There is a greatly expanded amount of energy storage on offer at the European edition of the Intersolar trade exhibition and conferences this year, including the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) Europe show hosting its own conference for the first time. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to canvas opinions on the big trends and topics from a number of industry figures.
Last week the US Energy Storage Association (ESA) hosted its annual conference and exhibition in Dallas, Texas. Andy Colthorpe spoke to Jim McDowall of battery and energy storage system provider Saft, which won the show’s Outstanding Acheivement Award.
We often hear about the so-called ‘synergy’ between EVs and energy storage in the home. Not merely the fact that the majority of both applications for storage tend to have a lithium-ion battery-driven heartbeat at their core, but a lot has been made of the fact that the two industries could spur each other on to both lower costs and increased adoption. One company in the UK has taken on some of the challenges involved in integrating these and other related technologies.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is set to launch a technology roadmap for electricity storage at the solar industry conference and exhibition Intersolar Europe next month. IRENA technology roadmap analyst Ruud Kempener spoke to Andy Colthorpe about the project.
The UK is lagging behind many other countries in both private and public investment into the deployment of modern electricity storage. Despite some measures which represent a good start, the new British government needs to act to remove the “roadblock” to this activity, blogs Anthony Price.
Tesla’s grand entrance to the stationary storage market has been (largely) welcomed but question marks remain over the company’s business model. Andy Colthorpe gauges the latest reaction and explores the options facing Elon Musk.
Raj Prabhu of cleantech research and communications firm Mercom Capital talks through some of the interesting findings and trends highlighted by his company’s recent “Smart Grid, Battery/Storage, Efficiency Funding and M&A” report for Q1 2015.
The hotly anticipated announcement tomorrow of two products in the Tesla’s stationary storage range, teased and trailed by a series of cryptic and not-so-cryptic tweets and interview snippets, has led to mainstream media taking an interest in the stationary storage sector and what it could offer like no other news we’ve heard to date. And there hasn’t even been any actual news yet. Andy Colthorpe spoke to energy storage expert Cosmin Laslau at Lux Research, about what to expect.
One firm exploring the possibilities of contributing to grid stability by installing energy storage at solar farms is German PV plant technology provider Belectric. The company will install two large-scale energy storage projects in the UK and connected an energy storage system at a large-scale solar power plant in Germany late last year. The system at Alt Daber is the first such installation in Europe to operate on the primary operating reserve market. Andy Colthorpe interviewed Belectric’s UK managing director Duncan Bott and Tim Mueller, chief executive of Belectric’s solar research and innovation subsidiary, Adensis, about the Alt Daber project earlier this year.
Following February’s Guest Blog which looked at factors- barriers, boundaries and benefits- that can influence its widespread adoption, SMA’s Aleksandra-Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer and Volker Wachenfeld focus on the discussions behind designing and implementing home solar-plus-storage.
