Sales of electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) in the UK rose by 27% in 2017, year on year, and the latest figures, released in April 2018, show that around 146,000 plug-in vehicles are currently driving around on our roads.READ MORE
Internal combustion engines, for all their flaws, are design classics. Why let them go to waste? In this guest blog, Steve Drummond from Electrogenic explains why you should consider converting classic cars to electric.
Our electric vehicle infrastructure project manager, Hugh Pickerill, takes a look at future technologies for electric car charging.
The switch to electric vehicles has other beneficial effects above and beyond reducing carbon dioxide emissions from personal transport. Conventional internal combustion engine vehicles also produce pollution, notable nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, that have seriously detrimental effects on local air quality. Poor air quality can affect people’s health, especially irritation of the respiratory system and lungs and some forms of cancer. Improving local air quality is therefore a major issue for many local councils, and encouraging the switch to EVs is a key means for addressing this. Below we look in more detail at these tailpipe pollution issues.
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Why are there so many EVs in Norway? Our resident Norwegian, Bea Cecilie Karlsen explains all.
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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!
The heatwave of earlier in the summer may seem a distant memory for most, but a change in the weather across the UK doesn’t mean that the world of renewables has stood still. We have complied some of the many ways in which renewable energy has been making the news in August 2018.
A recent YouGov poll has indicated that over 60% of Brits would be willing to install solar panels and home battery storage systems at their residences if there were greater assistance from the UK government. 62% of those polled said that they wanted to fit solar PV systems at home and 60% stated that they would be interested in buying a home battery storage solution, such as the Tesla Powerwall 2. With traditional energy prices rising again for many this year, it seems that more and more people are looking towards renewable energy solutions as a real and accessible answer to saving money on their bills and benefitting the environment. The results of this poll come in spite of last month’s news that the FiT tariff is expiring in March 2019, with no replacement incentives currently expected to be announced. However, the questions to UK householders were framed with an indication that the UK government would give greater assistance for these technologies to be installed or used in the home.
Facebook announced this month that they are aiming to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2020, and will cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 75% over the same period of time. They are doing this by powering their global data centres with solar and wind energy exclusively, thanks to a record-breaking year of corporate energy purchases for them. Facebook claim that they will also design or upgrade their office buildings, both existing and new, to be more energy efficient and be powered by 100% renewable energy by their deadline at the end of 2020.
Having achieved their previous target of 50% renewable energy a year early (in 2017 rather than 2018 as originally planned), Facebook cite this latest goal as a continuation of their support for climate action and the Paris Agreement.
It will be interesting to see whether other tech giants, such as Google, try to follow suit over the next couple of years and make changes that benefit the environment too!
EV Volumes (the electric vehicle world sales database) have announced that the number of plug-in vehicles (pure EV and PHEV) across Europe have now surpassed a million in number, with an increase in sales of 42% compared to the same period in 2017.
Norway, Iceland and Sweden lead the way in terms of plug-in vehicle adoption so far this year, correlating with some strong incentives from their governments and a strong charging infrastructure already in place in many areas.
The number of electric vehicles across Europe is expected to surpass 1.34m by the end of 2018, which will be around 2.35% of all new car and van registrations; leaving plenty of room for further growth as the charging infrastructure improves in more countries and new incentives potentially become available in different nations.
Image credit: Bridgwater Mercury
An ice cream company based in the South West of England have become the first in the UK to fit out one of their ice cream vans with its very own solar PV system. More than a year in the planning and making, the Styles Ice Cream van uses roof-mounted solar panels to charge on-board batteries that keep the freezers, fridges and lights running when the van is parked up. On sunny days, the solar power generated provides 100% of the van’s needs, with a backup LPG generator used occasionally for short periods when the weather is not quite as kind.
With conventional ice cream vans, the diesel engine is often kept running most of the time to provide the power needed on-board, which is not only expensive, but also means the area around the van can be heavy with emissions. The ice cream company responsible claims that the system is saving them around £15 per day on fuel, plus any electricity hook-up costs when they park up at a country showground (up to £150) and they are making plans to roll out solar PV systems to the other ten ice cream vans in the fleet, in the near future.
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
Electric vehicles (EV) have come a long way in the last few years, so more and more people are seeing them as a viable alternative to conventional petrol or diesel cars and vans, hence the 141,000 plug-in cars and vans on the road at the start of 2018. However, there are still a lot of myths flying around when it comes to switching from the combustion engine to the electric motor and we want to put some of the most common ones to bed.READ MORE
In our latest blog, we look ahead to see what the 2018 holds for the distributed energy technology sector.READ MORE