The natural gas market in the world begins to change radically. Thanks to the newly built pipelines and liquefied gas tankers, LNG is natural gas becomes a commodity that can be transported in the near future to many places in the world. Natural gas prices are slowly becoming global from lokal.

Despite all the complaints on the rise in energy prices end is a bit paradoxical fact that the prices of their own energy commodities such as internationally traded coal, natural gas and electric power are currently relatively low. Nor the sooner very popular forecasts, including refurbished international agencies, the increasing scarcity of energy, which will drive prices up.

Net metering is a way of trading electricity from renewable sources. It also works as an effective incentive to purchase renewable energy source and represents an alternative to other forms of support. In the easiest way it can be described as “turning the meter in both directions”.

There's no law regulation to fix details of gas and electricity supply billing for big customers, such as industrial customers etc. Customer must fix it with the supplier on his own initiative in the supply contract.

Other important aspects of wind conditions over the area of the Czech Republic are discussed in the second part of the article. This include the distribution of wind speed and prevailing wind direction, which, can vary significantly between the sites in the Czech Republic.

While an actual map of the mean wind speed at the height of 100 m above ground (i.e. at the height of state-of-the-art "large" wind turbines) was created and published in 2007 – 2008, only less accurate older data were available for the conditions closer to the ground. This gap is filled by presented article and concurrently published map of the wind speed at the height of 10 m. Furthermore, other important aspects of wind conditions over the area of the Czech Republic are discussed. These results can form a useful tool for those interested in construction of small wind turbines.
To calculate the average wind speed at a height of 10 m above the surface the same procedure and the same input data as for “wind map” at a height of 100 m above the ground were used. The resulting wind map is a synthesis of three calculation models used for long time at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics AS CR: VAS, WAsP and PIAP.

In connection with the implementation of the revised European Directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings, certain legislative provisions such as Decree No. 148/2007, Coll. Replaced by Decree No. 78/2013, Coll. are currently amending. This article is focused on the changes associated with the energy certification of buildings, the "ENB", from the perspective of changes in the evaluation ENB.

Czech legislation introduced special regime of responsibility and funding of recycling of the photovoltaic modules installed until 2012. The special regime was motivated by the fear that PV modules will remain in the field at the end of life as its owner will go bankrupt controlled.
For every other electronic devices their producers are responsible for recycling since 2005. For photovoltaic modules the producers responsibility in the Czech Republic starts from 2013. For the modules installed until 2012 the owners are responsible for recycling. Before June 30 2013 the owners must enter into contract with a recycling company dedicated to photovoltaic modules recycling, which must be founded by at least four manufacturers of electronic devices (not necessarily photovoltaic modules). The recycling company have to estimate a fee for recycling despite of that no company in the Czech Republic has experience with large-scale recycling of photovoltaic modules. The owners then must pay the fee between 2014 and 2019. Regarding 30-year lifetime of PV modules the recycling will only rarely occur before 2040.
There is no obligation to deposit the collected fees on a blocked account nor another restriction for its use. This implies there is fear the recycling company will go bankrupt controlled. The supposed problem was not solved it was only shifted to another level.

Energy Regulator Office is often alleged of setting feed-in-tarff (FiT) for photovoltaic of an undue advantage which later caused photovoltaic boom in 2009 and 2010. Based on comparison with FiT in Germany it is shown that the allegations are exaggregated. Probably the main cause of the photovoltaic boom was the fact that photovoltaics was ignored in the Czech Republic. In substance no discussion occurred about PV until the end of 2008, attention was focused on wind power. In addition, the development in 2009 was very rapid and it occurred at a time of political instability.

So far it was assumed that the PV systems with an east-west orientation need separate inverter for each orientation or at least inverter with two MPP trackers to avoid mismatch losses. Analysis of such system shows that with one MPP tracker losses are relatively small.

Commented explanation of several key terms of energy, especially from portfolio of renewable and non-renewable energy sources used both in current energy systems and in systems considered in the near future in the Czech Republic.

Since the combustion of solid fuels in heating boilers is attended by emissions of pollutants, in individual EU countries are gradually adopted different tightening requirements (emission and efficiency), which the appliance must meet. Requirements are targeted both the producers or importers of the combustion devices and theirs' operators. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of current and oncoming requirements and also show their comparison.

Scramble for Africa is a concept which is name for the period of colonial conquest of Africa between 1881 and 1914. The former European powers occupied continent of Africa by armies until the final allotment of the entire continent. Similar is the current battle of the Baltic countries for supremacy in building their own LNG terminal.

Besides the photovoltaic panels, which were already described enough, there are the second major components of photovoltaic plants - inverters. The main parameter for each inverter in terms of energy use is its efficiency. It means how much power from a DC input AC output gets.

In the past there has been several large blackouts in the world. Risk of such blackout reportedly increases with increasing of share of renewable energy sources in energy mix. In fact neither of previous blackouts were caused by renewables. Main primary causes are age of transmission system components or operator error. Frightening with several days outage caused by renewable sources is exaggerated.

Especially in terms of energy savings and safety must enforce closed appliances category C. It must not, however, commit inappropriate application of new regulations such as Government Regulation No. 91/2010 terms of fire safety during the operation of chimneys, flues and heating appliances.

Sewage water contains organic compounds, thermal and kinetic energy, the amount is about 9 times higher than is needed for cleaning. The biggest source of heat energy are beyond the wastewater treatment plants, hotels, schools, restaurants, hostels, administrative buildings and other public facilities. Also, a wellness center, swimming pools, spas, and hospitals.