An Arizona scheme to study the use of energy storage and smart inverters in integrating solar to the grid has contracted the deployment of 4MW of AES Energy Storage’s lithium battery systems.
News in brief: Sunverge launches AC-coupled systems, whether South Australia’s blackouts could have been a different story with batteries, German government approves model region project for renewables, storage and grids.
A programme by utility Con Edison to reduce stress on the electrical grid at low cost to consumers in two districts of New York will get its first microgrid at a low-income housing complex.
Ireland’s first Tesla Powerpack commercial-scale energy storage system has been installed successfully recently, while England’s first was officially opened with a visit from a government minister yesterday.
US energy storage had a fairly quiet period in the third quarter of this year deploying just 16.4MW/31.4MWh but enjoyed a record quarterly sum of US$660 million of corporate investment.
A corporate venture fund set up by oil and gas company Statoil has invested in North American energy storage developer Convergent Energy + Power.
Zinc-air battery-based energy storage system maker Fluidic Energy has received US$20 million in investment for projects in south-east Asia from a private equity fund which includes the Asian Development Bank as a partner.
The merging of Tesla and SolarCity into a single entity creates a new company well-placed to deliver a full range of energy-related products and services to consumers, analysts have said.
The UK’s government department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) and its regulator, Ofgem, have jointly launched a Call for Evidence on System Flexibility for the country’s power networks, putting storage at the forefront. Anthony Price, head of trade group the Electricity Storage Network spoke to Energy-Storage.News about the document, which gives stakeholders until January to respond.
The soon-to-be-merged Tesla and SolarCity have completed a solar-plus-storage microgrid on an island in American Samoa that will reduce the local population’s reliance on costly and cumbersome diesel imports.
