First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the first of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe learns what the flow battery industry faces in the fight for commercialisation.
PV manufacturers Hanwha Q Cells and Sunpower have both signed deals to bring home energy storage to residential solar customers in Europe and in the US respectively.
In the past week, developer RES Group has just got a front-of-meter battery project underway for a utility company in northern Germany, while storage system provider Tesvolt has just signed a deal with another utility in the European country to distribute energy storage behind-the-meter for commercial customers.
Xcel Energy has filed a plan which would retire two coal plants, add significant capacities of renewables and gas – and deploy 275MW specifically in combination with PV.
California investor-owned utility (IOU) San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has contracted companies including RES, AMS and Enel Green Power to execute five energy storage projects totalling 85MW / 334MWh in its service area.
Advisory and certification house DNV GL is supporting Turkish plans to source 30% of total electricity generated in the country from renewable sources, carrying out a feasibility study for combinations of solar PV and energy storage.
The residential energy storage market in the US has just enjoyed one of its biggest growth spurts so far, although action is mostly centred in specific states with supportive policies and conditions.
Australia could be getting its first lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’, with some progress made in the past few days for a facility proposed to be built in Queensland.
Swiss vertically-integrated battery and energy storage system and equipment maker Leclanché has followed sonnen in netting a significant amount of investment to go into the second half of 2018, securing CHF75 million (US$76 million) from its main existing investor.
Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.
