Energytrendsofthefuture

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Andrew Taylor is an experienced energy professional, entrepreneur and the Group General Counsel for a prominent South African Independent Power Producer, the Pele Energy Group. In this episode we explore the impact of climate change, recent innovations in battery storage from Elon Musk and Tesla, and other new exciting technologies that will impact the energy landscape. Enjoy the conversation and subscribe for more.

Episode summary

Some experts now predict that we will have global warming in excess of 3-4 degrees which will fundamentally change life on the planet. In this context, Eskom is a smaller part of a larger global problem. Eskom’s Secunda power plant in Mpumalanga is one of the largest point emitters of CO2 and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) on the planet. Over a five-day window more solar energy reaches the planet than all the non-renewable energy sources on the planet itself. So effectively there is enough solar energy to solve the problem, however politics and economics have gotten in the way. Part of the problem is that we haven’t taken a top down global view to solve the problem – rather an energy scarcity and country specific approach. A typical energy ecosystem includes generation, distribution and transmission.

Musk and Tesla are currently pioneering the battery storage revolution. The power wall is a lithium battery that stores energy typically sourced from PV. Tesla’s latest innovation, the mega wall can store three megawatt hours of electricity (3000 Kilowatts hours). The average US household uses 29 Kilowatt hours per day. The average US household is also 65% more energy intensive than a European household. The mega wall has shown that energy storage is solvable.

Vanadium redox flow batteries is another recent innovation. It has the benefit that vanadium is easier to source than lithium. It also has a lower risk of overheating/exploding – making it a much safer alternative.

Nuclear batteries are another option. They create energy via nuclear decay with a useful life span of over 100 years. Perovskite is another recent innovation. It is a light absorbing crystal which has a 66% efficiency rate of capturing energy vs. traditional solar PV which is only sitting at between 16-18%. All of these are changing the balance from an economic, environmental and social perspective as compared to traditional fossil fuel.