The Rethink Energy Podcast complements the Rethink Energy weekly strategy bulletin, as we dive deeper into the dynamic factors of the energy market. We discuss the week’s key issues, while providing insight into our own research and forecasts to give clearer direction of where momentum is building through the energy transition.
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-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 batteries this year, including almost 1 TWh of power batteries.
-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 ever more frequent, further incentivizing battery developments.
-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’s dominance
-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 to 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.
This week’s topics include:
-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 horse has bolted.
This week’s topics include:
-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 solar wafers to the US industry in the future.
-All-solid-state batteries are still years away from being a mature product for the EV industry – but have begun to be used in the lucrative eVTOL market.
This week’s topics include:
-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 into co-located battery energy storage.
-The looming Trump Administration has identified fracking CEO Chris Wright as its pick for Energy Secretary – but will oil and gas production really expand in such a way as to reduce energy prices, thus undercutting the motive to invest in renewables?
-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 reached 300,000 tons in 2023, with Chinese companies looking to double it again, allowing the wind industry to expand its usage of the expensive material.
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 market and research efforts.