Germany's green energy boom is leaving a 'trail of blood' on coal companies

Since the beginning, the commercial growth of renewable energy has been a laborious, often painful matter of government pushes, tax incentives and campaigning for greater awareness. In Germany, however, the energy market is on the cusp of evolving to the next step: An era in which the sun and the wind replace fossil fuels through the sheer, unstoppable force of the market.
The country is currently experiencing a glut of energy, thanks to the recent openings of new coal power stations (which were commissioned back when electricity was in short supply) as well as record levels of renewable generation -- especially solar. On sunny and windy days, the excess of electricity (which on average stands at 117 percent of peak demand) gets so big that energy prices are pushed downwards and traditional power stations are forced to cut down their running hours. A decade ago, fossil companies enjoyed a 15 percent margin on their sales, but today they make just five percent. An energy trader has informed Bloomberg that he believes that the latest coal stations to come online will make "much less money than originally thought" and "won't cover their costs."

Regulation is still at the heart of Germany's predicament, because green generators have preferential access to the grid on days when there's an overload. In other words, they're allowed to run and run, while coal-fired stations have to switch themselves off in response to the excess. However, the consequence -- which we're already seeing -- is to sap investors' interest in financing the coal industry. In turn, this means that when the country's older coal stations reach their end of life over the next decade, there's a much greater chance that they'll be replaced by green sources. Renewable energy's contribution to the grid is on target to rise to 45 percent by 2025, while coal companies are left with what one chief financial officer described as a "trail of blood" on their balance sheets. In the US, meanwhile, the birth of solar on an industrial scale is only just getting started. (BY SHARIF SAKR / SOURCE: Bloomberg)

Apple Looking Into Practical Solar Charging For Notebooks, iOS Devices

A new patent application published by the USPTO this week (via AppleInsider) indicates that Apple has been thinking about how to practically deliver the benefits of solar power to mobile devices, without requiring clumsy and gigantic external converters.

Solar charging is still fairly fringe when it comes to the general gadget-using population, but Apple’s patent, filed originally in 2012, looks like it could provide a way to make getting your power from the sun something that’s generally palatable within a few years’ time.

The system in Apple’s patent is a power management array for accepting both power adapter and solar power direct from gathering devices or traditional mains based chargers. So in other words, you could plug in your MagSafe or iPad/iPod adapter, or alternatively hook a MacBook or other piece of hardware directly to a solar panel with a simple cord.

There’s also a means for accepting both inputs at the same time, according to the patent, for a power balance that would likely charge your device quicker but with more economical use of juice from the grid.

The key to this patent is that the system described is both composed of readily available power management techniques achievable with existing hardware, and; able to be built using componentry that takes up very little space, making it theoretically possible to integrate it into existing device designs without much modification.

Both of those indicate that Apple could build this into products sooner, rather than later, should it choose to go that route.

I’d still expect this to take a while to come to fruition, if it does at all, but it is one way that Apple could explore the possibility of expanding device battery life in non-traditional usage situations, like while out and about in nature and separated from any mains access.

The key will be whether this can be done without making any sacrifices to battery or device size, and that seems to be where Apple is focusing its R&D efforts around solar, according to this application at least.