Quoting an expected doubling in installed PV capacity over the next five years, a partnership between Chinese battery storage system maker BYD and European PV inverter company SMA is targeting the USA market, identifying it – along with Africa – as having “high growth potential” for the pair’s products.
As well as Elon Musk remarking that the company may have had its “best ever quarter” for solar since the SolarCity takeover, Tesla’s energy storage deployments have enjoyed a ramp up, while a fellow exec hinted the stationary battery business is constrained by cell supply.
‘Energy resilient infrastructure upgrades’ planned for a US military facility will involve the deployment of 20MW of solar PV, 4MW / 8MWh of battery storage and 4MW of gas-fired backup generation in a project worth US$133.5 million.
As Japan’s heavily regulated energy markets continue a process of liberalisation and supposedly increasing consumer choices, utility TEPCO has launched a smart electricity tariff enabled by the capabilities of residential battery storage.
A 30MW / 30MWh battery energy storage system has been inaugurated with a ceremony in Victoria, Australia, with one project partner describing the switching-on as “a real watershed moment in the continuing modernisation” of the state’s energy supply.
South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom has unveiled its Distributed Battery Storage Programme at an event this week, committing to solar-plus-storage and energy storage projects totalling 1400MWh.
Four energy storage projects that have been proposed as an alternative to expensive transmission and distribution (T&D) network upgrades, totalling 38.5MWh of capacity, have been awarded to developer EsVolta by California utility Southern California Edison (SCE).
It’s likely a strong indication of the way the world is adopting renewable energy rapidly that just under a month ago, one of the best-established trade shows for solar in the US featured what seemed like almost as much space dedicated to national and international energy storage companies and technologies, as it did for solar.
The UK’s government has shied away from supporting large volumes of solar and other distributed energy technologies through subsidies, but commercial and industrial energy storage and solar-plus-storage could be a huge market opportunity in Britain and abroad.
