iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is a pet peeve but I hate (eg) "9x cheaper" as a phrase. You mean a ninth of the cost? I think? Seems to me that cost is a thing that can be multiplied but cheapness isn't.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

god I hope so. It's a good point that the referendum system makes one vote for actual *policies*, not just on vibes, which works and hopefully will continue to work against the far right.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

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, www.bnef.com/insights/40165

bnef.com

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Reposted by Jenny Chase

Robbie Andrew @robbieandrew.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The US EIA is currently forecasting US fossil-fuel emissions to drop by 1.7% in 2026. robbieandrew.github.io/USA/

Graph showing: Changing EIA forecasts for US CO2 emissions in 2026 (Source: https://robbieandrew.github.io/USA/)

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Some of these are somewhat cute but yeah, maybe not the most low-maintenance high-output designs!

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Balcony solar installations that make you go "hmm", an occasional series.

A cropped photo of some south-facing solar panels mounted on a balcony, which would be in full sunlight if the awning of the balcony was not hanging right over nearly all of them. Taken close to midday near the poster's home in Switzerland.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The main reason I haven't done half the work and writing I wanted to do over the past year. He's pretty cute though.

Photo of a large blonde white baby sitting in a bathtub under a tree.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Just realized @davidosmond.bsky.social is on here, do follow him for amazing and intuitive charts of Australia's ability to meet electricity demand with a scaled-up renewables and storage fleet.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I did rather enjoy this summary of why Estonia's solar market is dead (too much solar). It's a small market but the trend is much wider. Basically power in sunny hours is now worthless across much of Europe. voiceofrenewables.com/estonia-sola...

voiceofrenewables.com

Estonia Saw Its Solar Glut Coming Two Years Ago — And Built It Anyway – The Voice of Renewables

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The global power fleet (excluding hydro) withdrew 29.8 billion cubic meters of freshwater worldwide in 2025, BloombergNEF research finds, and a more-rapid energy transition would significantly reduce this at least from existing power assets by 2050.

A screenshot of two BloombergNEF charts of freshwater withdrawal for non-hydro power plants in two BloombergNEF power system scenarios to 2050, Economic Transition and Net Zero. In both scenarios the power withdrawal drops, more rapidly in Net Zero. In 2050, the Economic Transition figure is down to just under 20 billion cubic meters, while for Net Zero is is still about 12 billion. The full research note published in September 2026 is under the paywall here: https://www.bnef.com/insights/40317/

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Basic Infrastructure - students would learn about where their energy comes from, plus the distribution systems for food, water and sewage treatment. And about how weather and climate interact with these.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Attention librarians and those who request academic resources: World Scientific Publishing has a special offer on a large big bundle of current Clean Energy titles, including my book. www.worldscientific.com/area/clean-e...

worldscientific.com

Clean Energy 2.0 – E-Book Collection

This collection brings together essential readings that explore critical clean energy issues in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). It cover...

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Like... it's probably a good thing in the long run. Pakistan’s fiscal deficit is at the lowest level in two decades, and the Pakistani rupee has been the most stable currency in Asia this year as of June. But for ordinary Pakistanis the high power prices really hurt.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

What Pakistan did was let power prices rise unstopped, and the utilities and discoms be untransparent and sometimes corrupt until everyone absolutely hates them. Plus, tiktok how-to videos. And local / family credit networks. Hard sell, honestly.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sadly, no, BNEF is still stuck with me saying "people will literally start babbling about space when trying to imagine new markets for solar panels rather than admitting that the future is selling to poor people".

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Maybe individualised print runs have got just a little too cheap. This came through the door today - note it's not even in a local language. Also thanks Co-op I probably will.

A flyer from Swiss supermarket Coop, reading "Make the most of our vast wine selection, Jenny Chase" - ie directly addressed to the recipient.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Wow, the rain here is absolutely hammering it down, and has been all day. I know it will quickly soak into the greedy ground, but this has to be good news for the Rhine water levels (I am upstream of the Rhine, on the Aare).

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ireland is developing a duck curve.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

You're Going to Need a Bigger Boat. (Kudos to my wind colleague Kajsa Jernetz for this entirely serious piece of analysis on wind turbine installation vessels worldwide).

Screenshot of a Bloomberg article titled "Wind Installation Vessels: You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat". The text reads, "As new wind turbines become taller and more powerful, their components are getting heavier. If wind turbines continue growing, the existing fleet of turbine installation vessels will be incapable of carrying the increasingly heavy loads and lifting to future hub heights. Even if turbine growth stagnates, foundation installation vessels will struggle to keep up as projects move into deeper waters that require larger, and heavier, foundations."

