The amount of VC funding invested in battery energy storage companies in the first nine months of this year has more than doubled from the equivalent period of 2016, according to a report from Mercom Capital.
In its home territory of Germany, energy storage provider Sonnen is making a play to replace utilities, but its business models in the US will instead emphasise cooperation with existing energy suppliers.
Australian energy provider MPower has been selected to deliver a grid-scale battery energy storage system in New South Wales that could save the local grid operator AU$1 million (US$0.78 million) a year in network upgrades.
US trade association groups, the Energy Storage Association and Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), have called on their respective industries to assist hurricane relief efforts in the US and its territories.
AES claims that 20MW of energy storage it deployed in the Dominican Republic just a few weeks before Hurricane Irma, assisted the island nation in keeping power supplies running even as devastation struck.
A distributed smart grid that can “heal” itself in the event of system components failing has energy storage and energy management software at its core, grid-scale system integrator Alfen has said.
One of the ‘value of energy storage’ questions that was being asked a lot two or three years ago was around the use of batteries and decentralised system architecture instead of traditional “poles and wires” grid networks. However, advancements in this area have been slow to materialise and Navigant Research’s recent ‘Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Deferral’ report sought to fill the knowledge gap. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to ask lead author Alex Eller three quick questions around the topic.
In the latest edition of downstream solar PV technology journal PV Tech Power, writers from Energy-Storage.News and PV Tech have profiled 10 of the top system integrators working in grid-scale energy storage today.
