Centrica and sonnen have completed a virtual power plant (VPP) project in the south of England, which will allow customers to maximise the potential of their solar panels while providing flexibility to the grid.

ZAF Energy Systems, a maker of nickel-zinc (NiZn) batteries which in 2019 claimed a “breakthrough in cycle life” has netted a contract to outfit a data centre in the Southern US for integrator Capitol Power Group (CPG).

While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.

The success of efforts to decarbonise economies in the UK and elsewhere could hinge largely on how governments and business communities – particularly large commercial lenders – engage with the sector in 2020, a UK-based financier of solar and storage has said.

In today’s episode, ESN’s Andy Colthorpe and Liam Stoker explore the way grids are changing in the Middle East to accommodate clean energy, the role virtual power plants are playing in Italy, and the contrasting role coal is playing in Germany and bush fire-stricken Australia.

Recommendations made to the government of India as it prepares to publish its union budget for 2020 from industry group India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) include measures to support both the upstream of industry and the downstream of clean energy deployment.

Energy storage company Moixa, together with automotive giant Honda, have launched a vehicle to grid (V2G) project at Islington Town Hall that will help to provide constraint management for the building, as well as facilitate a switch to electric vehicles.

A regulatory framework put in place by Italy’s grid operator TERNA has enabled Enel X to aggregate residential energy storage systems to pool their capabilities.

Portugal is already speeding up work to follow its record-breaking solar auction of 2019 with a fresh tender this year.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Environment Ministry of the Maldives have launched a plan to roll out solar–battery–diesel hybrids across 48 islands.