The second part of our round-up of the best guest blogs of the year covers as wide a range of topics as yesterday's list, from a mixture of experts and industry stakeholders.
We look forward to bringing you more quality content next year, but just to remind you that this is merely a selection chosen arbitrarily by the team as the year draws to a close – there were many other guest blogs, interviews, editor's blogs and features run throughout the year that we really think are worth your time, so why not take another look at the likes of our interviews with Nancy Pfund and Jigar Shah, editor's blogs from our team on Vattenfall's UK frequency response project and US residential solar companies' bids to become 'one-stop-shops' for their customers or our video interviews with the likes of Sonnen and Fraunhofer ISE expert Mathias Vetter.
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Roll on 2018 – here are the rest of those guest blogs:
Understanding the energy storage world leaders, anticipating the next big markets – Alex Eller
As you will have seen from his previous submissions to the site, Navigant Research analyst Alex Eller likes nothing more than taking on a really big topic and attacking it in great detail. There is perhaps no bigger topic than an examination of the top-level drivers for energy storage worldwide and Eller wrote about global and country-level dynamics, as well as digging deep into some specific examples of energy system needs and economics driving activity both behind-the-meter and at utility scale.
Published 10 July 2017
Britain’s flexibility strategy: A game changer or simply warm words? – Robert Ede
This blog by Robert Ede, senior political consultant at UK-based communications agency Whitehouse Consulting, dissected the aftermath of Britain’s General Election in June and some of the relevant announcements and policies that followed,
Ede looked at the Faraday Challenge, a near-£250 million cash injection into battery technology research and innovation, the national Flexibility Plan, analysing these and other developments and putting them into an easy-to-understand context.
Published 7 August 2017
Household energy storage batteries: Myths and realities – Ian Murray
Ian Murray, managing director of UK storage system provider Powerflow Energy addressed some questions consumers should be asking about battery systems before buying them for their houses.
Murray spoke up about some of the miss-selling practises he has heard about, sounding a note of particular caution when it comes to claims made about the economics of home battery storage:
“I recently spoke to a customer who had been told he would save £1,000 (US$1,330) per year from our 2.0kWh Sundial battery model, when his solar PV system alone only produces £600 per year. There’s no way on earth those numbers stack up as he will use about 50% of the £600 within the home anyway, leaving £300 per year to be stored and used later. He would have probably bought the product regardless as he wanted to increase his energy self-consumption from his solar PV system. He just wanted to be told the truth, is that too much to ask I wonder?”
Published 2 October 2017
How important is ‘brand power’ in the world of energy storage? – Dr Scott Dwyer
According to recent estimates, somewhere in the region of 50,000 lithium battery energy storage systems have been sold worldwide for household use. This represents a fairly small installed base, but with around 50 different providers or systems available in leading markets such as Australia and Germany and the likes of IKEA putting systems on shelves in their retail stores, competition is already fierce.
Scott Dwyer, principal analyst at Delta EE, wrote about the push and pull of brand power and how it will impact both sales strategies and customer desires.
Published 4 October 2017
What information are investors looking for when it comes to energy storage? – Philipp Lobnig
As the market opens up, it isn’t just households that are looking to use their money wisely when it comes to energy storage. As you will have seen on the site, investors are also taking a keen interest. Philipp Lobnig of Enable-+, an online portal that connects investors with energy projects under development, blogged on the importance of putting together clear project proposals and gave some simple formulas for putting together a successful project ‘pitch’.
Published 30 October 2017
How California demand response has opened up to energy storage, virtual power plants – Ted Ko
Ted Ko, policy director at Stem Inc, one of the US’ leading providers of commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage, discussed moves to open up electricity markets in the company’s home state of California.
A newly-introduced programme called the Demand Response Auction Mechanism (DRAM) forms a cornerstone of grid-operator CAISO’s transition from utility-based Demand Response (DR) programmes to wholesale market-based DR resource procurement. Ko wrote that it is still very early days, but changes like this could open up the state’s electricity markets to greater competition and increased penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) including aggregated behind-the-meter energy storage.
Published 16 November 2017
Behind the numbers: UK’s Capacity Market register pushes grid-scale pipeline to 8GW – Lauren Cook
Up-to-the-minute snap analysis of the UK’s pre-qualification register for Capacity Market projects forms the backbone of our final contribution, which comes from Lauren Cook, analyst at Solar Media Market Research.
As part of the Solar Media group that publishes Energy-Storage.News, you could argue that Lauren is not strictly a guest blogger, but leaving that aside, her team’s painstaking work in delving into the UK pipeline of utility-scale energy storage paints a detailed and fascinating picture.
The Capacity Market is the mechanism by which Britain pays generators to ensure the lights stay on, particularly in the winter months and activity in this sector can be a good indicator of where the energy storage industry in the UK is going.
Published 20 December 2017