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  Just reading about Australia power markets: "Average power prices fell between 40% and 65% across the National Electricity Market (NEM) year on year in 2Q 2026, driven by higher renewable output and increased battery discharge during evening peak demand periods." Paywall, https://www.bnef.com/insights/40165

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  Bluesky is on day 3 of drama about Lake Ontario / America, and US-based people I hitherto respected seem unaware that: - yes, cartography can be very political - you do have to accept that a country's government has the right to officially rename things and that cartographers should not be the ones making the final call on whether or not this is "stupid" - showing the locally official name is not an endorsement of the government, otherwise my god, we will never have maps of anythi...

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  One terrifying thing about adult life is how quickly and thoroughly one forgets things. It is so, so important to write them down - or they're gone. (My colleague just asked me about the European Minimum Import Price on Chinese modules, a policy regime I thought was seared into my brain because they were using my price index. At one point I got in trouble with the Swiss government for inviting European Union officials to the Zurich office to chat about the index formation.)

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  Unlike that of the rest of southeast Asia, Pakistan's gas demand has been falling. Pakistan's solar boom is partly attributable to excellent do-it-yourself videos on Tiktok and youtube, and partly to two other factors, says Zainaab Basil in an interview with BNEF. www.bnef.com/insights/40017

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  Seeking recommendations for podcasts about science or nature, suitable for an 8-year-old. We enjoy "Lachlabor" and "Anna und die Wilden Tiere" in German but haven't tried much in English. (We are planning to drive the EV from Switzerland to the UK, and it's going to be a long trip.)

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  RE: https://fediscience.org/@hausfath/116903686110008831 This (unfortunately, I say as part of one of the teams of serious energy systems modelers).

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  Minutes of a market's peak solar output that can be stored in total battery capacity, end of 2025. Hawaii was the highest I could find, at 92 minutes, while the EU-27 aggregate is just 8 minutes.

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  RE: https://mastodon.energy/@drsimevans/116873300919292698 In which Simon gets quite rightly mad about incorrect numbers.

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  Feels weird that none of "the progressive case for aircon" mentions solar. If this heatwave had happened in 2010, the European grid would have buckled in the daytime! As it is, there were some issues in the evening. The UK doesn't yet have that much solar capacity, and neither does France; but even so, imagine the power grid last week if it *hadn't* had that big solar chunk (this is France last Tuesday, during a scorcher; at 2pm, load was 57GW and solar was 19.5GW). https://w...

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  Wow - gas generation in California Jan-May 2026 was down 60% from its level in the same period of 2024, due to solar, batteries, imports from hydro and wind plants. This was despite a 7% increase in power demand. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67784

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  Since people keep asking how much solar is benefitting from the Iran war: we just reduced our 2026 forecast to 640GW(DC) of installation, down 2% from last year. We increased forecasts for Egypt and Malaysia, and Nigeria etc may grow. But big markets are shrinking due to saturation. Basically solar doesn't, in most places, directly replace oil. Most Europeans, for example, would respond to the crisis much more logically by buying an electric vehicle than solar panels.

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  Accidentally turned the garden hose full on the baby for several seconds, and after a moment of confusion he is delighted to be sitting in a puddle. (It seems I only breed water creatures).

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  A front-of-paywall BNEF podcast in which I break a golden rule and talk about BNEF tier 1. I won't be doing it again and am not looking for feedback. (It is a perfectly pleasant conversation, I just need to be incredibly careful what I say about these and possibly I wasn't. I am not supposed, for example, to use the phrase "the monster I created".) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2026-05-13/bnef-tier-1-lists-the-mark-of-credibility-podcast

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  My parents and uncle are coming to visit today, and as always when I host visitors I suddenly discover that while I have plenty of beds and bedding, absolutely none of it matches or looks good. This seems to happen regardless of how many times I go out and buy matching, nice bedding. I think the cupboards eat it and secretly change the colours. This is a shame as I love to host and would like to be good at it. Alas, it will never be. Bought in plenty of wine though, making vegetable lasagne.

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  Does anyone actually use Coordinated Universal Time, UTC, properly? Whenever someone sends me a time in UTC in the northern-hemisphere summer, they actually mean British summertime, so they're one hour off. Or they mean 'European summertime' in which case they are two hours off.

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  Exciting times in the incubator as the single fertile egg this year hatches. (Singleton goslings are a bad thing, but well, we'll get the adult geese involved and hopefully it won't grow up too lonely and unsocialised).

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  RE: https://mastodon.green/@akshatrathi/116606047171219282 This is an amazing interview and Akshat is great at pushing back at Tice's nonsense. (It's a very good thing I was not in Akshat's place because I would have [remembers this is a public forum and I am a professional] wished for Tice to step on a Lego.)

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  It's close enough between the US and the India that the margin of error is more than the difference, and minor revisions could reverse the order, but: India was the second largest installation market for PV in 2025, and BNEF expects this to also be true in 2026.

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  Obviously heatwaves are scary, but I'm also very relieved there will be one this week, when we are taking Child 1 and up to 17 of her friends to the currently-frigid outdoor swimming pool to celebrate her eighth birthday. (Wondering if they will let me bring the gosling... it's possible. There's a big grassy area and we could bring him his own bath).

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  Have a picture of a waterwheel turning, covered with thick ice. (Fulenbach, January 20, 2023. It's cold and Small Child forced me to go and see this last night after dark.)

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  It's easy to forget that most people don't know that power will be free (or even sometimes negatively priced) when it's very sunny. I have also been arguing with the China team about what a power market even means. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/14/uk-households-power-renewables-soar

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  So we have one (1) goose egg developing in the incubator, because these goobers are useless and a bit gay. (But obviously not completely gay. Just bisexual disasters.) My proposal was that we call the possible resulting gosling Una or Uno. We will introduce them to the adults very early and hopefully they won't be lonely for long. Child 1: no, me and my friend have decided it should be Tom or Daisy. ... so apparently we are doing a Great Gatsby theme this year?

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  This is fun - a daily quiz where you have to guess the animal in 20 guesses, with wrong guesses giving you information about taxonomy. https://metazooa.com/

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  Time to make 2025 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread. If you like these, you might like the second edition of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website until end of Nov 2025. It's the book I should have read before trying to get a job in renewable energy. Reviewers describe it as “to the point, important, and taught me a lot” and “surprisingly entertaining, don’t be put off by the title”. https://www.worl...

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  The reason I regularly feel compelled to defend the energy / climate progress of the UK (the country of my birth) is that the UK is actually doing pretty well. And you would not know that from the UK news! It's a British trait to believe we must be doing badly, our efforts are in vain, nothing we do will ever work - but it's not true here! All the 'green crap' is genuinely reducing the UK's demand for fossil fuels, and also its CO2 emissions! https://www....

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  The reason I regularly feel compelled to defend the energy / climate progress of the UK (the country of my birth) is that the UK is actually doing pretty well. And you would not know that from the UK news! It's a British trait to believe we must be doing badly, our efforts are in vain, nothing we do will ever work - but it's not true here! All the 'green crap' is genuinely reducing the UK's demand for fossil fuels, and also its CO2 emissions! https://www....

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  RE: https://vis.social/@infobeautiful/116109430224379547 Hi, it's me, from the "BloombergNEF" cited in that chart. While directionally accurate, 2024 was not over 600GW (2025 was about 655GW but this chart is older than that). There is uncertainty around solar build data but not that much. So it's a bad construction using incorrect data and I wish it would stop spreading around.