Member Info for SloppyGuiseppe

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/05/22/eu-to-support-tenders-for-15-gw-of-renewables-over-next-two-years/

It appears that Brussels is seriously willing to implement a “green recovery” plan. EurActiv – an independent, pan-European media network that specializes in EU policies – has leaked a draft of the European Commission’s reconstruction plan, including guidelines that President Ursula Von der Leyen outlined last week in the European Parliament.

The plan, which will be officially launched at the end of this month, focuses on sustainable development and digitization. It will include €25 billion of aid for renewable energy auctions to be held over the next two year at the member-state level, covering a total of 15 GW of capacity.

“A green recovery package should ensure acceleration of renewable energy projects, especially wind and solar,” the document says, without providing any additional details about how the tendering scheme will be implemented. “Both local projects at distribution level, as (well as) large-scale projects at transmission level, and of cross-border relevance.”

There is a separate chapter for clean hydrogen. There will be €1.3 billion for R&D and another €10 billion in co-financing to minimize the risk of large projects, as well as a “commitment” to reach 1 million tons of the gas. Contracts for differences in relation to CO2 will be enabled for hydrogen produced without fossil fuels.

There will also be a €20 billion purchase plan for electric vehicles over the next two years and an investment fund to accelerate sustainable mobility production, backed by as much as €60 billion. The funds will be invested in recharging stations, with the aim of deploying 2 million of them by 2025.

Finally, the rehabilitation of building stock is also part of the plan. To do this, the European Commission plans to launch a “European Fund for the Financing of Renovation.” It will include an approximate allocation of €91 billion per year, combined with other sources of financing, to reach €350 billion in annual investment. Public buildings, such as hospitals and schools – as well as low-income housing – will be prioritized, while encouraging the granting of “green mortgages.”

This value proposition will motivate the build-out of billions of dollars of new infrastructure in countries committed to reducing their carbon intensity, the company says.

Lux predicts the first tipping point for deploying renewable energy import infrastructure will be in 2030, when imported electricity via new high voltage direct current power lines becomes cheaper than low-carbon natural gas turbines.

The next tipping point will occur in 2040, when imported liquid hydrogen becomes cheaper than low-carbon steam methane reformation.

This gives companies today just ten years to develop the partnerships and pilot projects necessary to demonstrate such a transformative energy paradigm.

Major companies like Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsui & Co, Equinor and Shell are already developing their own decarbonized energy trade routes in Europe, Japan and South East Asia, meaning the fight for $500-billion worth of energy imports in those regions is just beginning, the company notes.

https://m.engineeringnews.co.za/article/report-calls-for-new-supply-chains-to-decarbonise-global-energy-trade-2020-05-22/rep_id:4433

Today’s global economy is enabled by a global energy trade and countries around the world are dependent on the flows of oil, coal and natural gas to keep their economies growing.

As countries move to decarbonise and adopt renewable energy, many are finding it difficult to do so cost-effectively because of fundamental limitations in solar and wind resources. For these countries to fully decarbonise without breaking the bank, they must develop innovative renewable energy carriers and build new zero-carbon energy supply chains.

This is according to a new report, 'Evolution of Energy Networks: Decarbonizing the Global Energy Trade', published by tech-enabled research and advisory solutions provider Lux Research, in which the company examines these renewable energy carriers and the countries and companies developing them.

“Places like Singapore, Japan and the Netherlands are great examples of countries that cannot meet their energy demands solely through domestic renewable sources like wind and solar energy.

In fact, countries representing $9-trillion of global gross domestic profit cannot meet their energy demands solely through domestic renewable energy production and will require the import of renewable energy from more resource-rich countries,” says Lux Research analyst and the lead author of the report Tim Grejtak.

“Our analysis shows the expanded build-out of alternating current and direct current power lines will be the most cost-effective way of importing low-cost solar energy from distant regions, though only up to roughly 1 000 km.

"At farther distances, other renewable energy carriers like synthetic fuels are less expensive. It’s important to note that imported energy costs can be competitive against other zero-carbon technologies, but no current energy carrier can offer costs low enough to completely replace liquid natural gas (LNG) or oil,” he adds.

In the new report, Lux evaluated the lifetime costs of 15 different renewable energy carriers ranging from conventional carriers like electricity, hydrogen, synthetic methane, and ammonia to more advanced energy carrier concepts like liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), vanadium and aluminium.

Delivering energy via land-based infrastructure like power lines or pipelines becomes expensive at long distances owing to the inefficiencies of power lines and the high capital costs of pipelines.

