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.
Fads and Fallacies of the Energy Transition
Throughout the energy transition, technology after technology has been lauded as "the big thing" of the energy transition, "the solution" to the challenges involved – in effect, a magic wand. The energy transition cannot be achieved by an over-emphasis on some...
Comparing Energy Storage, Like with Like
One of the biggest challenges facing those who wish to invest in, or otherwise work with, energy storage is how to compare the costs and performance of different technologies. Many (e.g. batteries) carefully select their data points to flatter both their capabilities...
Incentivising Clean Energy
While this article is written from the viewpoint of the United Kingdom, all its content would apply equally to most other countries or trading blocs such as the European Union. Current Situation Currently clean energy is incentivised by an uncoordinated mish-mash of...
Batteries – Expensive and Inadequate Solutions
Batteries – Expensive and Inadequate Solutions Enabling an Affordable, Reliable and Resilient Energy Transition Grid connected batteries are being used for many grid services that would be much better and more cheaply delivered by large-scale long-duration storage,...
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...
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...