About the Author
Mark Howitt is Chief Technical Officer, a founding director of Storelectric. He leads Storelectric’s technical and operations, minimising technological risk, maximising efficiency and environmental friendliness, and speed to market. He focuses on technologically simple solutions using proven technologies wherever possible.
His degree was in Physics with Electronics. He has 12 years’ management and innovation consultancy experience world-wide. In a rail multinational, Mark developed 3 profitable and successful businesses: in commercialising a non-destructive technology he had innovated, in logistics and in equipment overhaul. In electronics manufacturing, he developed and introduced to the markets 5 product ranges and helped 2 businesses grow strategically.
Global Lessons from the Texas Blackouts
Three Perfect Storms? Three severe winter storms swept across America in the period February 10-20, 2021. While causing many problems across the country, in Texas they caused widespread blackouts, affecting almost the entire population in rolling brown-outs and total...
Calculating the Need for Storage
Current Calculations Currently each country and grid calculates its need for storage in very complicated manner, by creating a model with various scenarios, projecting different generation mixes all based on huge assumptions as to what will be rolled out in future....
Saving Billions on Grid Upgrades
The UK government and grid are planning £16bn grid upgrades as part of wider developments to accommodate 35GW new renewable generation, largely from offshore wind. This is to accommodate the peaks of intermittent generation in order to reduce curtailment, and will...
Enabling Renewables to Power Grids Affordably, Reliably and Resiliently
Storelectric has identified a number of critical challenges for the energy transition, and their solutions. These are discussed below. Intermittency Most renewables generate electricity intermittency, i.e. when it wants to. This applies to wind, solar, tidal and wave...
Fads and Fallacies of the Energy Transition
Warning: this blog article is rather more strident than most. First Four Fads: Batteries, Distributed, Virtual, Demand-Side The energy transition isn't carefully thought through – it’s driven by fads, the current ones being batteries, distributed, virtual and...
Interconnectors and Imports
Interconnectors in Europe The United Kingdom no longer has enough domestically generated electricity for its own peak needs, and relies on imports through interconnectors. As the grid decarbonises, power stations are closing, increasing the country's reliance on...
Re-Starting Net Zero Grids – Black Start
The Challenge Net Zero grids have very low levels of dispatchable (i.e. on-demand) generation – largely hydro-electric, nuclear, gas-fired power stations with CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), and biomass power stations. The bulk of their energy derives from...
Issues with Ever-Shortening Contract Durations
Since privatisation, the only major capital investment into infrastructure-scale plant and equipment that was not planned before privatisation has been undertaken under special financial instruments (ROCs, OFTOs, CATOs, CfDs, CM etc.) that guarantee 15+ year...
Vehicle to Grid and Shared Mobility
Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Shared Mobility are two of the big buzz-phrases rolled out in the transportation sector, as magical solutions to energy storage needs of the grid (V2G) and to all the woes of transport-related climate change. They have both advantages and...