Delivery via ship, on the other hand, is much more cost-effective at long distances, whether it be LOHC delivered by tanker or liquid hydrogen delivered by cryogenic carrier like LNG.

Notably, Lux’s analysis found that across all renewable energy carriers, low-cost solar energy can be delivered to resource-constrained regions at 50% to 80% lower cost than generating that solar energy locally under less favourable conditions.

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/ORPH/14550007.html

https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3933772/home/RESEARCH-Key-takeaways-from-the-latest-Ferro-alloys-Market-Tracker.html

RESEARCH: Key takeaways from the latest Ferro-alloys Market Tracker
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets’ team of analysts are ready to view.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated impacts on steel production, mining and manufacturing activity, end-use consumption, and trade and transportation continue to dominate ferro-alloy markets.
US steel mills are operating at around 50% of capacity, with similarly low operating rates evident in Europe as well. Chinese steel mills are increasing output on a year-on-year basis, in a positive signal for potential future market recovery.
While the world copes with the Covid-19 pandemic through lockdowns during the first half of 2020, we are forecasting a sharp decline in steel output this year. We are forecasting world crude steel output to fall by around 5% year on year in 2020 to 1.80 billion tonnes.
Our base case forecast assumes a 3.0% decline in Chinese output this year, however, we believe risks to the upside dominate. The likelihood of significant Chinese government stimulus, particularly on infrastructure spending, could drive steel output beyond our expectations in 2020, with positive implications for both ferro-alloys and ore demand.
Manganese ore and alloy prices remain elevated in China, but we expect European and US prices will struggle in the near term while little business is concluded against dramatically reduced steel production levels.
The outlook for manganese ore and alloy prices in China is stronger, given the lingering effects of the South African lockdown on ore supplies and transportation, as well as maintained Chinese steel output levels, and hence, steady demand for manganese alloys.
Moreover, if infrastructure stimulus spending does materialize, we would expect this to provide a significant boost to manganese (and vanadium) demand from the rebar sector.
Most chrome prices continued rising in May, largely reflecting supply concerns. Lockdown measures are being relaxed, but mining activity and the shipping of material in South Africa remains complicated.
Nevertheless, some areas of the market are starting to look unbalanced. The premium for higher-quality Turkish ore has narrowed sharply, while ore stocks remain high and prices in South African Rand terms have moved above historical averages to hit three-year highs.
The incentives are there for South African miners and smelters to ramp up production. When they are able to, chrome prices may retreat sharply unless demand picks up in the near term.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/05/21/three-signs-that-battery-energy-storage-is-mainstream-today/

Electrochemical batteries have been around for more than 100 years and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have been in use for half a century. During the early days of solar, users deployed PV panels to charge batteries in places far from a power line or gas station. Those batteries powered things like satellites, weather stations and remote homes. Around the turn of the century, people began connecting PV systems directly to the electrical grid.

At first, the grid connection was for purely scientific or ideological reasons, and, as regions and businesses offered incentives and PV sped down the cost curve, people used PV to save money on electricity. In 2004, PV systems installed without batteries outnumbered battery-based systems for the first time – by 2010, solar-plus-storage systems were relegated to a small niche of the booming solar industry. But now the industry is coming full circle......

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/opinion/us-coronavirus-reopening.amp.html

Second, gather more data. In many places in America, there appears to be virtually no coronavirus, so those localities probably could safely reopen just about everything — if we could identify them and if we had rigorous surveillance so we could be ready to clamp down on an outbreak the moment it began.

Yet a majority of counties still don’t have a coronavirus testing site, and in some places the public isn’t using the testing capacity we have. So we should ramp up testing sewage for the coronavirus. Sewage often tests positive before human cases turn up, so it offers a critical early detection system. If Pakistan can conduct widespread virus testing of its sewage for polio, the United States can introduce widespread sewage testing for the coronavirus.

Long article, worth a read.

https://m.fin24.com/Economy/World/the-biggest-power-demand-plunge-since-the-great-depression-is-reshaping-markets-20200520

The global plunge in electricity demand will drag on long after nations lift stay-at-home orders, leading to the biggest annual drop since the Great Depression and fundamentally reshaping power markets.

Cape Town, South Africa’s second-biggest city, said it could buy its own renewable energy within five to six years if it wins a court case against the government.

