While Germany is one of the world’s leaders in solar PV and now an early leader in residential energy storage, utility-scale energy storage is still “under discussion” and not yet a mature proposition, industry figures have said.
In a major energy strategy upheaval, the South Australian government is providing significant funding to support energy storage projects, starting with a 100MW grid-connected battery that will be the largest in the country.
Swedish start-up Northvolt, which is run by two former Tesla Motors executives, plans to build a huge lithium-ion battery factory in the Nordic region, giving Tesla and Panasonic’s Nevada Gigafactory a close rival within Europe in terms of size.
US battery and energy storage system manufacturer Aquion Energy has declared bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and offloaded 80% of its employees, according to a company release.
A new project is set to test the feasibility of turning a UK car park into a MW-scale battery to provide power on demand to the electricity grid from electric vehicles.
Led by a record-breaking final quarter, energy storage reached 336MWh in 2016, growing 100% in megawatt-hours from 2015’s installed capacity, despite staying roughly flat in megawatts with 221MW deployed last year.
US utility Southern California Edison (SCE) is looking to acquire distributed energy projects to help strengthen the grid in the Goleta area of Santa Barbara, California.
The North American subsidiary of international investor-owned energy supplier E.ON has partnered with Greensmith Energy to deliver two grid-scale energy storage systems known as the Texas Waves projects.