A further By the Numbers section clarifies that 28% of offshore wind installations outside mainland China are at risk between 2026 and 2035 if turbines keep growing, that installation vessels could be in tight supply by 2030, and that BNEF's database tracks 209 vessels, of which 82 operate outside mainland China.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The first post I've seen describing exactly why the "cable route changed for Dobby's grave" story is fishy (it probably isn't remotely true). backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on...

backofmind.substack.com

chortle on a chortle

an underestimated obstacle to infrastructure

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Reposted by Jenny Chase

Tom Haddon @tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The pie chart that appears when the curtains are drawn back to show the final energy consumption (fallacy) is nothing short of perfection as it is still trotted out to this day as some sort of monolith.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

John is being entertainingly and accurately irate about glowing descriptions of net metering. (He's right, the future of electricity pricing is all about WHEN your electricity is used or generated. In sunny hours it is, increasingly, not worth anything on the market.)

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Not to dunk on this but it isn't really true that the Hormuz oil crisis is driving a solar boom. Here's this chart updated to June of China solar exports, showing that the March spike in exports has subsided and was therefore mostly just export tax rebate effects.

Chart from BloombergNEF and SinoImex showing monthly dollar-value exports of solar cells and modules from China, by market, from November 2024 to June 2026. They spiked to $4.5bn in March 2026 because a key China export tax rebate was removed, fell to $3.1bn in April - still high but possibly due to some spillover effects and deadline missing - and then are back to a normal-ish level of $2.2bn in May and $2.5bn in June.

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Reposted by Jenny Chase

Commercial Solar Guy @commercialsolarguy.com · 03/08/2026

Linked to article is lying about stories. I assume AI - maybe human. The project reported on (and linked to) is *cranberries* (not blue). The ‘sweeter’ berries claim is made up. The reference linked to with claims of testing is a solar project database site. Nothing related to fruit testing.

ecoportal.net

In Massachusetts, a solar farm was raised nine feet above blueberry fields, and its shade is changing how the fruit grows and tastes

In Massachusetts, a solar farm was raised nine feet above some blueberry fields, and its shade is changing how the fruit grows and even how it tastes.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

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

Chart of Pakistan's gas demand, historical and forecast, sourced to BloombergNEF which collated data from Pakistan Energy Yearbook, Pakistan Economic Survey, Bloomberg Terminal’s AHOY JOURNEY (historical), Independent System and Market Operator’s (ISMO) Integrated Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2025-2035 (IGCEP 2025-2035), National Electricity Power Regulatory authority (NEPRA).

The chart shows gas demand by sector (grid power / domestic / fertilizer / industry / other / losses), in billion cubic meters. Between 2020 and 2025 the total dropped 16%, though it spiked in 2021 on higher losses. The main sectors in the drop were grid power, domestic and industry. This decline is expected to continue at a slower rate to 2035.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Reached home at midnight after driving 800km through France with a baby and an 8-year-old. EV charging: pretty good, a few moments of inexperience panic when the interface was slow or there was a disorganised queue for chargers. But generally kids have to stop more often than an EV.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

We are driving the EV back to Switzerland from Kent, and wow this is a huge solar structure in a random place. ( @bjoernstats.bsky.social is running down the car battery more than I feel comfortable with).

Photo of a dry field by a motorway, with a huge structure of 8 by 9 solar panels standing free like a sculpture on the horizon.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Yeah, not bad! (although the editor is so unaccustomed to the subject they let "renewal" slide for "renewable", and the situation in Kenya is a bit more complex than that, and I wouldn't use quite those terms for Pakistan's boom...)

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

*sigh* the Bloomberg system is flagging my emails for obscenity because a large excel I am trying to send contains a reference to the "Longyan Yongding District Fengguang Jimei Foda Rooftop Distributed PV Plant" (solar plant in China), and apparently "Foda" is an obscene term in Portuguese.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Ooof those are some torn-up solar carports.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Me trying to explain to a client the last ten years of solar auction prices, including developers in Portugal bidding to supply solar at negative prices to win access to a grid connection they could use for a larger project: "it got weird". Well, it *did*.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Nice charts. I continue to be frustrated that coverage of the relatively minor grid issues in Europe during the heatwave rather miss the point that solar and batteries were *helping*.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

What I have learned from observing project development for over 20 years: always file for land and interconnection permits even if the project is highly uncertain, you might be able to sell to someone. Or, a hydrogen firm actually makes some money. www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/plug...

datacenterdynamics.com

Plug Power sells Texas site to Stream Data Centers

Land in Graham earmarked for hydrogen plant set to host data centers

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

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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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Also they are right. The baby is annoyed that we ask on EVERY page "where's Spot?" when he keeps trying to show us that Spot is on the back cover like last time. We could conduct bedtime much more efficiently if we listened to him.

