: “Broadly speaking, we’ve inherited the current world from the 1980s when the current frameworks were put in place. And those frameworks were based on the nature of the system and business models as they existed at the time.”
Getting regulation right Read More »
While attention is focused on distribution network operators and the rise of distributed generation, it is easy to forget that both the electricity and gas transmission networks have their own challenges to face. National Grid brought those challenges sharply into focus with the publication last month of its annual set of documents setting out the long-term future of its transmission. networks.
Gas: four paths to 2050 Read More »
Network asset and operations leaders will be all too familiar with the pressures on industry today to do more with their existing asset fleet, minimise capital expenditure and, at the same time, uphold the highest standards of safety.
Fluid movement: new transformer fluids are shifting asset risk profiles Read More »
