Tesla Powerwall 3 is here!
After months of whispers on social media, Tesla have officially launched the Powerwall 3. So, what do we know so far?
Joju Solar has won ‘Contractor of the Year’ at the prestigious Solar & Storage LIVE awards, to add to the ‘EV Charge point Contractor of the Year’ title secured at the EVIEs last month.
The winners were announced on Friday, at the close of a three-day online conference and the awards now put Joju at the top of the pile across all their product offerings – solar PV, battery storage and EV charging infrastructure.
“Winning the Solar & Storage LIVE Contractor of the Year has been a long-held ambition and it feels amazing”, said Joju Solar Co-founder and Technical Director, Dr Chris Jardine.
“We’ve been working in the low carbon technology space for 14 years and this recognition is testament to the hard work put in by our team over that entire period – continually improving both technically and in terms of the service we offer.”
Joju Solar were recognised for their work on helping hundreds of homes reduce their carbon footprint, through solar, storage and EV charging. Additionally, it has been an intensive year delivering community energy projects. We installed 2MW of solar PV for Egni Coop in Wales, including the largest solar roof in Wales, at Newport’s Geraint Thomas Velodrome. This project won the Community Energy Award at the Solar and Storage LIVE awards in its own right. Other highlights in 2020 include a 39kW community-owned solar PV array on the roof of Salisbury Cathedral.
Joju is also working with more than 80 councils nationwide to install EV charge point infrastructure, simplifying the process and allowing councils to deploy charging infrastructure across their region without spending a penny.
“It’s very pleasing to be recognised across all our product offerings as offering excellent service in what we do.” said Chris. “But this is still very much the beginning – the climate crisis hasn’t gone away; we still need lots more renewable capacity; and a complete electric transport revolution needs to happen in the next decade. That’s always been our mission”
Octopus Energy’s Tesla Energy Plan has now ceased. It has now been superceded by Octopus Flux. Octopus Flux is an innovative electricity tariff that changes import and export tariffs throughout the day. You can top up your battery with cheap electricity in the middle of the night, and earn money by discharging your battery to the grid at peak times. Read our guide to Octopus Flux here.
Choosing the right electricity tariff for you can be pretty confusing. READ MORE
Joju Solar will be exhibiting at Fully Charged LIVE again this year. The 3-day event will be held at Silverstone Race Track from Friday 7th – Sunday 9th June. The event is put on by Robert Llewellyn and the team behind the Fully Charged Youtube Channel, and will feature all the latest from the world of electric vehicles, and renewable technologies for the home.
We can safely say that last year’s event was by far the best trade event we’ve ever attended. The expected audience was well exceeded and 65% of those turned up within the first hour of the first day. When the doors opened at 10am, the surging crowds were more like a Black Friday sale than any renewable energy show we’d ever been to.
That’s our stall with the orange posters on the right hand side. We didn’t stop talking solar, battery storage and EVs all weekend!
This year’s event promises to be even better; the venue is now double the size and there will be a wider range of activities. The highlights include:
So grab your tickets and come and say hello! We’d love to talk to you about any new projects you might have, or simply catch up with our old friends and customers. Hope to see you there!
Back in the 1890’s a power station in central Oxford powered a local grid that ran the city. As demand for electrical power grew, many small local networks like this across the country were developed. However, by 1925, such an approach was seen as inefficient and fragmented, and major review was conducted by Lord Weir. The British Government created the Electricity (Supply) Act of 1926, which recommended that a “national gridiron” supply system be created. This was the formation of the National Grid as we know it, a back bone of high-voltage transmission lines feeding lower voltage local distribution networks. One outcome of this, however, was that it supported a model of large centralised electricity generation; many GW of coal, gas and nuclear plants supplying the bulk of our power.
Now, in 2019, the challenges are very different. With the need for rapid decarbonisation of electricity to mitigate climate change, not to mention the fact that renewables are now cost-competitive with traditional generation, we now have many smaller generators connected at the bottom of the electricity grid.
Which poses the question: is the old localised energy grid model a more appropriate way of managing our electricity system in the 21st Century? Has the wheel turned full circle?
This is what a major new project, Project LEO (Local Energy Oxfordshire), is looking to find out.
Project LEO is a £13.8m project over 3 years, run by a consortium of Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks, Open Utility (Piclo), EDF Energy R&D, Nuvvé, Low Carbon Hub, University of Oxford, Oxford City Council, and Oxfordshire County Council. The aim of the project, as the name would suggest, is to develop a local electricity market for Oxfordshire, that supplies its own needs, ensures reliable grid operation, and rewards generators a storage for the energy and flexibility they provide.
Why is this project being developed in Oxfordshire? Currently the grid in Oxfordshire is constrained, meaning it’s hard to connect more renewable energy projects to the grid; the grid is essentially full. There are two potential ways to solve this:
Put another way, lets imagine a new massive solar farm was connected to the grid. In summer the excess power would blow up the existing substations – no-one wants that! So the first option would be to build a new substation at considerable cost. The second option would be to find nearby users to take that excess power, which is likely to be considerably cheaper.
To facilitate this, Project LEO is developing a local energy marketplace, to control and manage the operation of the ‘assets’ in a smart local energy system. These assets might include hydro generation on the Thames which could be ramped up and down, or large heating systems such as the Bodleian book depository, which could be used flexibly according to available renewable power. It could also include smaller solar PV systems, batteries and smart EV charging.
And this is where Joju Solar comes in! We’re going to be working with our long-term community energy partner the Low Carbon Hub to deliver solar and storage projects that integrate with the Project LEO local energy marketplace. Lots of innovation will be required. For example, currently batteries charge from solar, and discharge to meet demand within the home. In future, batteries will still charge from solar, but might discharge when Oxfordshire needs it, rather than when your home needs it. This should reduce costs for everyone, and allow more renewables to be connected to the grid. However, it won’t be easy; devices will need the ability to ‘talk’ to the grid for them to be able to respond to the signals from the local market.
It’s a very exciting step for us – to go beyond simply installing generation and storage in people’s homes and businesses, and actually help create a local smart electricity grid. We can’t wait to get started.
It’s been a busy month in the world of renewable energy; with the summer so far being the fifth sunniest ever recorded in the UK, it’s no surprise that solar PV system output is breaking records left, right and centre. READ MORE
In our latest blog, we look ahead to see what the 2018 holds for the distributed energy technology sector.READ MORE
Last week saw two major policy announcements with major impacts on the way we manage our electricity networks, generate and consume electricity, and use transport.
We’ve just installed one of the first Tesla Powerwall 2 units in the country, for comic actor, presenter and renewable energy enthusiast Robert Llewellyn. We’ve blogged the entire installation process, so you can see how simple it is.