Almost US$700 million of corporate funding went into energy storage in 2015, including US$397 million from venture capital (VC) investment, according to the latest report from Mercom Capital.
Although Britain’s government has cut support for renewable energy severely in the past few months, controversially claiming a need to balance the transition away from fossil fuels against the cost to consumers, energy storage may face less of a challenge at the top level, according speakers at a conference in London.
Analysis firm IHS has said that as of the end of 2015’s fourth quarter, the pipeline of planned energy storage projects using batteries or flywheels had reached 1.6GW, in a year which had seen a “change in stakeholder mentality” in favour of the technologies.
SMA is aiming to tackle the market for retrofitting energy storage systems in to existing home PV installations, with a new AC-coupled version of its Sunny Boy inverter suitable for high voltage batteries.
News in brief: SolarEdge’s Powerwall-compatible StorEdge self-consumption solution is now available internationally; AES completes another 10MW project in Holland which will provide grid services; and Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation’s Willey Battery Utility is the latest energy storage system to join PJM’s frequency regulation market.
California’s CalCharge is a partnership between public and private sector, aiming to accelerate the adoption of energy storage in the state. Andy Colthorpe of Energy Storage News spoke with CalCharge president Danny Kennedy, the Australia-born former chief of US residential PV installer Sungevity who has a colourful background in eco-activism and the programme’s recently appointed manager, Alex Luce.
Corporations and utilities are already interested in energy storage but must collaborate to advance deployment and lower costs, avoiding some of the past mistakes of the PV industry, according to the heads of one California-based industry group.
The unsung hero in the grid revolution is the data that enables new technology and provide more control of an increasingly complex system. Andy Colthorpe explored the growing role of Big Data in energy networks in a feature article for the downstream solar technology journal PV Tech Power.
DNV GL’s new recommended practice guidelines for grid-connected energy storage systems is aimed at “reducing risks” for investors and the wider community, the document’s lead author has said.
Panasonic has given the first indication of the expected size of its investment in collaborator-competitor Tesla’s battery Gigafactory, which according to the company’s president could be up to US$1.6 billion.
