India has doubled its total installed electricity capacity since 2014 to 500 GW, almost double Germany's electric capacity

Good news! Very impressive, but still lagging far behind e.g. China and the US!

Germany's wind power turbines can not keep up, while it destroys nuclear and coal fired power plants! 😊

According to Google: "China's total installed electricity capacity reached 3.72 billion kilowatts (3,720 GW) as of the end of September 2025.",
"The total installed electricity capacity of the USA is approximately 1.25 terawatts (TW) as of 2024, which is about 1,250 GW.",
"Germany's total installed electricity capacity was approximately 263.4 GW in 2024"

"... from less than 250 gigawatts to over 500. Note that “total installed electricity capacity” reflects the theoretical maximum that all of India’s generators could produce, not their actual output."

"... Break-up of India’s Power Capacity

Non-fossil fuel sources (renewable energy, hydro, and nuclear): 256.09 GW – over 51 % of the total.

 

Fossil-fuel-based sources: 244.80 GW – about 49 % of the total.

Within renewables: 

Solar power – 127.33 GW

Wind power – 53.12 GW

..."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

India achieved Historic milestone in power sector: Surpasses 500 GW and Renewable Generation Exceeds 50% of demand (original news release)

Why Are So Many Public EV Chargers Broken in Los Angeles?

Recommendable!

What you should know about the electric grid: A brief primer

Recommendable!

Unreliable, intermittent wind and solar power is a huge scam! Not clean at all (e.g. just think of the waste and manufacturing)! Environmentally unfriendly! Wind power is a huge insect and bird killer and so on.

What you should know about the grid: A brief primer - Competitive Enterprise Institute

Space nickel-hydrogen Battery coming down to earth at large scale thanks to lower cost

Good news! Better energy storage technologies are urgently needed! This could be huge!

This battery technology has been tested in space for years!

"... bring the battery chemistry deployed on the International Space Station, nickel-hydrogen, down to Earth?

“[It’s] the most durable battery ever invented,” ... Nickel-hydrogen batteries ... can last for 30,000 charge cycles, are fireproof, and outperform lithium-ion batteries on a number of key metrics for energy storage at the large scale. ... there’s basically no maintenance on this battery ...

This fall, the company will finish construction of a 92,900-square-meter gigafactory in Kentucky that will start by making up to 5 gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries annually. He projects the facility will reach its full capacity when it’s churning out 20 GWh of cells per year. ...

Nickel-hydrogen batteries look and work unlike any other battery. They consist of a stack of electrodes inside a pressurized gas tank. The cathode is nickel hydroxide and the anode is hydrogen. When the battery is charging, a catalytic reaction generates hydrogen gas. During discharge, the hydrogen oxidizes and converts back to water. ...

Nickel-hydrogen batteries can run for tens of thousands of cycles, giving them a life of over 30 years. Their use of expensive platinum catalysts kept them relegated to space applications until five years ago, when ... [a] team found an inexpensive nickel-molybdenum-cobalt alloy catalyst for the battery that costs US $20 per kilogram. ...

“I call it the barbecue test,” ... “We take the battery, put it in an open fire, and watch it continue to heat up. What ends up happening is that the pressure above top charge will force the hydrogen back into water. And then we have a release valve designed into the unit, so at a predesigned pressure and temperature that will release, and you’ll get a steam vent.” ...
So far, EnerVenue has been operating a pilot production line that can manufacture 100 megawatt-hours’ worth of batteries per year—and they’ve deployed small-scale test systems. But ... the company already has over 7 GWh, or about $400 million dollars’ worth of purchase orders, ..."

NASA Battery Tech to Deliver for the Grid - IEEE Spectrum A battery built for satellites brings grid-scale storage down to Earth

... cylindrical batteries are low-maintenance and non-volatile and will require no special heating, cooling, or safety systems—unlike lithium-ion battery storage.

Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

Good news! However, this seems to be very early stage technology. I am not so sure about molten salt, elevated temperature (above the boiling point of water) ...

"Engineers at MIT have developed a new battery design using common materials – aluminum, sulfur and salt. Not only is the battery low-cost, but it’s resistant to fire and failures, and can be charged very fast, which could make it useful for powering a home or charging electric vehicles. ...
After a search and some trial and error, they settled on aluminum for one electrode and sulfur for the other, topped off with an electrolyte of molten chloro-aluminate salt. ...
They can not only operate at high temperatures of up to 200 °C (392 °F) but they actually work better when hotter – at 110 °C (230 °F), the batteries charged 25 times faster than they did at 25 °C (77 °F). Importantly, the researchers say the battery doesn’t need any external energy to reach this elevated temperature – its usual cycle of charging and discharging is enough to keep it that warm. ..."

From the abstract:

"Although batteries fitted with a metal negative electrode are attractive for their higher energy density and lower complexity, the latter making them more easily recyclable, the threat of cell shorting by dendrites has stalled deployment of the technology. Here we disclose a bidirectional, rapidly charging aluminium–chalcogen battery operating with a molten-salt electrolyte composed of NaCl–KCl–AlCl3. ... to form the foundation for high-rate charging of the battery. This chemistry is distinguished from other aluminium batteries in the choice of a positive elemental-chalcogen electrode as opposed to various low-capacity compound formulations, and in the choice of a molten-salt electrolyte as opposed to room-temperature ionic liquids that induce high polarization. We show that the multi-step conversion pathway between aluminium and chalcogen allows rapid charging at up to 200C, and the battery endures hundreds of cycles at very high charging rates without aluminium dendrite formation. Importantly for scalability, the cell-level cost of the aluminium–sulfur battery is projected to be less than one-sixth that of current lithium-ion technologies. Composed of earth-abundant elements that can be ethically sourced and operated at moderately elevated temperatures just above the boiling point of water, this chemistry has all the requisites of a low-cost, rechargeable, fire-resistant, recyclable battery."

Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

A new concept for low-cost batteries Made from inexpensive, abundant materials, an aluminum-sulfur battery could provide low-cost backup storage for renewable energy sources.

Fast-charging aluminium–chalcogen batteries resistant to dendritic shorting (no public access)

Internal combustion or spontaneous combustion?

Pick your poison or choose between Scylla and Charybdis (lesser of two evils)! 😄

Infrequently, electric vehicles suddenly go up in flames caused by e.g. spontaneous combustion.

Vehicles equipped with internal combustion engines rarely experience those kind of events.

What will the future of combustion be like?