HUIZHOU GANGKOU PHASE 1

MingYang Smart Energy has secured a contract to deliver wind turbines for the Huizhou Gangkou Phase 1 and 2 offshore wind project.

The Chinese turbine manufacturer won the contract from General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN).

MingYang will deploy 64 MySE6.25-180 wind turbines for the 400MW project.

The first delivery of turbines will begin October 2020 and is expected to complete by August 2021, the company said in a statement.

The Huizhou Gangkou project is located 25km off the coast of Huidong County of Guangdong Province.

CGN plans to connect the Huizhou Gangkou wind farm to the grid in late June 2022 - link

KAPTIS - KENYA

Tembo Power, the developer of the Kaptis hydropower project, has selected Ninety One SA (Pty) of Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF) and FinnFund to finance its project in Kenya. The Kaptis plant will have a capacity of 15 MW and will be operational in 2022.

The financial partners of the Kaptis hydropower project are now known. They are FinnFund, a Finnish company specialising in development finance. It will invest in the project alongside Ninety One SA (formerly Investec Asset Management) of Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a fund owned by Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG).

FinnFund and EAIF/Ninety One SA will provide the loan liquidity for the construction of the Kaptis hydropower plant in Western Kenya. “I am pleased to welcome EAIF/Ninety One and FinnFund into our consortium for the actual construction of Kaptis. Both lenders are major players in the African infrastructure sector with specific knowledge. They have successfully demonstrated their skills in financing small hydropower projects in sub-Saharan Africa”, says Raphael Khalifa, the founder of Tembo Power, a company based in Ebene, Mauritius, and the project sponsor.

The commissioning of the hydropower plant is scheduled for 2022.

GREAT GUY, GREAT CAUSE

Delighted to have added to Captain Tom's stunning fundraising - link

BIFFA BUGGERS UP

A HUGE pile-up of waste has prompted complaints slamming one waste management company for not collecting rubbish from a series of shops on Wokingham Road.

Refuse collection firm Biffa has not picked up rubbish from the grocery shops since Friday, according to one shop owner, despite repeated calls to the company, which calls itself ‘number one for business waste’.

The shops affected, on the stretch of the road near Palmer Park, include Big Bazaar and Rahim Stores - Link - more like this - link

POOR LENO - ROYKSOPP

US HITS 100GW WIND CAPACITY

The US now has more than 100GW of wind installed after it connected some 9.1GW of new projects to the grid last year.

Total US capacity now stands at 105GW, with 2019 additions representing 39 percent of all utility scale power additions to the grid nationally.

The figures, published in an annual report by US wind association AWEA, show wind is the largest provider of renewable energy in the country, supplying over seven percent of the nation’s electricity last year.

“Years of hard work culminated with wind power becoming America’s largest renewable energy provider in 2019, with a 50-state footprint of job creation and economic development,” said AWEA chief executive Tom Kiernan.

Last year, wind capacity grew by 9.6 percent nationally, spurred on by strong additions in the states of Texas and Iowa.

In total, developers delivered 55 wind projects in 19 states during 2019.

Research shows the US wind industry now supports a record 120,000 American jobs, 530 domestic factories and rakes in $1.6 billion a year for local states and communities, AWEA said - link

ANNOYING COLLEAGUE TRAITS - NO. 1

DEER BUDDHA

MEYGEN TIDAL

THE MeyGen tidal energy project off the north Caithness coast is continuing to operate despite the difficulties created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Simec Atlantis Energy, the company behind the pioneering initiative, outlined the impact the Covid-19 crisis is having on its various business interests, which include the MeyGen scheme in the Pentland Firth.

A spokesman for Simec said: "While the situation across our portfolio of projects requires constant monitoring and reassessment, at present we have seen minimal disruption to the tidal business with MeyGen continuing to export power reliably to the grid. In addition, it remains our expectation that we will be able to maintain our current contractual commitments to deliver equipment and services to our clients in Japan and Scotland this year." link

COVID CROP UPDATE - 002

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THE 2020 COVID CROP - 001

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GOOD LIFE - INNER CITY

GIGASTACK

Orsted and ITM Power have revealed a concept for an electrolyser installed in the tower of an offshore wind turbine, to potentially reduce the cost of producing hydrogen.

As a result of their collaboration on the BEIS-funded Gigastack feasibility study ‘Hydrogen supply competition’, the partners have proposed “an electrolyser placed in an offshore wind turbine tower, or very near it, which provides a direct electrical connection to the direct current (DC) link in turbine, with appropriate power flow control and water supplied to it”.

The companies said such an approach could represent a “better design concept” for bulk hydrogen production, as opposed to installing electrolysers at a terminal or platform, remotely from the wind turbine. Advantages of doing so include reduced costs and energy losses.

Where the electrolyser is installed in, or close to, the wind turbine tower, the hydrogen gas would be transported to shore by an underwater or underground pipe network - Link

EARLY MORNING WALK

INVINITY LOOKING TO CHINA

Vanadium flow battery giant to go 'head-to-head' with Li-ion kings.

Invinity Energy Systems – formed from redT and Avalon – eyeing markets in UK, Canada, US, South Africa and China.

Next-generation energy storage technology companies redT and Avalon have merged to form Invinity Energy Systems, to further develop vanadium flow technology as a competitor to the lithium-ion (Li-ion) designs that have come to dominate the market as the global renewables build-out gathers pace.

Invinity believes its battery design, based around a non-flammable, liquid electrolyte held in tanks within a self-contained module, which has a 20-25 year operating life and does not degrade as fast as conventional batteries, will be “well suited to heavy-duty, daily use” storing solar and wind power production - Link