The city of 4 million people has sued the Energy Ministry and the national power regulator to obtain the right to procure its energy in a case that could pave the way for other municipalities to do the same. The state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is currently the country’s main provider. The case was heard last week and a judgment is yet to be made.
“It’s something that every city needs to be thinking about,” said Leila Mahomed-Weideman, director of sustainable energy markets for the City of Cape Town, in a video conference Wednesday.

Cape Town, along with other major cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria, wants to boost the amount of energy it gets from renewable sources and reduce its dependence on Eskom at the same time. The state utility has subjected South Africa to bouts of power cuts since 2008 as it struggles to meet demand.

Under Cape Town’s plan, the city would set up a power-purchasing office and expect tenders, licensing and connection to the grid within six years, according to a presentation given at the conference.

In addition to buying power from city residents with solar power mounted on their rooftops, Cape Town expects to source electricity from solar power projects and waste-to-power projects at its landfill sites.

Coronavirus: NHS England official cautions against buying antibody tests https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52747112

Will be worth keeping an eye on......

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/chinas-commodities-rebound-faces-decisive-test-at-policy-meet/amp

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/amp/news/power/opinion-covid-19-has-uncovered-urgent-need-for-flexibility-for-indias-electricity-grid/75833069

Battery-based energy storage: a key flexibility resource operating in India

In India’s capital city of Delhi, the nation’s first grid-scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), a 10 MW project owned by AES Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation and supplied by Fluence, has been operational for over a year at a substation in northern Delhi. During the “Lights Out” event, this 10MW system was put into action ramping up and down autonomously to its full available capacity in sync with the change in frequency within milliseconds (see Figure 2).

The modular architecture of BESS offers scalability - a 1000 MW system can be built as four 250 MW or twenty 50MW projects and networked to operate in tandem throughout an entire region. Easy to deploy in dense urban areas, a BESS project can be sited in a matter of months. It produces no air emissions or wastewater discharge and has minimal noise. The Delhi BESS provides much needed flexibility, well beyond that available by gas generation or hydropower, on a daily basis and far more efficiently.

A grid-connected BESS is always “on,” able to respond in milliseconds to positive or negative deviations in supply or demand. Once connected, it largely runs in an automated mode responding to signals from the grid, able to act as both a generation source and load – providing flexibility in both directions. A BESS has a typical lifespan of 20 or more years if it is properly managed and maintained.

Large-scale battery installations have been boosting the reliability of the electricity grid around the world for over a decade. One of the longest-serving grid-connected megawatt-scale battery-based project in the world, a 12MW project in Northern Chile, has been running since 2009, providing reserve capacity that enables a co-located coal power plant to run more efficiently.

As this capability has proven itself, the number and size of these large grid batteries has grown. Globally, there are many projects under development that are over 100 MW in scale. All of these projects have replaced capacity that, in the past, would be provided by gas, diesel, or hydro generation plants. When added to the grid alongside solar or wind generation, battery-based energy storage can firm up the output of those resources, ensuring clean energy is there for consumers when it’s most
needed.

With the coming implementation of real-time markets in India for electricity, there is commercial interest in India for setting up grid-connected battery-based energy storage plants under a fixed lease to the system operator for different services. Such BESS assets can be installed at key points across the country and their charging and discharging controlled by a centralized dispatch.

Would be great publicity for sewage testing if rolled out in New York.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/amp/28755363/testing-sewage-coronavirus-can-track-cases-manhattan-bp-says

Testing Sewage For Coronavirus Can Track Cases, Manhattan BP Says
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is calling on the mayor and governor to start testing sewage waste as a way to track COVID-19.

https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3933248/Latest-news/V2O5-dips-13-on-weak-end-user-demand-while-supply-fears-ease.html

V2O5 dips 13% on weak end-user demand while supply fears ease
Weak end-user demand pushed European vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) prices lower again last week while supply worries have slowly started to ease with mines in South Africa gradually opening up, market sources said.

Fastmarkets assessed the vanadium pentoxide 98% V2O5 min, in-warehouse Rotterdam price at $5.50-6.40 per lb on Friday May 15, down by 13.5% from the previous assessment of $6.50-7.25 per lb.
V2O5 prices had been moving up over the past month, with buyers struggling to find cheap prompt units due to increasing worries over future availability...

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/ORPH/14543006.html

Open Orphan plc (ORPH) the rapidly growing specialist CRO pharmaceutical services company which has a focus on orphan drugs and is the world leader in the testing of vaccines and antivirals using human challenge study models, notes the increase in the Company's share price and media comment regarding its collaboration with Quotient Limited. Furthermore, it also notes the substantial increase in interest in antibody testing for Covid-19 following recent announcements by the UK Government.

