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.
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. The energy transition isn't carefully thought through – it’s driven by fads, the current ones being batteries, distributed, virtual and demand-side. They all fall down on a number of factors, including: All...
Interconnectors and Imports
Interconnectors in Europe We have studied the energy transition plans of 6 countries in detail (UK, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL - who account for 75% of pre-Brexit EU GDP - please forgive the number of abbreviations!) and are aware in general terms of the plans of most of our...
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...
Doing My Bit
I was recently asked: do renewable power plants impact the environment? Quite obviously the questioner was seeking to justify pursuing the fossil-fuelled status quo by nit-picking faults in the case for clean energy. This led me to reflect on some environmental...
Alternatives to CAES
Alternatives to CAES for provision of arbitrage, balancing, ancillary, stability and other services come from power stations, pumped hydro-electric stations, batteries, Demand Side Response (DSR), interconnectors and ignorance. Power Stations Power stations are being...
The Future Role of Hydrogen
Hydrogen will play a significant role in zero-carbon economies in the future. It can be stored at large scale, especially in salt caverns which can be formed in much of the world; It can be stored at ultra-high pressure – vehicle makers are considering up to 700bar:...