News

Well December crept up quickly this year, didn’t it?  Maybe the cold weather is to blame. As usual the year has flown by, and I am starting to panic a bit about so much to do and so little time (not even counting what I need to do for Christmas and the family activities).

The countryside looks fantastic (lots of feed) and the livestock healthy and in very good condition. It bodes well for a good summer albeit we do need some hot days to cleanse the landscape and harvest grain crops.

Energy costs are predicted to increase significantly next year on top of the increases we have had this year. It reinforces the need to look at opportunities to reduce demand or more likely how to use energy more efficiently. Electrification of everything is happening although green hydrogen does hold longer term promise in some applications.

Into the future energy will likely be supplied by a mix of applications – DC (wind and solar), green hydrogen and batteries. Efficiency of use will also be an important innovation and the use of smart metres, AI, GPS, autonomous drive systems and software using machine learning algorithms for monitoring and measurement as well as efficiency.

Battery technology is probable where we will see some very significant innovation (e.g . lithium sulphate as opposed to lithium iron which is about 5 times as energy dense) in the near future but the final model is more likely to be a mix of all the above.