The Company confirms that the MosaiQ COVID-19 Antibody Microarray machine is on site at hVivo's laboratory in East London and is undergoing testing. It is expected to be fully operational within two weeks following which it will have capability to undertake up to 3,000 tests a day, in line with expected performance as stated by Quotient Limited. The Company intends to enter into discussions with channel partners to secure testing volumes with pricing to be determined as part of these negotiations. It is not the company's intention to deal directly with consumers and while there can be no certainty on pricing until such time as terms are agreed, the Company notes current market prices ranging from c.£70 for home testing kits and upwards towards c.£150. It is the intention to supply testing capability to channel partners, who will in turn deal with the end users and the final price points. The Company will update shareholders in due course.

Further information on the Company's approach to Covid-19 antibody testing and vaccine trials is available on the Company's website

https://sharetipstersuncovered.wordpress.com/category/tom-winnifrith/

Coronavirus test results waits 'undermining confidence' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52691581

Guaranteed 100% accuracy, why would the government not be interested and if it’s not ours then it will be someone else’s.

https://www.itweb.co.za/content/G98Yd7LYKkrMX2PD

The Competition Tribunal has given a fund owned by Standard Bank the green light to acquire renewable energy projects in SA for an undisclosed amount.

In a statement, the competition watchdog says in this transaction, Mulilo Renewable Energy and Greenstreet, through its Stanlib Fund, will acquire Mulilo Prieska and Mulilo De Aar.

Stanlib Fund II SPV is wholly-owned and controlled by Standard Bank Group and is a private equity investment fund established to acquire a portfolio of long-term infrastructure assets.

Mulilo is owned and controlled by Mulilo Energy Holdings and it controls Mulilo Renewable Energy Solar PV Prieska and Mulilo Renewable Energy Solar PV De Aar, which are involved in producing renewable energy electricity using solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind technology for Eskom.

Established in 2008, the Mulilo Group is an independent renewable energy developer and strategic equity investor.

It focuses on wind and PV technologies and develops, builds, owns and operates large-scale renewable energy projects.

The Mulilo Group forms part of SA’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) and Eskom is its sole customer.

The REIPPPP is a public-procurement programme that allows independent power producers to submit competitive bids to design, develop and operate large-scale renewable energy power plants across South Africa.

With high levels of sunshine and wind, combined with the wide availability of land, SA’s renewable energy sector believes the country is well-positioned to take advantage of renewables.

The South African government plans that some 6?000MW of new solar PV capacity and 14 400MW of new wind power capacity will be commissioned by 2030.

“REIPPPP has already established a flagship public-private partnership model for South Africa, and indeed the rest of Africa, and in the process is helping alleviate Eskom’s current power crisis while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” says the World Economic Forum, commenting on the programme.

Before referring the matter to the tribunal, the Competition Commission considered the effects of the proposed transaction on the national market for the supply of electricity to Eskom by renewable energy producers using solar PV, and the national market for the supply of electricity to Eskom by renewable energy producers using wind technology.

The commission, in its assessment, found the proposed transaction does not raise any public interest concerns.

In addition, it was of the view that the merger is unlikely to result in any substantial prevention or lessening of competition.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/15/world/science-health-world/sewer-science-testing-coronavirus/#.Xr57p2hKiUk

The science of sewage surveillance could be deployed in countries across the world to help monitor the spread of national epidemics of COVID-19 while reducing the need for mass testing, scientists say.

Experts in the field — known as wastewater epidemiology — say that as countries begin to ease pandemic lockdown restrictions, searching sewage for signs of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could help them monitor and respond to flare-ups.

It’s a crucial tool in the global fight to eradicate polio, and scientists in Britain and elsewhere also use it to monitor antibiotic resistance genes from livestock farming.

Few countries have the resources or capacity to test each person individually, with most only able to test health care workers or people with symptoms severe enough to mean they need hospitalization. This means authorities have only limited information about how widespread the new coronavirus is or whether it is affecting some communities more than others.

“You can use this type of surveillance as a public health tool,” said Andrew Singer, a researcher at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology who is working with Jones and others on pilot coronavirus sewage testing plans in Britain.

“And the utility of this approach is that it’s so cheap and the investment that you make … will reap rewards, not just for (this) coronavirus pandemic,” but for future outbreaks, too.