La firma francesa nPerf, especializada en medir y evaluar la conectividad a internet alrededor del mundo, presentó su más reciente balance sobre las conexiones fijas en Colombia, qué mostro quién es quien en este frente de las telecomunicaciones.

De acuerdo con la compañía, para este análisis, que se desarrolló entre el primero de julio del 2023 y el 30 de junio del 2024, se tuvieron en cuenta 778.393 pruebas realizadas con el medidor de velocidad de nPerf y los tests efectuados en la app de nPerf (Android y iOS) Además, se contó con la participación de clientes de los principales operadores de Colombia.

Entre los hallazgos,  se destacó que la compañía ETB ha ofrecido «el mejor rendimiento en internet fijo” en Colombia durante el 2024, según la puntuación obtenida en la medición. Además, este operador consiguió los mejores resultados en los indicadores de latencia, streaming y navegación web.

Es de destacar que la puntuación de nPerf evalúa las mediciones de velocidad y latencia, así como el rendimiento de navegación web y streaming, con el fin de “representar la calidad de la experiencia del usuario para un uso normal de internet”.

During a major storm event that eventually cut power to tens of thousands of homes, a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) were able to feed power back into Australia’s electricity grid, according to a new report from The Australian National University (ANU).

According to lead author of the study, Senior Research Fellow Dr Bjorn Sturmberg, it’s the first time in the world this type of vehicle-to-grid response to an emergency has been demonstrated. 

“It shows electric vehicles can provide the backup we need in an emergency like this,” he said. 

“We have a fleet of 51 EVs across Canberra that monitor the grid whenever they’re plugged in and can quickly inject short bursts of power to rebalance the system if the national grid rapidly loses power. They’re essentially big batteries on wheels. 

“The event in February — caused by storms in Victoria — was the first real-world test of our vehicles and chargers. We now know a vehicle-to-grid system can work.”  

At the time, 16 EVs were plugged in at properties across Canberra. Four were charging, while 12 were idle. 

“These vehicles quickly stopped charging and within seconds started discharging power into the grid, as they’ve been programmed to do,” Dr Sturmberg said. 

“In total, they provided 107 kilowatts of support to the national grid. To put that in perspective, 105,000 vehicles responding in this way would fully cover the backup required for the whole of the ACT and NSW.  

“For context, there were just under 100,000 EVs sold in Australia last year.” 

Dr Sturmberg said there is still work to be done to balance the growing demand for vehicle charging with grid security. 

Small and remote islands are subject to an array of energy challenges. As they are often isolated from mainland power grids, many face difficulties balancing supply and demand. They tend to be heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels, which can lead to high costs and energy security risks. And, despite their limited contributions to global emissions, they are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events. 

These dynamics create major inequities. Electricity generation on islands can cost 10 times more than on mainland territories and countries. In 2021, island nations had the most expensive average cost of electricity in the world; in the Solomon Islands, for example, electricity cost almost seven times more than in the United States, while electricity tariffs in Caribbean countries are more than double the US average. This can negatively impact socio-economic development. In Pacific island countries, fuel imports accounted for up to 13% of GDP in 2019.

Islands – including those that make up the group known as Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – also need to upgrade their energy infrastructure so that it is resilient to higher temperatures, more frequent natural disasters and flooding related to rising sea levels. At the same time, aging power systems are often inadequate to accommodate growing electricity demand due to economic growth and increased air-conditioning usage. Consequently, many systems are prone to load shedding events and recurrent outages, such as in Sint Maarten, Guam and Dominica, the latter of which was left without electricity for months in 2017 after Hurricane Maria damaged its long-distance grid.

With more than 730 million people living on 11 000 permanently inhabited islands across the world, and with the number of natural disasters rising sharply in recent decades, it is crucial to find solutions to these issues and meet the energy needs of island residents in a secure, sustainable and affordable manner. Expanding the deployment of clean energy technologies, including renewables, therefore presents a major opportunity, while increasing the efficiency and digitalisation of energy systems could also deliver major benefits if harnessed. 

EPRI and a team of researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) collaborated to predict how the risks of hurricane-induced power outages are expected to evolve based on climate-driven changes to hurricane behavior.

The results show dramatically increasing power outage risk along the U.S. coastline–particularly in the Gulf Coast and Florida, as well as Puerto Rico—driven by an increase in the number of major hurricanes expected under a future climate change scenario. The data studied suggests storms may travel further and make landfall more often, power outage frequency may significantly increase, and outage events will likely be more severe.

The assessment relied on PNNL’s Risk Analysis Framework for Tropical Cyclones, or RAFT.

In the first five months of 2024, the US installed capacity increased by 14,435MW, meaning newly installed solar capacity accounted for about 74% of the total additions.

In May, 50 new solar projects were placed in service with a combined capacity of 2,517MW, ahead of wind (277MW, two units), hydropower (211MW, two units) and natural gas (184MW, nine units). Solar accounted for 79% of the newly installed capacity in the US that month.

Year-on-year, installed solar capacity in the US increased by 118% from 4,885MW in the first five months in 2023 to 10,669MW in the same period in 2024.

PV Tech reported that the US added 4,557MW of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2024, bringing the total installed capacity to over 100GW, according to trade body American Clean Power Association (ACP).