Guardian: World First for Shetlands in Tidal Power Breakthrough

A power company in Shetland has claimed a breakthrough in the race to develop viable offshore tidal stations after successfully feeding electricity to local homes.

Nova Innovation said it had deployed the world’s first fully operational array of tidal power turbines in the Bluemull Sound between the islands of Unst and Yell in the north of Shetland, where the North Sea meets the Atlantic.

It switched on the second of five 100 kW turbines due to be installed in the sound this month, sending electricity on a commercial basis into Shetland’s local grid.

BNEF: Electric Vehicles -- It's Not Just About the Car

To understand the future of the car over the next decade, you need to watch the mainstream car companies -- the big U.S., European, Japanese, Indian and Chinese names. The most important news this year is not which executive left Google or joined Apple; it may not even be the launch of Tesla’s Model 3. It may instead be the $15 billion settlement of Volkswagen’s ‘Dieselgate’ lawsuits, which included a $2 billion commitment to promoting zero-emission vehicles in the U.S. This was just part of $11.2 billion VW intends to spend over the next decade on electric vehicles -- a commitment that the company expects to result in up to 25 percent of its unit sales being electric by 2025. Put that in context: that would be 2.5 million vehicles a year in less than a decade -- a cool 43 times Tesla’s 58,000 unit sales last year.

Over the past few years, we at Bloomberg New Energy Finance have been devoting more and more of our attention to the transportation sector. Just as in 2004 we felt the energy industry and its mainstream analysts had failed to understand the scale, imminence and implications of the renewable energy revolution, so in 2010 we started to feel the same about electric vehicles. One of the Magnificent Seven long-term trends I highlighted at our Summit that year was “The Transformation of Transportation,” which I illustrated with pictures of what electric vehicles looked like up to that point -- British milk floats, the Sinclair C5 (look it up!), various tiny and weird-looking cars like the G-Wiz -- followed by pictures of the electric cars of the future, which looked like, well, normal cars.

Inside Energy: Donald Trump’s Energy Whisperers

Donald Trump is wooing energy-state voters by promising a presidency that will champion coal, promote drilling and free frackers from federal regulations limiting oil and gas development.

If the Republican candidate’s energy platform sounds like it was written specifically for fossil fuel companies, that’s because an Oklahoma oil billionaire helped craft it.

MIT Technology Review: Why We Still Don’t Have Better Batteries

Last month, Ellen Williams, the director of ARPA-E, the U.S. Department of Energy’s advanced research program for alternative energy, made headlines when she told the Guardian newspaper that "we have reached some holy grails in batteries.”

Despite very promising results from the 75-odd energy-storage research projects that ARPA-E funds, however, the grail of compact, low-cost energy storage remains elusive.

A number of startups are closer to producing devices that are economical, safe, compact, and energy-dense enough to store energy at a cost of less than $100 a kilowatt-hour. Energy storage at that price would have a galvanic effect, overcoming the problem of powering a 24/7 grid with renewable energy that’s available only when the wind blows or the sun shines, and making electric vehicles lighter and less expensive.

Electric Vehicles Research: Skeleton Technologies Receives 13M Euro Investment Boost

Skeleton Technologies, Europe's leading ultracapacitor manufacturer, has received €13 million in new investment led by FirstFloor Capital, a Malaysian venture capital investment firm specializing in funding high-growth technology companies.  

The Round C investment, which also includes existing Skeleton Technologies' investors UP Invest and Harju Elekter, brings total financing to €26.7 million and will support Skeleton Technologies in its next phase of revenue ramp-up to bring graphene ultracapacitors from high-end sectors to the mass market, while moving higher up the value chain with turnkey energy storage solutions.