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Reposted by Jenny Chase

Laura Millan @lauramillan.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

From timing park visits to cold showers, parenting in Madrid offers a preview of how climate change is reshaping family life across Europe Read my latest story on @bloomberg.com for FREE! www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

bloomberg.com

How to Raise Young Children in One of Europe’s Hottest Capitals

From timing park visits to cold showers, parenting in Madrid offers a preview of how climate change is reshaping family life across Europe.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Just got a slightly concerning invitation from Eurostar to reschedule a trip to London next week to later for free, if I wanted to, because "we are currently experiencing hot weather". I do not think my employer will look kindly on me rescheduling to miss our training week, though.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Not really a dispute, but it's also a function of Germany doing much of the work before 2019; on *electricity production*, RE+ nuclear in Germany went from 53% in 2019 to 58% in 2025. Coal from 28% to 21%. See chart "Bruttostromerzeugung" here: www.bdew.de/energie/erne...

bdew.de

Dossier: Erneuerbare Energien

Alles zu erneuerbaren Energien in Deutschland: Entwicklungen, Potenziale und Positionen des BDEW im Überblick.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

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.

Chart showing BloombergNEF data for minutes of battery storage, calculated as cumulative battery capacity in megawatt-hours at the end of 2025, divided by cumulative solar capacity in megawatts at the end of 2025. It is highest in Hawaii at 92 minutes, is 66 minutes in California, 44 minutes in Saudi Arabia, 34 minutes in the UK and around 30 in Texas, total US, Chile and Italy. Germany and mainland China are both on 15. Spain has 2 and India, 0.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Yeah, these numbers absolutely exist! And weirdly nobody bothers to compute "how much water has been saved by renewables and by coal-to-gas switching so far"... probably because it's basically nothing in the wider context of what agriculture and lawns use?

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

This seems like a good reason to build renewables, since the water they're talking about is from fossil fuel power generation. It's not specific to data centers.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

The baby is big enough to be on a bike! He seems resigned about it.

Jenny Chase, on a bike, with her 10-month-old baby on the back seat. A field of maize and the Alps are in the background.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Yay we are relevant enough to be news! Notoreity isn't as good as fame, but it's much better than indifference.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Seems worth bookmarking if you want to know about vehicle registration data by type (and who doesn't?)

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Australia (well, three states of it) mandates three free hours of electricity every day from tomorrow, up to 24kWh. This is a pretty good explainer. lenergy.com.au/free-daytime...

lenergy.com.au

Free Daytime Electricity Is Coming. How It Actually Works

The Solar Sharer Offer launches 1 July 2026. Here's what changed, how the cap works, and how to maximise free daytime electricity for your home.

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

It does feel insane 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 when the sun went down. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

Not just for rich people: the progressive case for air conditioning | Phineas Harper

Air conditioning can bring significant benefits but also real harms. The answer is for it to take its place alongside a comprehensive state plan for climate adaptation, says writer and curator Phineas...

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I'm not sure that "Hitzenflaute" is a word we need, surely this is just a duck curve? And much easier to fix with a moderate amount of batteries than a dunkelflaute. (Good article though). www.pv-magazine.de/2026/06/26/w...

pv-magazine.de

Was gegen die Hitzeflaute in Europa hilft - pv magazine Deutschland

Der Bundesverband Neue Energiewirtschaft hat, ähnlich wie vor Pfingsten, als lange Phasen mit negativen Strompreisen anstanden, die Bundesregierung erneut zum Handeln aufgefordert. Die Maßnahmen, die ...

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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I am glad the boss is doing this. While as analysts we try to maintain a little distance with the renewable energy industry associations, it is very important for our fractured sector to have ways to unite against the much tighter fossil fuel lobbies. www.ft.com/content/5d02...

ft.com

Michael Bloomberg arms green lobby for fight against oil interests

Billionaire pledges $285mn to renewable industry associations as nations face energy policy decisions in wake of Iran war

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