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In what is unlikely to become a regular feature of Energy-Storage.news, but seems apt nonetheless, this edition rounds up news from some of the latest behind-the-meter orchestras of small-scale resources in the past few weeks.
At 4:52pm on Friday 9 August 2019, the UK suffered its first wide-scale blackout in more than a decade. More than 1.1 million consumers were plunged into the dark as rail lines screeched to a halt, traffic lights failed and even airports reported problems. Liam Stoker looks at the root causes, and how battery storage came to the rescue.
The business models and technologies underpinning the development of stationary energy storage markets are evolving rapidly. Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Jan Figgener and David Haberschusz of RWTH Aachen University look at some of the key trends driving the sector forwards, in a paper which first appeared in PV Tech Power's Energy Storage Special Report 2019.
Virtual power plants made up of household solar and battery systems look set to continue their rise in Australia, with utility AGL expanding the scope of an ongoing project significantly.
Navigant Research has created a definition for virtual power plants (VPPs) in the course of creating a market report which finds that nearly 4GW of such projects are already in operation, with rapid growth forecasted over the next decade.
The US state of Georgia’s fledgling energy storage market took another step forward with the ceremonial switch on of Georgia Power’s ‘Smart Neighbourhood’ in Atlanta.
California electricity company East Bay Community Energy has hired Sunrun to install solar and battery systems on 500 low-income housing units in the area before 2022.
SolarEdge’s StorEdge inverters have been deemed eligible for a programme rolled out by National Grid in the US states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island encouraging customers to help reduce peak demand on local networks.
Over half a million dollars of contracts to supply flexibility to a distribution network in Britain have been awarded through a commercial tender to resource operators including behind-the-meter energy storage systems.
Under the agreement, Statera will develop 1GW of high-efficiency gas reciprocating engines and energy storage.
US software and data company Autogrid has continued its roll-out of solutions into Japan’s evolving electricity market, joining a virtual power plant (VPP) project that could add more than 10,000 assets by the end of 2021.
Assets are up for sale following the bankruptcy of EnSync, a networked smart home solutions provider from the US which has been using battery energy storage to aggregate connected systems for energy trading and other services.
The capabilities of virtual power plants (VPPs) to provide capacity as well as frequency regulation services to the grid in Australia will be demonstrated through a new integration trial.
A Tesla Powerpack energy storage system with 7MWh capacity has been deployed for a train company in Japan, adding backup power capabilities to trains and adding the system to an ongoing virtual power plant project.
A contract with utility Southern California Edison (SCE) has led to Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) supplying 2GWh of grid services from just 60MWh of energy storage during 2018, with one analyst dubbing the feat an “impressive milestone”.
Statkraft has partnered with energy & meteo systems to launch a 1GW wind, solar and battery storage virtual power plant in the UK, which it says will further renewables’ penetration into the country’s energy market.
Solar-plus-storage systems in ordinary households will provide 20MW of energy capacity in New England, with Sunrun announcing the award of a contract from the state’s ISO (independent system operator).
News in brief from around the world in energy storage.
Calgary-headquartered Eguana Tech has joined high-profile rivals like Tesla and Sonnen in targeting South Australia’s residential energy storage market, announcing it has become eligible for the state’s incentive programme.
Residents of Ballyferriter village on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry are to join the project this month with the installation of domestic energy storage units in 20 homes.
In another eventful and exciting year, Energy-Storage.news has been able to capture conversations and interviews with leading industry figures.
Batteries in private households will be now able to perform the “same tasks as a conventional power plant”, across the whole of Germany, the CEO of Sonnen has said, following a ruling that opens up grid services markets to the company’s devices.
Ben Hill is widely known in the solar and energy storage industries as the former Trina Solar executive who drove the Chinese company towards a leading position in the European market in the days of the large-scale boom before leaving to become Tesla’s VP for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. UK start-up Solo Energy is among a number of companies he is now working with closely as an advisor.
Residential PV system owners who signed up to Japan’s feed-in tariff policy for 10-year contracts, that will soon expire, may be able to find new ways to benefit from their solar using battery storage.
EDF Energy, one of the UK's 'Big Six' major energy suppliers, is seeking to build a portfolio of domestic batteries to take into energy services markets by offering discounted energy storage units to consumers via a new partnership with manufacturer Powervault.
Steven Marshall, the Premier of South Australia, has welcomed the start of assembly-line work at Sonnen’s new factory in Adelaide, while rival Tesla’s virtual power plant (VPP) in the state is beginning its second phase of development.
Stem Inc, which offers commercial and industrial (C&I) customers battery storage systems to lower their energy costs, has partnered with Canadian state-owned utility Ontario Power Generation to offer Ontario businesses ‘no-money-down’ energy storage solutions.
The global energy storage market will grow to a cumulative 942GW/2,857GWh capacity by 2040, attracting US$620 billion in investment, caused by sharply decreasing battery costs, according to a Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) report.
A ceremony was held yesterday in Niedersachsen, Germany, to welcome the start of operations at a ‘hybrid’ energy storage plant that will use a combination of sodium-sulfur and lithium-ion batteries to stabilise the grid.
Cloud-aggregated virtual power plants using residential or C&I battery storage as part of a smart energy management system can benefit the grid, integrate renewables and EVs and hopefully add a powerful long-term value proposition for home storage. Andy Colthorpe and David Pratt report on how some of the UK’s first VPP projects are proving the concept.