Please read the website carefully and use the website to apply. Please don't use email since your application might get lost and it is a lot of extra work for us. But you can ask me/us questions using email (see site).
NEON research accelerates the energy transition with a focus on solar, wind, electric mobility, MAAS and smart grids and using a team with many different competencies that will work closely together with each other and with companies and governments. neonresearch.nl/solutions/
Every Friday we come together in Eindhoven (virtually for now) to learn from each other and motivate each other. We end the week / start the weekend with music and drinks.
But of course people of the 20 partner companies are also welcome and every month the Friday is a mini-conference with presentation to and from partners.
The idea is also to use these presentations to eventually create a global transition course. neonresearch.nl/partners/
Every year we produce a report and (more importantly) an online model that shows cost effective pathways to a renewable future. At the kick-off a member of the Dutch parliament already indicated that he and his colleagues would LOVE to use that.
Let's not exaggerate: a lot of the practical work within NEON will still be writing papers that are primarily relevant for a specific domain or discipline. But the explicit purpose is that the PhDs together create societally relevant pathways that accelerate the transition.
That's the kind of "purpose driven movement" you would become part of when you get a PhD position within NEON. And we aim to grow further so we can make a BIG difference! Please apply when that appeals to you!
And usually I don't spam on Twitter but it is *really* important that we find the smartest and most motivated people for NEON.
So I would like the tagged & following people to consider a retweet. (You can simply mute this discussion if you don't want to see notifications!)
The heathen Gods have gathered on mount Olympus for a feast. Sun god Apollo is recognizable by his halo, Bacchus (Dionysus) by the grapes, Neptune (Poseidon) by his trident, Diana (Artemis) by the moon, Venus (Aphrodite) by Cupid.
If you add batteries to solar PV, not all energy has to flow through batteries. But let's keep it at $0.01 and add that to the price of solar. That makes PV (and wind) SUPER cheap!
Batteries must be discounted more quickly you say?
Cheap stationary batteries will pave the way for wind and solar in cheap and resilient energy grids. Unfortunately the @IEA is mispredicting it (again).
Many of my followers know this picture: it visualizes how the IEA underestimates solar. Now I see basically the same problem in their new battery report.
The IEAs new battery report gives a lot of great info on batteries but also two predictions taken from their authoritative world energy outlook: 1) STEPS which is basically business as usual 2) NZE (Net Zero Emissions) which is aspirational iea.org/reports/batter…
I used the Sunday afternoot to describe how I think that dirt cheap batteries will completely transform our electricity grid, paving the way for solar and wind and replacing grid reinforcements with grid buffers aukehoekstra.substack.com/p/batteries-ho…
This is something I'm working on for different government and grid operator projects, but I never realized just how cheap sodium batteries could become and how much of a game changer that will be.
So I used my Sunday evening to write this and would love your feedback!
First I look at the learning curve and then we see it is extremely predictable: every doubling of production has reduced prices by around 25%.
It's even steeper and more predictable than solar panels, the poster child of this type of learning curve.
(More details on substack.)
Aaaand we have another winner of the "EVs and renewables can never happen because of material scarcety" sweepstake. I thought @pwrhungry was more serious. Let me explain why this is misleading bollox.
First of all, notice how his argument is mainly that Vaclav Smil says this and HE is an authority.
Why bother to write a substack that basically parrots someone else?
Because you don't really understand it yourself and needed to write another substack maybe?
I'm a bit tired of this because Bryce abuses Smil the same way most people who are against renewables abuse him. They emphasize this is a serious and revered figure that knows numbers. They make it about the messenger, not the argument.