The number of installed stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS) is growing significantly. According to recent estimates, today’s annual global market volume of about US$1 billion is expected to increase more than twentyfold in less than 10 years, reaching a staggering US$20–25billion by 2024. Florian Mayr of Apricum Consulting looks at this growth in the context of specific use cases for storage in two of its most advanced regional markets, the US and Germany.
John Grimes of Australia’s Energy Storage Council writes a summary of the recent Global Energy Storage Market Overview & Regional Summary Report which was issued to his group’s members in October. The report looks at many of the big trends and activities driving the space forward.
Lux Research published 2015’s fourth quarter update to its Grid Storage Tracker earlier this month, tracking every stationary deployment of advanced energy storage globally. Dean Frankel, research associate at Lux talks through some of the headline findings and big trends and explains why it has been a “monumental year” for energy storage.
PV Tech Storage spoke to Nancy Pfund of ‘social impact’ investors DBL Partners, among Tesla’s early backers and participants in two of the top five VC fund plays of this year’s third quarter.
In contrast to “behind-the-meter” household energy storage systems, whose operational strategy is generally aimed at local financial optimisation of power consumption, the use cases for battery technologies on an industrial scale are primarily determined by the requirements of the electricity supply grids, particularly the regional distribution grids. SMA’s Voker Wachenfeld and Dr Alexsandra Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer take a closer look at some of the demands and applications driving the sector forward.
While some observers have breathlessly called 2015 the “Year of the Battery,” a more accurate description might be that we are seeing the dawn of the “Age of Energy Storage,” especially the winning combination of storage integrated with solar and emerging smart grid technologies, writes Panasonic’s Daniel Roca.
We are approaching the sixth annual Solar Energy UK conference and exhibition, hosted by our publisher Solar Media. Taking place next week amid challenging times for the UK PV industry, recognition of the potential of storage at the top level at last, and actions already underway by the industry, will be among the central topics of discussion, with more exhibitors and conference strands than ever before.
We’ve been talking over the past few months with a large number of key and emerging players in the UK’s energy storage industry. With our show Solar Energy UK coming up next week, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you the thoughts of two of those players on the relationship between renewables and energy storage.
The UK, catapulted into being one of the world’s leading regions for solar PV deployment unexpectedly over the past couple of years, is now facing just as unexpected challenges in the form of drastic FiT cuts of as much as 87%. While this is undoubtedly bad for the industry, there are some possible avenues for policy adjustments that won’t require subsidising as well as strategies the industry could adopt to make self-consuming solar with storage a more viable option, writes Simon Daniel of Moixa Technology.
The €32 million (US$36 million) Hydrogen Mobility Europe programme was launched today, with Germany, the UK, the Scandinavian countries and France signing up with the aim of expanding hydrogen refuelling station coverage across the continent. Andy Colthorpe speaks to one of the companies behind the project and power-to-gas energy expert Christopher Hebling of Fraunhofer ISE about this “modern fairytale” technology.
